Bryan O. Robinson was deeply disappointed when he was rejected last fall by Old Dominion University, his top choice.
He wasn’t the only one. Tracey R. Grimm, a college counselor who is stationed here at Louisa County High School, was also let down. She works for a new statewide program aimed at raising the college-going rate among low-income Virginians and those whose parents do not have college degrees.
True, Bryan’s SAT score was low, but he had managed to pull his grade-point average up to nearly 3.0 after missing 2 1/2 months of school during his junior year, when he endured two brain surgeries. The onetime football player’s ability to fight back from a brain aneurysm, and to succeed academically, was proof, Ms. Grimm says, that he could handle the demands of college. So she contacted admissions officials at Old Dominion, a public university in Norfolk, Va., that has 14,200 undergraduates, to make Bryan’s case. She submitted his grades every few weeks to show he was continuing to make progress. At her suggestion, he also took the ACT, earning a better score on that assessment test. This spring, Old Dominion officials relented, admitting 18-year-old Bryan to the class of 2011.
“I couldn’t let him fall through the cracks,” Ms. Grimm says. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
Catching students who might otherwise slip through the cracks is, in fact, a pretty accurate job description of the work done by Ms. Grimm and 21 other advisers who are part of the University of Virginia’s College Guide Program. Under the program, the guides, who are all recent UVa graduates, are deployed to high schools throughout the state, where they help students, many of whom will be the first in their families to go to college, prepare for standardized tests, apply for financial aid, and plot a career path.
In 2006 the College Guide Program’s first year, college-going rates at the 14 participating high schools increased by 15 percent, says Nicole Farmer Hurd, the UVa official who hatched the program. And some colleges also saw great jumps. At the University of Virginia’s only branch campus, located in the Appalachian Mountains in Wise, Va., applications from high-school seniors at schools with college guides rose 112 percent.
In fashioning the Virginia program, Ms. Hurd, who is assistant dean and director of the Center for Undergraduate Excellence at UVa, said she sought to partner with high schools that had a real need, based on their economic profile and college-going rates, as well as sufficient local support to sustain it. The Virginia-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation provided the initial funds to start the College Guide Program and today pays about a third of its annual budget. (The late Mr. Cooke owned television stations and newspapers, as well as the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.) Another third is paid for by AmeriCorps, the national-service program, and the remainder is covered by local foundations and University of Virginia alumni. In Louisa County, a portion of the program’s funds come from the William A. Cooke Foundation, which is based there.
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has been so pleased with the effort’s early results that it recently announced it would award $1-million grants to 10 other institutions — including Brown University, Frank-lin & Marshall College, and the University of California at Berkeley — to replicate the University of Virginia model.
“So often, these are students that have the talent and the ability to succeed but lack that critical little piece of information,” says Matthew J. Quinn, the foundation’s executive director. The guide program “is like a magic wand tapping them on the shoulder and pointing them in the right direction.”
When Ms. Grimm was growing up in Chesapeake, on the Virginia coast, she knew she wanted to go to college but had little idea about how to choose the right one. She ended up at the University of Virginia, a familiar name, but soon realized it was not the right fit.
“It was just too big for me,” she says, with a laugh. “I needed my own guide.”
Ms. Grimm, who nonetheless graduated from UVa last spring, has consequently tried to steer her students toward colleges that best meet their ambitions and personalities. In Bryan’s case, that meant encouraging him to strive for Old Dominion, rather than to settle for a smaller, more isolated, and less diverse college. It meant gently questioning whether a business degree was really the right fit for Rosie M.F. Gutekenst, an expressive student who spends her afternoons teaching theater to elementary-school students. (Ro-sie has since decided to major in psychology and performance theater at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she will be in the honors college.)
But for many of the students at Louisa County High, located in the rural, rolling Piedmont hill country of central Virginia, the challenge can be to convince them that college is a possibility. About 32 percent of Louisa High’s 295 graduates last year went on to a two-year college, while 33.6 percent went to a four-year institution, according to state statistics, for an overall college-going rate that lags behind the state average. They also are far more likely to be the first in their family to go to college: Just 14 percent of Louisa County residents 25 years or older have bachelor’s degrees, while nearly 30 percent of Virginians are graduates of four-year institutions.
“It can be really intimidating,” says Trenna M. Bloom, a career- and technical-education teacher at the high school. “They just don’t know where to begin.”
