They Each Applied to More Than 100 Colleges. That May Be the Problem.
By J. Clara ChanAugust 3, 2017
Anisah Karim (left) was deemed a “million-dollar scholar” by her high school and enrolled at Tennessee State U. But her transition to the university was rough, and she blamed it, in part, on her high-school counselor’s focus on scholarship dollars. The counselors “really didn’t focus on what was best for us,” she says.Courtesy of Anisah Karim
Anisah Karim was by all measures a good student — she earned high grades, took part in her high school’s selective dual-enrollment program, launched her own culinary nonprofit, and participated in a slew of extracurriculars.
But when her college counselor told her to apply to 100 colleges so she could have a chance at becoming a “million-dollar scholar,” a coveted term her school uses to honor students who receive more than a million dollars in scholarship offers, Ms. Karim said she found herself getting pulled out of class and faced with disciplinary action during her senior year for not meeting application requirements.
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Anisah Karim (left) was deemed a “million-dollar scholar” by her high school and enrolled at Tennessee State U. But her transition to the university was rough, and she blamed it, in part, on her high-school counselor’s focus on scholarship dollars. The counselors “really didn’t focus on what was best for us,” she says.Courtesy of Anisah Karim
Anisah Karim was by all measures a good student — she earned high grades, took part in her high school’s selective dual-enrollment program, launched her own culinary nonprofit, and participated in a slew of extracurriculars.
But when her college counselor told her to apply to 100 colleges so she could have a chance at becoming a “million-dollar scholar,” a coveted term her school uses to honor students who receive more than a million dollars in scholarship offers, Ms. Karim said she found herself getting pulled out of class and faced with disciplinary action during her senior year for not meeting application requirements.
She was expected to apply to at least five colleges a week in order to meet her 100-college quota, she said, and she still does not know why or how her guidance counselors came up with that number.
Then the college-application fees began to pile up. Ms. Karim applied for fee waivers and to colleges without application fees, but as she tried to reach the 100-college milestone, she estimates she had to pay fees for about four applications. They were expenses she felt she was incurring for “no reason,” especially since the scholarship offers she received from one college couldn’t be transferred to another.
It got to the point where I told myself that I wasn’t going to pay for it anymore.
“It got to the point where I told myself that I wasn’t going to pay for it anymore,” said Ms. Karim, who attended high school in Memphis’s Shelby County school district.
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Ms. Karim, who asked that her high school not be named, said she eventually complained to high-school administrators, including the principal, but “nothing ever happened.”
“It was basically, ‘Everyone has to do it, so I don’t see why you have a problem with doing it, and this is to help you,’” Ms. Karim said. “Being a kid, you’re expected to not say certain things or bring certain things up, so it’s kind of like you complain about it and then [have to] get over it.”
By the time graduation rolled around and she was set to attend Tennessee State University — an institution her counselor advised her to attend because it offered her a full scholarship — she was looking forward to moving past her stressful senior year.
But the transition from high school to college didn’t go smoothly. She ended up having such a terrible first year at Tennessee State that she decided to transfer to the University of Memphis, another public institution.
Ms. Karim chalks up the move to bad counseling at her high school. But as she prepares to enter her second year of college, and her first at Memphis, Ms. Karim — who wrote about her experience in an op-ed published on Chalkbeat, a nonprofit education-news organization’s website— wants to make sure that other high-school students don’t follow in her footsteps.
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The counselors “really didn’t focus on what was best for us,” Ms. Karim said. “They focused on the scholarship dollars — they weren’t able to focus on, or they didn’t want to focus on, what was best fit for me.”
The ‘Million-Dollar Scholar’
Students nationwide have increasingly applied to more colleges to improve their chances of acceptance. A 2016 survey of freshmen conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute found that 7 percent of first-time freshmen had applied to 11 or more colleges, up from 3.7 percent in 2010.
But for some students at schools in Memphis’s Shelby County school district, which has long struggled with low high-school graduation and retention rates, it’s not unusual for the number of college applications to be as high as 100.
