It’s college application season, and last Friday I gave a presentation on private colleges and the Common App at the Brown Issues meeting after school. I started with a question: “Who here wants to go to a four-year university after high school?”
All hands in the room shoot up.
“Great. Anyone applying to any private schools?”
One hand rises tentatively. One.
The disparity in the two responses didn’t surprise me -- I wouldn’t have given the presentation if I thought everyone was planning on applying to private colleges and already knew how. But it does suggest a larger failing on the behalf of our school to make students aware of the opportunities available to them.
McClatchy tracks its students into California’s public university system (UCs and CSUs). Twelfth grade English teachers make assignments out of the UC essays. Counsellors stress the importance of A-G requirements. The HISP program, despite its rigor, does not award students AP or Honors credit for their freshman and sophomore year classes, in large part because UC schools are supposedly familiar with the program and recognize the difficulty of HISP classes even without those labels.
There’s nothing wrong with this in-state focus -- McClatchy is a public school, so UCs and CSUs are the logical next step for the majority of students who want to pursue higher education. Because of this, things like building schedules around A-G requirements and requiring seniors to write UC essays for class are helpful in keeping as many students as possible on the college path.
But McClatchy’s college-support mechanism acts as if schools that aren’t public and in California don’t exist. It’s entirely possible to attend McClatchy for four years, meet with your counsellor regularly, take advantage of every resource in the college and career center, attend every on-campus college information session, and still not be able anywhere that isn’t a UC or CSU because you don’t know what the Common App is.
(The Common App is a service through which one can apply to practically every private university in America, and many out-of-state public schools.)
Sadly, this hypothetical McClatchy experience is a reality for many. Very few students knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the Common App at the Brown Issues meeting. Even some HISP kids, generally more privileged and more likely to have college ambitions than the larger student body, don’t know what they need to do to apply out-of-state until late in the application season.
Without this knowledge, students miss out, particularly low-income students.
I know that sounds wrong -- low-income students missing out by not considering private schools, with their astronomical tuitions and pretentious, prep-school students?
Yes -- and the fact that many students are deterred by that reputation is just another reason we need more education on the topic.
Private schools have huge endowments and small student bodies, allowing them to heap financial aid money on deserving applicants. Most private schools promise to meet the entirety of students’ demonstrated need, meaning they offer aid packages tailored to each family’s financial situation. If they want you, they’ll cover whatever costs you can’t.
Equally important, private schools offer students more attention. Smaller class sizes mean more interaction with professors, lower student-to-faculty ratios mean better individualized career counselling and the ensurance that nobody slips through the cracks. This support is particularly valuable low-income students who might be the first in their family to go to college.
Lastly, private school admissions favor a type of student who might struggle to get into UCs and CSUs. Due to the large volume of applicants at those schools, quantitative data -- test scores and grades -- carry lots of weight (at CSUs they carry all the weight, since there are no essays). Private schools are more interested in your story and your voice, things that come through in the personal statement you write as part of the Common App. Interesting students without great numbers, and students with difficult home lives that might hinder academic achievement, fare better in private-school applicant pools than in public ones.
The most frustrating thing about all this is that relaying the above information to students would be incredibly easy.
Mr. Mitchell already makes the rounds in 11th and 12th grade classrooms, informing students of scholarship opportunities. Why not have a short presentation on the Common App too? Or on Questbridge, the application service designed to catapult low-income students into prestigious universities through generous scholarships?
An in-depth presentation isn’t necessary on the first pass. Just something short to alert students to the wider world of higher education so they know what to ask their counsellors about if they’re interested.
We’re talking about five minutes of time that could change students’ lives.
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