Center for Student Opportunity

I'm a big fan of the Center for Student Opportunity,  a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote college access and opportunity among first-generation and historically underserved student populations. They've produced a very fine guidebook of colleges that focuses on information particularly appropriate to these students, including what support is offered, scholarships and so on. It also has essays and tips from experts in the front. I saw the first edition last year at NACAC and bought ten copies on the spot to give to the charter school counselors I've been working with over the past two years.


CSO has also created a strong website called College Center that lets students search for college access programs, ask experts questions about the college process and search for colleges offering advising, mentoring, transition programs, and so on. I expect them to continue adding to the list as they go on. 


Colleges can find out how to partner with CSO to reach underserved students by clicking here. With a contribution to CSO (based on Carnegie Classification), institutions can not only reach individual students but also community organizations. Everybody wins.


CSO's most recent addition is a blog section where ten students from minority, low-income, and first-generation backgrounds are sharing their stories or high school and college. The initial entries have the energy of a new project, projecting optimism and immediacy. Although there are only a few from each student so far, I hope they continue to record their thoughts and experiences for the benefit of their peers about to go through the process themselves. 


Their situations reflect the concerns that many first-generation students have, such as having to be an example for their younger siblings and communities. They are also poignant in their forthrightness--one student blogger talks about how she discovered she was pregnant while she was applying to colleges. This forthrightness can help students who think that personal circumstances make it impossible to think about continuing their educations. (They blog as part of their having become Opportunity Scholars--see below.)


If you are a counselor or community volunteer who works with first-generation, low-income, and otherwise underserved students, the Center for Student Opportunity can be a great help. Not only does the website have excellent resources, there is also a page where you can download free guides for helping high school students, parents/families, and others. Students also have the opportunity to be nominated as Opportunity Scholars; if selected, they receive college counseling support from a network of volunteer counselors as well as a chance for a $1,000.00 renewable scholarship in college. 


If you are a college and want to expand your outreach to underrepresented students, be sure to look at CSO's Colleges Partnership Program. 


There's plenty more to explore on the site, and I expect it just to get better and better as more and more individuals and institutions connect to it. It is a welcome and necessary resource for the students we serve.

Back to the Future

Those of us who applied to college thirty or so years ago seem mostly to have tossed out a few applications, taken the SAT or ACT once, and then gotten on with the rest of our high school lives. We waited and hoped for the best. Some of us were lucky enough to have a counselor who casually mentioned a college or two we'd never heard of and encouraged us to apply, which we did. That was certainly my experience. Mr. Boulhouwer, counselor at West Morris Regional H.S. in Chester NJ is responsible for my applying to and eventually attending Amherst College in Amherst MA. He suggested I try a "liberal arts" college. After explaining to me what that was, he tossed out Amherst and I said I'd give it a shot. The rest, as they say, is history. (To this day I'm convinced that I didn't even know Amherst was all-male until I got there; I probably would have been a Williams alum if he'd said "Williams" instead.)

I've joked with any number of adults of about my age who have similar stories about how they got to their alma maters: the chance remark, the off-hand suggestion by a math teacher, or the casual observation by a respected neighbor or relative. There was no strategizing, no long-term planning, no multiple testing, no weighing the pros and cons of every school. At some level, we knew we'd be fine anywhere we went and we trusted that the schools would make good decisions (although not necessarily the ones we wanted). Once the applications were done we went about our business. And in fact we did turn out pretty well, most of us.

Having made the transition from working with the uber-strategic to the underserved, I've discovered many similarities between the latter and my generation of college-goers. Low-income and first generation students interested in going to college tend to be hard workers fully involved in their schools and communities, out of choice and necessity. They're not strategizers, they're young people who hope their talents and experiences will be enough to get them admitted to college; that is to say, they haven't been good students and participants in order to get into college, they're going to get into college because they're good students and participants. They're not multi-testers trying to break 2200, they're test takers because they have to be, and let it go at that. Most of them can't afford, literally or figuratively, to spend hours and hours parsing essay questions; they've got real things to do.

In these ways and others, I'm finding that the low-income and first-generation students I work with are very much like we were many years ago when it comes to college admission. Without romanticizing too much, I'd say that they have an authenticity that colleges and universities say they want, an openness to and desire for new experiences that can make them exceptional students in any classroom. Yes, many of them are rough around the edges and many have gone through things we wouldn't wish on anyone, but they have a resilience and even an optimism that make them wonderful to work with. They believe that college is going to help them live better lives and learn important things; they are honored to be chosen and pleased to have the opportunities to advance; they are grateful to be able to fulfill their hopes and dreams and those of their families. They don't see college acceptance as a right or a mark of innate privilege; they see it as the result of hard work and determination. And they're willing to bring these qualities to campus.

