Springdale : Tour touts college to Hispanics
Posted on Thursday, February 16, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/145945/
SPRINGDALE — Attending college simply isn’t on the radar screen of some Hispanic students at Springdale High School, counselor Sally Fitchue said.
“You have many first-generation kids whose parents never went to college, so therefore, they don’t know much about it,” she said. “They think [grade point averages ] are based on just your last grading period.”
The “Paying for College” national bus tour rolled into Springdale on Wednesday to help increase awareness among such students on how to prepare for and pay for college.
The tour is sponsored by the Sallie Mae Fund, a charitable division of the Sallie Mae loan company that’s dedicated to increasing college opportunities for high school students.
Springdale is the only Arkansas stop on the 78-city tour. At each stop, organizers hold workshops on getting into college, offer access to the tour bus’s mobile college resource center and award one $ 1, 000 scholarship.
Orlando Espinosa, who has led the tour since it departed from Chicago last summer, said the statistics on Hispanic college attendance rates are “alarming.”
Only 9. 5 percent of Hispanics older than 25 have college degrees, and half of all Hispanic parents are not aware of a single source of college financial aid, according to research by the Sallie Mae Fund.
In Springdale, 30 percent of students are Hispanic. Statewide, the number of Hispanic high school graduates is expected to grow by close to 600 percent by 2015.
Springdale does not track the percentage of its Hispanic graduates who go on to college, said Registrar Lynette Cartwright.
“A lot of high schools, they are so overburdened with the amount of students they have that they just concentrate on the top 10 percent, and a lot of students fall by the wayside,” Espinosa said. “Students whose parents never went to college may want to go, but they really don’t know the logistics of it.”
He spent about 30 minutes Wednesday walking Springdale seniors through the steps they must take to turn college dreams into reality.
Espinosa’s main message was that any student can be admitted to and find scholarship money for college if he puts some effort into it.
“Often times you miss out on opportunities because you don’t do the legwork,” he told the students. “You can’t be lazy. You have to dedicate yourself, because we are talking about your education.”
His tips included taking college entrance exams multiple times, avoiding generic essays and lackluster letters of recommendation, and taking advantage of all the “free money” that’s out there. He told a personal story of how he won a $ 10, 000 college scholarship because he was the only student who applied.
Students also often fall into the trap of being unprofessional when they seek college scholarships, Espinosa said.
For example, scholarship boards don’t respond favorably to application packets sent from e-mail accounts titled “hootchiemama,” he said. Springdale Mayor Jerre Van Hoose attended the morning event and gave away two $ 250 scholarships. The Sallie Mae Fund planned to give away another $ 1, 000 scholarship at a special workshop Wednesday night. The tour hits the road today for Kansas City, Mo. It wraps up this summer in Seattle.
To contact this reporter : jkrupa@arkansasonline. com