Last week applications from students attending high schools
across the nation poured into UC admissions offices.
In the Los Angeles area, some public high school college
counselors are finding that their students’ applications may
not go as far as those from magnet or private schools.
As counselors watch seniors set out for their futures, some feel
confident that the majority of their students will end up in a
four-year college, while others struggle to send their students to
any college at all.
“We have, at our school, a whole college-going
culture,” said Mary Jane London, college counselor for the
Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies.
LACES is a public magnet high school, which involves an
application process in itself, and where students and parents are
constantly involved in college preparations, she said.
For larger, non-magnet public schools, like Jefferson Senior
High in East Los Angeles, the college preparation process can be
difficult due to lack of funding.
“We provide SAT test preparation classes, but we have a
limited amount of students who can participate,” said Esther
Walling, college counselor for Jefferson High.
She cited minimal funding as the reason behind resource
limitation. The problem of funding is a difficulty many LAUSD high
schools face.
Ann Keitel, college counselor for Venice Senior High School,
also said lack of funding makes her job difficult.
“I would like to publicly embarrass the state of
California and the federal government for the fact that (college
counselors are) considered off the norm,” she said
The status of college counselors as “off the norm”
means Keitel does not get a budget for preparation resources from
the government, she said.
Keitel believes legislators and school board members are
hypocritical when they discuss educational improvements and stress
the importance of getting students into college, while
simultaneously taking funding away from the resources that will aid
these goals.
Another major hurdle for public schools, especially in working
class communities like East Los Angeles, is the lack of parent
involvement in college preparation activities.
“The parent education level (in our community) on average
is about sixth grade,” said Walling, the counselor at
Jefferson.
Parents cannot get involved with the process because they do not
understand how to help their children with applications and
admission procedures, she said.
The college counseling office at Garfield High School is the
primary resource center for students because their parents do not
know a lot about the application process, said Deborah Head,
Garfield’s college counselor.
Some high schools experiencing this problem are trying to take
an active role in building parent participation.
“Parent education is a huge part of what we do with our
outreach program,” said Shawna Valbuena, college counselor
for South Gate Senior High.
Valbuena goes to parent meetings a few times a year, and
explains the processes of applying to college with the parents.
As the primary resource for college bound students, these
schools host activities such as college fairs, application
workshops, and have representatives from college campuses speak to
students to get them involved.
“The strongest preparation we have is (the Early Academic
Outreach Program) from UCLA,” said Keitel.
The goal of EAOP is to get underrepresented high school students
into college, according to their Web site.
They send representatives to high school campuses as mentors,
taking students through the application and admission process,
Keitel said.
The UC system works to address the different levels of resource
availability to which high schoolers are exposed. Under a new
admissions system, called comprehensive review, the university
takes students’ different experiences into account.
A few years after the consideration of an applicant’s race
was banned in California, comprehensive review was implemented to
serve as a means of taking students’ personal struggles into
account during the application process.
One of the criteria for comprehensive review is to consider
academic achievement in light of circumstances such as low family
income and the applicant’s educational environment.
Comprehensive review may be the extra push that will send
acceptance letters into the mailboxes of underprivileged students,
but for many counselors, competing with private and magnet schools
for college admission is an ever-present struggle.
Counselors like Keitel, who aids 3,000 students with minimal
assistance, will always face resource issues barring students from
the luxuries other campuses have access to.
“There are no resources. I have no budget,” she
said.