For these students, applying to college is an adjunct to their lives, not their purpose in life, as it seems to be for so many of their overprivileged peers. And in that way, they avoid the largely self-created stress we hear way too much about. Their lives are their own and if a college accepts them, that's great; if not, they'll try again. It makes me hopeful for the future.

Fizzy Aspirations & Constipated Dreams

I've just returned from an informal session with some students participating in a mentoring program sponsored and run by 100 Black Men of Chicago. They work with African American high school boys on topics from academics to health; I was asked to do a college presentation and work individually with some of their seniors. And I have to say how inspired I am after that session.

About ten students were there (including one girl, the sister of one of the boys), with six seniors and the rest from other classes. The seniors by and large had actually done most of their applications and some had even heard back from the colleges they had applied to! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they'd really done their homework. The biggest issue I ended up illuminating for them was college costs: Most said they'd been told by their teachers that going out of state for college would cost them more than staying in state. I quickly put that myth to rest and did an impromptu college financial aid presentation, which visibly relieved not only the students but also the mentors.

The range of aspiration varied but I could tell that with enough lead time any one of the boys there could probably do well enough in high school to attend a decent college. The most prepared had actually visited Pepperdine, and knew a great deal about the process. But all the seniors except one had at least put in an application. And they seemed not to be very stressed about it.

The other concept I wish I'd had more time to talk about is "fit." The sister who was there said she'd gotten several full ride scholarship offers as well as some partial scholarships. I said that was great but that she should be sure to go to a school that met her needs, not just one that was free. I think she took that to heart because I saw her writing information down and going through the "compare colleges" pages of the College Board site that I'd steered her to.

One reason I'm so inspired by this Saturday morning meeting is that it was good to see kids and their mentors focused on college and trying to make a difference in their lives. I was impressed by the men in the room and felt that they were putting a lot of themselves out there for the good of the next generation. I confess that I don't see middle class and prosperous African American adult males in groups very often, so I was humbled and full of admiration at the same time. I realized how provincial I am despite my best intentions, but I was greeted and thanked warmly, given plenty of time to do my presentation and share in the men's desire to do something right with and for these boys.

Another reason for my excitement is the wonderful contrast between working with this group and working with the families of my former employer. The freshness and eagerness of the African American boys I saw today stood in such contrast to the constipated dreams of the parents I once worked with. These were parents for whom having to go to Tufts instead of Brown was a major tragedy; for whom not getting into a "name" school was simply "unacceptable" and a failure (of mine, not their child's); for whom any little twig of advantage had to be grabbed to give someone already supremely privileged another "edge" into Valhalla.

It's such a relief to be out of that niggardly, grasping, contentious, and status-anxious world. It feels so immensely better to be devoting my time and talents to students and parents who can really use my help and who actually appreciate it, who believe that hard work really does matter, not just who you know or how you construct yourself according to some nasty "How to Get Into College Book." I think that the kids I work with now are more authentic and actually more desirable in many ways, despite academic lacunae, and that with the right support an inspiration early enough they could do just as well as the overbred scions of the crafty elite. Let's not forget that George Bush drank and C'd his way through Yale; I'd put up any of the kids I've met in the last year against him and feel confident they could do better at running a country, never mind four years in college.

I haven't looked back at my former school with anything much more than pity since I left (not voluntarily but willingly). The endless agonizing over iotas of meaning in instructions and points on tests, the ceaseless strategizing that finally erodes any traces of interesting character traits, the fierce determination to "win" at any cost, and the sad Bataan death march that is high school for these students, even one that purports to give them so much (that's another story), left me feeling sorry for them and pity for their parents. But in the end there was no real help for them--they all wanted what they wanted and refused to accept less than that, despite the fact that they received more than they deserved in the first place. I'm glad to be with kids and adults who see the world head on and are willing to take it as it comes, rather than always trying to find a way around it; I'm glad to see the spark in a young African American boy's face when you tell him he can indeed go to college. I live for that now and feel like it's what I should have been doing before.

It takes time to learn these things--but better late than never.