Though it’s not clear which school was the first to give students incentives to land millions of dollars in scholarship offers, Belinda Johnson-Martre, a guidance counselor at Middle College High School, said she was first inspired to start the program at her school three years ago.
While attending high-school graduation ceremonies for other family members, she noticed that schools with much larger student bodies than Middle College would announce total scholarship offers in the hundred of thousands of dollars, but never in the millions — something she was “very disappointed in.”
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Ms. Johnson-Martre said that during the first year of the program, which isn’t mandatory, two students became million-dollar scholars. The following year, members of the Class of 2016 applied to an average of 25 to 50 colleges, and four students claimed the title. And for the Class of 2017, students applied to an average of 50 to 100 colleges each, and 16 were million-dollar scholars.
“They’re hungry for it now,” Ms. Johnson-Martre said. “They want to supersede the class before them.”
Now similar programs exist at other high schools in Shelby County, Tenn., including Whitehaven High School and Power Center Academy High School. Students are eager to become the next million-dollar scholar, a title that can come with perks like a ceremonial check at graduation or college-signing day, pizza parties, gift cards, special access to school events, and glowing media coverage.
It’s something that you really want to do because it’s like you’ve accomplished this goal.
“It’s something that you really want to do because it’s like you’ve accomplished this goal,” said Zariah Nolan, a Whitehaven High School graduate who applied to about 160 colleges and was offered about $9.6 million in scholarships. “You … enjoy your school year so much more.”
Ms. Nolan said she began her college-application process as soon as school was out after her junior year. She searched Google for colleges with no application fees, of which there are more than 400, and just started applying to them.
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By the time August arrived, Ms. Nolan had already applied to 25 colleges and had received about $100,000 in scholarship offers. By October, that number had reached $3 million.
“I was like, ‘If this is what I have now, how much could I possibly get?’” Ms. Nolan said. “If I choose not to go to a school that gives me a full ride, will I be able to use other scholarships to pay for my schooling?”
But Ms. Nolan said she wasn’t told that such scholarships — offers of student aid by a college or university, not by a national organization or a government agency — couldn’t be transferred between institutions. She said her counselors supported her desire to become a million-dollar scholar and encouraged her to keep applying to more colleges.
More Harm Than Good?
Still, Ms. Nolan looks forward to attending Dillard University this fall, because she fell in love with the New Orleans campus and its community when she visited. Unlike Ms. Karim, who said she had been told to “settle” for the college that gave her the most money, Ms. Nolan said her counselors made sure to emphasize what college would be best suited for her.
In Shelby County, the “million-dollar scholar” approach to college counseling has, by most accounts, been an effective way to encourage first-generation, low-income students to go to college.
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But it’s just one approach to improving education access and success that some schools have taken in the district, which last academic year had a 78.7-percent graduation rate. In early 2015, the school district launched an 80-90-100 strategic plan, which was intended to get 80 percent of high-school seniors to graduate ready for college or a career, 90 percent of seniors to graduate on time, and 100 percent of college- or career-ready graduates to enroll in a postsecondary institution by 2025.
The approach complemented statewide efforts like the Tennessee Promise, a state-funded scholarship and mentorship program, begun in 2015, that covers tuition and fees for local students who attend any of the state’s community colleges.
Competition is good in its own place, and it’s a way where they are able to have an option.
For some guidance counselors in Shelby County, the “million-dollar scholar” approach has effectively changed the college-application culture at their high schools.
“Competition is good in its own place, and it’s a way where they are able to have an option,” Ms. Johnson-Martre said. “They don’t have to settle for a two-year [college].”
But some education experts are concerned that the “million-dollar scholar” approach unintentionally does more harm than good to students by stressing quantity over quality and scholarship money over fit — as happened to Ms. Karim.
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You’re forcing students to apply to schools that they may have no interest to apply to.
