ROCHESTER - Fewer than four of every 10 students in Rochester's beleaguered public schools earn a high school diploma. Those who do have slim hopes of enrolling in the University of Rochester, a prestigious private school where tuition is $35,000 a year.

That prospect looked a little brighter Wednesday when the 157-year-old school said it would waive up to $100,000 in tuition costs over four years for any Rochester school district graduate who qualifies for admission on academic merit.

The Rochester Promise program, among a handful of similar initiatives at campuses around the country aimed at accommodating struggling urban school districts, “is our way of celebrating our close relationship to a city we love,” said the school's president, Joel Seligman.

Beginning next fall, the university is hoping to enroll as many as 40 city graduates under a $1 million program that might later be enlarged if the rolls of qualified candidates start to swell.

“It's a great cause for celebration,” especially for families in poor city neighborhoods who view sending their children to the leafy campus on the banks of the Genesee River as “something that maybe is an unattainable goal,” Mayor Robert Duffy said.

Over the last four years, the school accepted 69 graduates of the city's public schools - where the graduation rate is 39 percent - and 33 of them enrolled.

“I don't think we have enough Rochester city students on campus and so this is a blatant attempt to make sure that we get some more,” said Jonathan Burdick, the university's director of admissions.

“I look forward to not just a few but hundreds of students coming through this door and treating this as ... their avenue to greater things beyond.”

The school currently has 4,600 undergraduates and 4,100 full-time and part-time graduate students.

Along with other grants and loans available to high-achieving applicants from poor families, “we can sell this to our kids as pretty much a free ride to one of the best institutions in the country,” said William Cala, the city's interim schools superintendent.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said last week it will spend up to $100 million over the next decade on a tuition-assistance program for students in the city's public schools.

New Jersey's Rutgers University offers full-tuition scholarships to students from three careworn school districts nearby, and George Washington University offers free rides each year to a select number of students from public schools in Washington, D.C.