08 December 2008
Getting to College
Here’s one of life’s really big questions:
How or where do you find success in life? And what is it anyway?
Philosophers and advice gurus might spin all kinds of answers, but there’s one really easy answer for somebody who is 16 or 17 years old in the United States: college.
U.S. government surveys show that a person who has a college degree will earn $1 million more over a lifetime, on average, than a person who has a secondary school diploma.
The answer may be easy, but then comes the hard part. How do you get into college? Which one do you pick? Which one will pick you? How do you pay for it?
Just getting into college takes a lot of work and research. Most young people who do it successfully have a parent guiding them and prodding them along the way.
But parents who didn’t go to college have a disadvantage as they try to push their kids toward college. And the kids in those families often don’t see themselves as college-bound, even when their grades are good enough for admission.
That’s the job College Summit has taken on. It’s a nonprofit organization that started out 15 years ago when four teens in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., went to a counselor at a community center and asked for help getting into college. That counselor was J.B. Schramm, and today College Summit is working with secondary schools in 10 U.S. states, serving 17,000 senior-level students who need a boost getting into college.
With a special focus on students from low-income backgrounds, College Summit works with students throughout the senior year to reach all college admission deadlines. An equally important part of the program is helping secondary schools build a college-going culture among all their students. The organization’s leaders figured out that when kids see other kids go on to college – kids a lot like themselves – everybody begins to believe they have a shot at making it.
That ripple effect sets in motion huge waves, says Schramm.
“The young person who is the first in his family to get a college degree has basically ended poverty in his or her family line forever,” said Schramm, the founder and chief executive officer of this organization.
College Summit employs one strategy used in the military in getting students ready to propel themselves toward college: boot camp. In military-speak, boot camp is an intensive period of basic training in which civilians learn to be soldiers. For College Summit, boot camp is a four-day period of immersion in which instructors help young people see beyond a high school diploma and envision themselves as college students, and even as college graduates.
As College Summit has demonstrated its success and moved into broader partnerships with schools and school districts, the goal is to establish higher expectations in secondary schools. While the high school diploma has long been a goal in itself, College Summit and its partner schools want students to look at secondary school as only the launching pad for further achievement.
In order for seniors to see college as the next step following graduation, College Summit schools put tools and curriculum in the hands of all students to navigate the postsecondary planning process. College Summit and partner schools build time for those activities into the school day and provide training so educators can provide counseling and encouragement for students’ college aspirations.
The College Summit philosophy is not that all students may choose a university, but that students shouldn’t lose the chance because a secondary school program didn’t prepare them.
“Our goal is to have every student find the path that makes sense for them,” Schramm said, “whether it’s a four-year college, a two-year degree, the military, or occupational certification.”
