Since 2018, we have been following a sample of 5,000 young adults of the Dividend Generation in Yaounde, Cameroon, as they finished their final year of school, and began their transition to adulthood. This  sampling approach usefully starts all students from a common baseline to see how paths may diverge, depending upon subsequent circumstances and students’ first encounter with the world of work and adulthood. Furthermore, the collection of baseline information during the first round of interviews helps understand prior differences among students, and how these initial differences –coupled with later events—affect their trajectories.  This school-based sample helps us to investigate what schools –a key institution for youth—can preemptively do to support youth before they leave the system. Further, engagement with a large group of youth in a school environment during the first year makes it possible to build rapport in ways that can reduce future attrition and improve the quality of data collected. We have completed a second wave of data collection in 2019, with a wave 3 planned for 2021.