At the Edge of Two Worlds

After only a few minutes, the counselor could tell that Juan1 was a bright young man. He spoke clearly and confidently about politics, current events, and his interests in writing and one day holding elective office. His energy and intelligence had the counselor thinking immediately about a wide range of colleges, some far from Juan’s Hispanic Chicago neighborhood: Here was a student who would go places. But when the topic of post-high school options finally came up, Juan was puzzled. “You mean I can go to college outside Chicago?” he said. As the oldest of three children and the first in his Mexican immigrant family to consider graduating from high school, he had other things on his mind: How his family would cope without the income from his video store job; what his siblings would do without his leadership; and how his parents would manage without his help translating and guiding them through the complex world of American life.

Poised at the edge of two worlds, Juan had to weigh his own future with his family’s, a situation not uncommon for first generation students preparing for life after high school. Unlike their counterparts from college-going families, first generation students lack many of the assumptions and supports that make attending college simply a matter of applying, being accepted and enrolling. As they enter the college application process they must deal with academic, personal, and family issues that students from more privileged backgrounds seldom need to consider in the same depth. The idea of attending college may itself be difficult to comprehend. For those students, Juan’s question is more often, “You mean I can go to college?”

The statistics are daunting: African American and Hispanic students have only a 50 percent chance of finishing high school, in contrast to White and Asian students, with 75 and 77 percent completion rates. Only 20 percent and 31 percent of college-age Hispanic and African American students are enrolled in college; corresponding percentages for White and Asians are 41 and 60. And only six percent of low-income students earn a BA, while 40 percent of high-income students do so, and in less time. (These and subsequent statistics about college attendance come from the website www.firstinthefamily.org, a project of the Lumina Foundation.) Although there have been significant improvements over the last thirty years, first generation and low-income students still must deal with skeins of cultural, social, and personal issues that are often tangled by a lack of information about the college application process, a lack of understanding and support in their communities and families, and a sense of personal responsibility that hinders their willingness to pursue their goals at the expense of family or other obligations.

The term “first generation” often indicates a great deal more than just being the first in the family to go to college. It may include coming from a low-income family in a disadvantaged or even dangerous neighborhood. It can mean having limited English skills and attending crowded, poorly funded schools with few counselors and overworked teachers. Parents may have no understanding of “college,” especially if they come from abroad: The Byzantine American system of college choice has no counterpart anywhere else in the world (in some countries, “college” actually means “high school”). In many countries, there is only one “university” worth attending; nearly all the rest are seen as inferior, and where you go may depend nearly entirely on a school leaving test that can’t be retaken multiple times. The term “liberal arts college” more often than not simply doesn’t translate into anything meaningful or useful in English or otherwise.

Being first generation affects students well after they are accepted as well. Students are suddenly overwhelmed by a sea of privilege and seemingly effortless accomplishment. Classmates talk about what they’ll do Saturday night or which courses they’ll take, not whether they can afford to go out for dinner or buy all the books on the reading list. Angel Perez, now Dean of Admission at Pitzer College, knows this experience firsthand. He says he didn’t realize he was poor until he arrived on Skidmore’s leafy campus, having left his crime-ridden South Bronx neighborhood determined to make it out of the ‘hood. He also struggled with his cultural identity: “At school I wasn’t white enough, and at home, I was no longer a real Hispanic. ‘You talk funny,’ my brother and friends would say when I came home. ‘Why you trying to be white?’ kids would tease in the projects when they would see me return from school. I remember turning down a ride [home] from my college roommate because I did not want him to see where I really lived.” As Kathleen Cushman writes in her article “Facing the Culture Shock of College,” “These cultural tensions may be one reason that almost one-fourth of first-generation students who enter four year colleges in the United States do not return for a second year.” (Educational Leadership, Vol. 64, No. 7, April 2007)

For these students and their families, financial concerns are also paramount. Where college-going families cringe and accept the need to put some kind of financing together for their children, they seldom have to consider whether they will still be able to pay the rent or car insurance. Families struggling to make ends meet see the price tag of a liberal arts college and find it hard to get beyond it, even when told about “financial aid.” To add to the confusion, they can’t be sure what that expense will get them or their child, nor do they know that they can get free help navigating the process from the federal government and colleges themselves. Plenty of scams centered around finding money for college or getting athletic scholarships prey on this ignorance, increasing their wariness. The struggle to meet everyday obligations collides with thinking about their child’s long-term success; often, there’s no room for error, making the contest that much more critical.

