For high schoolers, a 'guide' to college

When one low-income student at Patrick County High School in Stuart, Va., was accepted to college, he may have been the second happiest person in the world.

University of Virginia graduate Jennifer Lester was likely the first.

Lester worked with the student, whose mother had died when the student was young and whose father rarely stuck around, as part of UVA's College Guide program.

The program sends recent graduates to high schools in low-income areas in order to aid and encourage disadvantaged students in the college admissions process.

"I showed him that there were people who believed in him," Lester said.

Inspired by the popular post-graduate program Teach for America, where students are given a stipend and salary to teach at low-income schools for two years, College Guide is in its second year and currently employs 22 recent UVA graduates as pseudo-admissions counselors.

The program has plans to rename itself as the National College Advising Office and expand next year to 10 other universities across the country, including Brown and Penn State universities.

As part of the program, "guides" live for a year near the high school in which they work and receive a small stipend and housing. They help high-school students schedule classes, find colleges that match their interests and aid families with financial aid forms.

However, the program's goals extend far beyond filling out paper work.

Tracey Grimm, College Guide's representative at Louisa County High School in Mineral, Va., said the hardest part of her job has been changing the mentality of students who go to a "work force" school - where students often work full-time straight out of high school - and convincing them college is an attainable goal.

The program works with the entire student body, but guides target low income individuals who would be the first generation to attend college and "have potential," said Nicole Hurd, director of College Guide and dean of UVA's Center for Undergraduate Excellence.

And it's this ability to affect high-school students' lives that is the real incentive, Lester said.

"The most rewarding experience has been getting cards saying, 'Thank you, because of your help, I am now going to college,'" she said.

Hurd said the program developed after she discovered that 79 percent of Virginians graduate from high school, but only 53 percent go straight to college.

During its short lifetime, the program has experienced remarkable success.

In the past two years applications from schools where guides work have increased 22 percent at the College of William and Mary, 18 percent at James Madison University and 10 percent at UVA - proof, Hurd says, that the program "is not just recruiting for UVA."

There are currently no plans to expand College Guide to Penn, but Hurd said that she would love to bring the program here if there was sufficient interest.

And the statistical success is only part of the impact that program has on disadvantaged students.

"It's crazy to have a 16-year-old say 'Thank you so much,'" Grimm said. "It's really a great feeling."

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