For Ms. Grimm, that means starting young. One recent morning, she headed to Louisa County Middle School to talk with eighth graders about their career aspirations, which ranged from drag racer to anesthesiologist. “How many years of college do you need?” she prodded the wannabe doctor, who had researched his job choice during a previous class period. “How much will you make?” The lesson: There’s a connection between learning and earnings.
Back at the high school, Ms. Grimm navigated the crush of students in Louisa Lions T-shirts and backpacks changing classes. She singled out one for congratulations on a college acceptance, scheduled a meeting with another, and held an on-the-spot consultation with a third about whether the young woman ought to take courses at the local community college rather than enroll directly in a four-year degree program.
About 40 students a day stop by Ms. Grimm’s narrow, glass-walled office, which used to house the janitorial staff. Some just pause to say hello or to inquire about the latest scholarship applications. Others, including a junior who wants to go to business school but is puzzled about the distinction between graduate and undergraduate programs, come in for longer sessions. Still others, like Zebulon N. Jones, who is heading to the Virginia Military Institute in the fall, spend hours with Ms. Grimm polishing essays for scholarships that they hope will pay their college bills.
Erica Wolf, a willowy senior, raps on the window. “I’ve got good news, Grimm,” she says, waving an envelope from Old Dominion. “I got into ODU! I was so excited I jumped off the porch.”
Ms. Grimm, who is as vivacious as she is tenacious, responded with equal enthusiasm, taking the letter and quickly scanning the hefty financial-aid offer. Within five minutes, Erica has signed the reply, reserving her place and financial-aid award, and Ms. Grimm has placed it in the outgoing mail.
“The greatest reward is that every day I get a thank you,” Ms. Grimm says after Erica leaves. “I’m going to cry my eyes out at graduation.”
Ms. Grimm admits there are challenges. There is the student with whom she thought she was making headway, until he got kicked out for bringing a knife to school. And the boy who has a college acceptance in hand, but whose father refuses to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa form, jeopardizing his ability to receive financial assistance. And the students who use her office computer to write their college essays because they do not have one at home, or, Ms. Grimm discovers, a permanent home.
Lauren Ross, a college guide at Rappahannock County High School, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, says students will come in and talk “about everything on their mind” because they can relate to the guides, who are close to their own age.
“We’re not that far removed from what they’re going through,” says Ms. Ross, who also is a 2006 University of Virginia graduate. “We remember what it’s like to wake up at 7 a.m. and ride the bus for an hour.”
Ms. Hurd, the UVa dean, says that when she was establishing the guides program she particularly wanted to use recent college graduates, who earn a $20,000 annual stipend, as advisers because high-school students see them as peers.
“The students look at the guides and say, ‘If they can do it, so can I,’” says Ms. Hurd. This summer she will become director of the newly formed National College Advising Corps Office, a joint venture of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the National College Access Network that will coordinate the expansion of the guides programs at other institutions and encourage more colleges to establish similar projects. “The guides have the credibility of a peer, but with this extra ability and know-how.”
Todd E. Ryan, Louisa County High School’s director of guidance and counseling, calls himself a “big fan” of the guide program and of Ms. Grimm. He and the high school’s four other full-time guidance counselors are increasingly being pulled to deal with administrative tasks, such as mandatory statewide testing, and have limited time to devote to college advising, he says.
“She’s able to provide services we just weren’t able to,” Mr. Ryan says. “It’s almost too good to be true.”
Still, Ms. Grimm says she has had to overcome a certain amount of skepticism about her efforts and quell rumors that she is trying to force all Louisa High students, even those for whom college may not be the right option, to earn a postsecondary degree. (Partly to dispel some of those concerns, she has worked closely with Ms. Bloom and other vocational-education teachers to help connect students with trade schools and training programs.)
And even the staunchest advocates of the guide program acknowledge that it will take time to see real change in college-going and college-retention rates for the participating high schools. “You can’t change a culture overnight,” Mr. Ryan says.
There are hopeful signs, however. More than 50 parents showed up for a recent financial-aid night, so many that Ms. Grimm had to scramble to find extra chairs. And when she organized a bus trip late last month to three Virginia colleges, there was a waiting list.
“I feel maybe I did something to make a difference, to plant some seeds,” says Ms. Grimm, who has agreed to commit to a second year as a college guide at Louisa. “It’s all about seeds, not instant gratification.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Admissions & Student Aid Volume 53, Issue 34, Page B16