Regardless of these issues, first generation students can be as ambitious and bright as their more college-knowledgeable peers. Despite what seem like overwhelming odds, they want to make something of their lives. That may mean returning to their communities to help those in similar situations, or going out into the wider world battling the problems that once surrounded them. Or, like anyone else, they may simply want to do better than their forbears did, making good on the promise of the American dream. While background can affect students’ approaches to their futures, it isn’t destiny. College counselors working with first generation students find that they need to be particularly attentive to personal and family issues before, during, and after the process.

Aside from not having any assumptions about college attendance, first generation students often have no models to look to for inspiration, either adults or peers. They must create their own paths to college almost from scratch and so need good guidance as they hack through the underbrush. Some aspects of the process simply need to be noted and brought to a student’s attention. Aliza Gilbert of Highland Park H.S. says many of the first generation students she works with don’t take the strategic measures their more informed peers do. She says, “Unless you have an outside person telling you, [these students] only take the ACT once.” They don’t realize that it’s possible to take the test (or the SAT, for that matter) multiple times. Seemingly small details like this can make a difference to a student with a good record but poor scores. Students unfamiliar with the process may also not realize that they can pull themselves out of tricky situations. Dee Holohan, now with the Schuler Foundation, which supports first generation students’ efforts to attend college, tells of a young man she worked with at St. Martin de Porres School in Milwaukee several years ago. Handsome and popular, he had done poorly his freshman and sophomore years and was convinced he could never get into college. Naturally, this assumption wreaked havoc on his motivation. “I told him that if he turned things around he could go to a good school. I emphasized that it was his choice and said if I could believe in him, he could believe in himself,” Dee says. Remarkably, he “did a complete 180°, going from Ds and Fs to straight As in his classes. By senior year he was very successful” and in a position to be accepted at several colleges.

Dee’s student also greatly improved his chances of completing college. According to First in the Family, over 75 percent of students who earn an A or A plus average in high school complete college, compared to 20 percent with a C average. Additionally, over 60 percent with two or more AP courses graduate from college in four years or less as opposed to only 29 percent of those who don’t, and, most dramatically, 75 percent of students who take pre-calculus in high school earn their BA degrees in contrast to the seven percent who do so with only Algebra 1. Aliza Gilbert tells a similar story of a young woman with Bs, Cs, and Ds her first two years of high school. Approached by Adelante (“move forward”), a group within the school dedicated to identifying and developing student leaders, the student began to think of herself as a leader and improved her grades because she realized that “teachers believed in her.” Last year she earned all As and Bs, receiving a scholarship to the summer College Access Program at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently in AP Psychology and well on her way. Aliza says she “gets it” now and realizes that even though it may be a struggle she can achieve.

Working with first generation students means in part putting aside all assumptions about what a student knows or doesn’t know about college or life after high school. Gilbert says, “They don’t necessarily see college as part of their life plan.” This in itself is a major hurdle that may take a long time to overcome. Working primarily with Latino students, Gilbert notes that girls tend to think about college when they’re younger but lose that image before they get to high school as they realize they are expected to marry and have a family; boys are expected to provide either for their family of origin or the one they make, or both. For other students, the struggle to get through high school may leave them exhausted and unwilling to take the next step. If the family is not supportive, this can lead to steady deterioration in performance and a lack of motivation, a vicious circle that can be hard to break. Although these conditions can be daunting, many counselors working with first generation students find it a positive challenge. The pleasure of seeing students take tremendous strides that will ultimately benefit their families as well as themselves can be immeasurable, and the motivation to go to college affects other areas of a student’s life as well. The struggles may be tough, but that only makes the results more satisfying. Gilbert remembers counseling a pregnant student that, with a baby to support, she couldn’t afford not to get the most education she could.

Of course, first generation students need all the information that other students do to prepare for the college process: the whos, whats, wheres, and whens are the same no matter what your background, but the whys need to be addressed more thoroughly for students with non-college families. Parents in particular may want to know why they should send a child far away, spend a great deal of money and sometimes lose a babysitter or second or third income producer in order to gain an uncertain benefit. The intrinsic worth of a college education is often not apparent to many parents regardless of background, but many may respond to several specific advantages of college attendance, as presented by First in the Family:

• Over a lifetime, a college graduate can earn $1 million more than a high school graduate
• On average, college graduates have lower rates of unemployment than high school graduates
  
• College graduates have more jobs to choose from
  
• Even a little over a year of college can increase lifetime earnings 15 percent
  
• College opens doors and introduces students to worlds and people who can make a difference to them in the long run
  
• Higher education helps you be a leader and make better decisions
  
• College graduates live longer

Despite these powerful advantages, first generation students still may shy away from the whole idea of college partly because of the complexity of the college process and the uncertainty of financial aid. An uncertain future doesn’t compete well with here-and-now needs. But counselors agree that several basic techniques can help these students come to terms with the next phase of their lives, all of which, of course, are linked:

1. Make going to college expected, not extraordinary: Schools as a whole need to establish a sense that going to college is the essential next step for their students. This expectation can be found in the courses offered, teachers’ talking about their own colleges, students being challenged and held to high performance standards, and establishing a four-year plan to support college planning. College counselors can help by being part of discussions about curriculum and being advocates for college attendance. Creating a “college going” atmosphere in the school as a whole helps and visits to local campuses let students see what they could have if they work hard.
   