“A lot of schools may not be looking at academic, social, and financial fit for the students who are applying to be scholars here and are just sending lists of colleges to students to apply without doing any real due diligence,” said Gabriel Fotsing, founder and chief executive of the College Initiative, a Memphis-based nonprofit program that helps underrepresented students make their way to college. “You’re forcing students to apply to schools that they may have no interest to apply to.”
David A. Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said the logic behind “spraying applications across scores of institutions” — ostensibly, in order to give students more options — also isn’t viewed positively by admissions officers.
“Colleges are looking for candidates who are serious about their institutions as they review applications. In fact, admission officers have a name for applications that materialize in their files with very little other contact — phantom or ghost applications,” Mr. Hawkins wrote in an email. “They do, of course, review the applications, but if stacked up against a student who has clearly demonstrated interest and submitted a well-considered application, the admission office will almost inevitably favor the latter.”
Counselors Overwhelmed
However many colleges a student applies to, education experts in Memphis said the real problem boils down to bad counseling and mentorship.
A report on high-school counseling published by Mr. Hawkins’s organization found that less than 40 percent of counselors surveyed said that their high school employed a counselor whose sole responsibility was college applications or college selection. Many counselors also have duties unrelated to students’ postgraduation plans, including setting course schedules, helping students with personal or social problems, and advising students facing academic challenges.
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Counselors are also scarce, especially at public schools serving low-income students, and may have to juggle multiple administrative responsibilities, meaning that few can take the time to get to know individual students well. For Tosha Downey, director of advocacy at the Memphis Education Fund, a nonprofit philanthropic collaborative, misguided counseling can result in a domino effect, with serious consequences for students, especially if they come from a low-income community.
Our students are ill advised, they’re ill matched, and they don’t finish college.
“Our students are ill advised, they’re ill matched, and they don’t finish college. And what happens when they don’t finish college is they don’t have the academic skills or the professional skills to be competitive, and most of them also leave with a debt burden,” Ms. Downey said. “And because they have the debt, they can’t pursue their education until they clear the debt. And if they are in a low-income, low-wage job, which is prevalent here in Memphis, even for people with college degrees, then those students are not able to finish their education.”
Such was the case with Isiah Jones, a graduate of KIPP Memphis Collegiate High School. Mr. Jones attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville at the advice of his counselor, but wound up dropping out after a month and a half amid struggles to engage with others and make friends at the predominantly white institution, the system’s flagship.
“I wasn’t engaging, I wasn’t having fun, I wasn’t learning,” he said.
It’s a lot of money, but it’s like, for what? I regret even going — I should have just waited, but they pressured me into going.
The 19-year-old is moving to Atlanta this month in hopes of attending another university or pursuing a career in fashion or journalism. But before he can even think of returning to college, Mr. Jones said he needed to pay off the nearly $9,000 in debt he amassed during his short stint at Tennessee — $6,000 of which he owes to the university and about $3,000 of which he owes for student loans.
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“It’s a lot of money, but it’s like, for what?” Mr. Jones said. “I regret even going — I should have just waited, but they pressured me into going.”
“As far as my counselor, I don’t really want to ask her anything in regards to me going back to college,” Mr. Jones added. “I just want to try to do this on my own, my own way. We’ll see how it goes from there.”
Advocating for Change
Since publishing her op-ed on Chalkbeat, Ms. Karim has shared her experience with her school district’s Board of Education as another way to advocate for change.
Chris Caldwell, chair of the Shelby County Board of Education, told The Chronicle that the board would investigate the district’s schools to see how widespread the problem is.
“You certainly don’t want to have a student experience what Ms. Karim did, and I think that any undue pressure that’s put on students is not appropriate,” said Mr. Caldwell, who said he was speaking for himself and not the board. “I think we’re putting enough pressure on them with all this testing.”
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For Ms. Karim, this is just the beginning of a much-needed conversation. “If students don’t complain about how they’re being counseled,” she said, “then people don’t see it as an issue.”
Correction (8/7/2017, 12:15 p.m.): This article originally misstated the amount of scholarship offers received by Zariah Nolan. She was offered about $9.6 million, not more than $80 million. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.