College is not for everyone; there are many paths to a fulfilling and successful life. But research shows that people with at least a bachelor’s degree will earn significantly more over the course of their lifetimes than those without. College is also an opportunity to broaden a student’s perspective, letting them meet people of different backgrounds from places all over the world and developing their skills as a thinker and communicator.
At the same time, getting to and through college is as difficult as ever. Not only has the price of tuition skyrocketed, but selecting a school, going through the application process, and securing financial aid have also become increasingly complicated. Even students’ parents who themselves attended college often have trouble reconciling the current situation with what they went through even just a few decades ago.
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In fact, it’s her high school that has made all the difference. That’s because, from Wysinger’s perspective, Holy Names High School in Oakland did more than just prepare her for college academically—it gave her the tools and the confidence to enroll and excel.
Wysinger is a proud graduate of HNHS’s College Access Program, a unique initiative that guides aspiring students through the complicated process of selecting, applying for admission to, securing financial aid for, and, most importantly, developing the confidence to excel at college.
“The College Access Program helped me find what I really wanted, gave me a glimpse of what college would look like,” Wysinger says. “Without the program, I wouldn’t have known what I needed to know. I think I would’ve been lost.”
The College Access Program helped me find what I really wanted, gave me a glimpse of what college would look like. Without the program, I wouldn’t have known what I needed to know. I think I would’ve been lost.
- Bettina Evan, Chef
“Today, applying to college is complex, competitive, and can require a level of specialized knowledge which students and families cannot be expected to hold,” says Rachel Sommerville, college admissions advisor at HNHS and coordinator of the College Access Program. “We aim to work with each student individually so there is never a moment the student or their family feels alone during what can be a very confounding process.”
That’s what makes HNHS’s College Access Program unique. Not only is the college-advisory program embedded in the larger high school counseling department, but that proximity, coupled with the intimacy that comes with operating in a smaller school, also enables the advisors to get to hear each student’s story. The advisors familiarize themselves with the student’s background, interests, and goals so they can help them blaze the right path to their future.
“The counselors helped me through every step, from applying to searching for scholarships, even setting up my student account after my acceptance to make sure I could afford health insurance,” says Janice Tran, a senior at HNHS who will attend college in Connecticut next fall. “And even though my older siblings went to college, they never really researched possibilities. The counselors found what I valued and what I should value and helped me find the college that was the best fit.”
Admissions, Dollars, and Sense
Next, starting in the spring semester of their junior year, students are paired with an advisor, who will walk them and their family through all aspects of the college admissions process. Students and parents will also attend workshops on SAT/ACT test planning, building activity lists, searching for colleges, and application procedures. There is also an emphasis on the cost of college and how financial aid works so that families can be prepared.
“As the cost of public and private education increased, the system of financial aid has become baroque, complicated, and dangerous,” Sommerville says. “Why dangerous? Because if a student and their family doesn’t fully understand the cost of four years of college, they may enter a decades-long period of financial insecurity due to burdensome debt.”
That emphasis on financial aid continues into the student’s senior year, when the program picks up steam toward getting them to college. During the fall semester, students finalize their college lists, complete applications, write their admissions essays, and, with their families, attend FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) workshops. Then in the spring, once acceptance letters start coming in, advisors help the students unravel each college’s financial aid package.
“The excitement around being accepted by a university is so wonderful, yet these packages arrive, and they are incredibly hard to decode,” Sommerville says. “I’ve had a student tell me she got a ‘full ride,’ and so I asked her to show me her financial-aid package and saw that most of her package was loans. The university was expecting her family to take out over $50,000 in loans each year.”
Each senior is provided with a spreadsheet, and advisors show them how to plug in the numbers and do an accurate comparison between financial-aid packages.
More than Money and Admissions
Departments
By StoryStudio on June 1, 2022 11:19 AM
Holy Names High School College Access Program helps students find the college that’s right for them
Making a Plan, Blazing a Path
Today, Hydeia Wysinger has a pretty good idea where she is going—and how she is going to get there. It doesn’t matter that she’s only a freshman at Santa Clara University. It makes little difference that she’s a first-generation college student whose parents, while supportive and proud of their daughter, had no experience at a four-year university and therefore had no advice or life hacks to impart. And it doesn’t matter that Wysinger comes to a large university from a relatively small high school.
The College Access Program begins in 9th and 10th grades with a series of workshops that introduce young students to the idea of life after high school. These workshops expose students to the vast possibilities and opportunities that might await after graduation and get them thinking about their own talents and ambitions. It reinforces what it will take to gain admission to college—helping students understand and develop the study habits, project-management skills, and presentation and public-speaking skills to build a transcript and résumé that will one day help them get into their school of choice—and succeed once they are there. Students also learn to advocate for themselves and ask for guidance.
College Access
Program
Much of the College Access Program is dedicated to helping students and families matter-of-factly push through the logistics of applying for and affording college. But that’s not all the program does, nor even really at the heart of what it’s all about. At its core, the program is about preparing these students for what they will face when they leave HNHS and enter their future—and this preparation runs much deeper than application forms and financial-aid packages.
“These workshops, collectively, work towards this idea of what it means to be curious,” Sommerville says. “This has been an exciting project with profound implications for developing early on in students a higher level of sophistication, not only around college, but also around being engaged and curious with the world. Colleges are looking for students who will be successful on their campuses. What better way to be intellectually and socially successful at college than to be curious about the world? Developing curiosity includes practicing the difficult art of stepping forward in order to find out more, to join in, to read deeper, to approach teachers, to ask others about their lives.”
The program is also about more than helping students discover what is possible in the outside world—it’s also about aiding them to find the potential and confidence within themselves.
“I always knew I wanted to go to college,” says Wysinger, who is already double-majoring in psychology and public health with a minor in religious studies at Santa Clara. Her confidence has also empowered her to lead mediations between students and campus police after problematic encounters and to be part of a team that interviewed candidates and hired a new officer. “The College Access Program made me know it was achievable,” Wysinger says. “Having gone through the program, I know I can do this.”
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