2. Make it personal: Tony Seiden, college counselor at Perspectives Charter School in Chicago, says the most important thing is “developing a partnership with both the student and parent(s) early in their high school career. Developing a high level of trust…is a key initial step in helping students succeed throughout high school.” Bringing the family in on the process acknowledges the importance of family in the decision making process, something that is often particularly important for first generation students. Aliza Gilbert says it’s easier to work with kids when they can connect the name with a face.
   
3. Let students know they can do it: Angel Perez of Pitzer still remembers the teacher who observed him intently counseling a fellow student when he was a peer leader and saw something in him that he hadn’t seen in himself. She told him he had what it took to go to college and he finally believed her. Unfortunately, many first generation students internalize the idea that they aren’t “college material.” An honest, well-placed observation about a student’s writing, science grades, or acting skill can put that student on the path to high school and college success. This method can include suggesting summer programs on college or school campuses in the student’s field of interest or that will provide extra academic preparation for high school.
   
4. Say it and say it again: Even students from college-going backgrounds have to be reminded about deadlines and forms; first generation students and their families need particular attention because everything is new. Counselors say it’s important to keep tabs on the kids and communicate information again and again in different ways. Mailings, emails, phone calls, and messages through teachers and other trusted people reinforce the importance of getting things done. But don’t assume that everyone has email, for example; as they say in computerland, always have built in redundancy in case the primary system fails.
   
5. Be present for the future: Part of the counselor’s job is to encourage students to do well in their time in high school so they can have a better chance of going on to college. Students supported in and outside of class respond to positive attention and can make huge gains in a relatively short time. Actively participating in clubs and sports as well as taking on leadership roles in high school can be beneficial in the short and long term. Counselors can build a foundation for these achievements by helping students see how being involved in school, community, and even at home can have positive long-term effects.
   
6. It takes one to know one: First generation students often do not have models they can follow as they start to gain exposure to college planning. Tony Seiden has Perspectives alumni come and talk to his students and has alums’ parents talk to current parents about what it was like to send their children off to college. He says, “Parents are good at working with each other to achieve the same goal.” At Highland Park, students identified by their teachers as potential leaders visit their middle schools to talk about what to look for and avoid as when they get to high school. Having students and parents talk to each other can build the kind of community that college-going families assume. When counselors of color visit a school and talk about their own experiences as well as their colleges, students pay attention. Seiden says, “I’ve seen students who don’t care about school, or consider college a future option, make a complete 180 after visiting with a campus rep [of color].”
   
7. Keep at it: In many ways, students are students no matter what their backgrounds. With first generation students, however, simple persistence may be one of the most important factors influencing their eventual college attendance. Angel Perez says he came to trust his counselor because she was persistent. “She told me five times to visit Skidmore before I actually went.” By repeating the message that “I think you’d really be a good match for this school” over and over, she finally persuaded him to get on the bus, changing his life. Because many students may come from single parent households, a counselor’s continued faith and attention may be particularly significant. (At Urban Prep in Chicago, for example, 94 percent of students come from single parent, female-headed households.) Gilbert emphasizes that “these kids don’t have a parent or a hired person to manage the process for them” so the counselor is a real touchstone keeping them on target. Dee Holohan and the Schuler Foundation take a highly active role with students from the end of their freshman year, including requiring them to attend at least one summer program (paid for by the Foundation). Careful planning and detailed follow-up help ensure that students don’t slip through the cracks.

Although the time and energy needed to work with first generation students can be daunting, the rewards can be immense. Seeing the first sparks of talent and interest ignite into a bonfire of energy and hope may be some of the most satisfying moments in counselors’ lives. Helping students enter the gateways to American success ensures that their children, no longer first generation college goers, will be even more likely to succeed.

This article was recently published in the IACAC Newsletter, Nov. 2007.

1 Not his real name. “Juan” is a composite of two different charter school students counseled by the author.