Education Week - October 21, 2020 - 10

| WHERE

ARE THEY NOW?

Conflicting Messages Exacerbate Student
Detours on the Road to College
By Sarah D. Sparks
It's only October, but Dallas-based Sara Urquidez is
one of the many college counselors nationwide who
is already "very nervous" about where her seniors
will end up next fall.
While the pandemic has thrown stones onto students' pathway into college, the road has never been
smooth for prospective college-goers from low-income homes, like Urquidez's students. And educators and their vulnerable but promising students are
not on the same page when it comes to college.
Urquidez oversees college counseling in the Dallas
Independent school district and neighboring charter
schools through the nonprofit International Leadership of Texas. For the Class of 2021, she said, barely
10 percent of the 1,500-odd students she's working
with have started their college applications process,
despite outreach this summer, compared to more
than 80 percent of students in the class of 2020.
More than 9 out of 10 of her students come from
low-income homes, and the bulk of them are firstgeneration college-goers. School closures and the
city's deep digital divide complicate Urquidez's efforts to help.
"Our reach has been so limited compared to what it
would be in person," Urquidez said. Students who are
coming to virtual college planning sessions, she said,
are absorbing information "but not necessarily moving forward as fast as they would be in person ... [it's]
definitely not the same as being able to pull a student
out of class and say, hey, let's get this thing done."
In a nationwide survey in August of more than
2,100 class of 2020 graduates, as well as high school
teachers, principals, and district leaders, the EdWeek
Research Center found deep discrepancies between
the college-going priorities adults thought they were
setting for students-and the lessons high-achieving,
low-income students took from those conversations.
For example, while about half of adults and students in schools prioritized writing a compelling ad-

mission essay, most other aspects of the admissions
process showed gaps. More than three-quarters of
educators and leaders considered it vital for students
to complete advanced coursework, keep high grades
in classes related to their desired major, and do volunteer work to pursue a four-year degree, but on average
little more than half of low-income, high achieving
students reported that educators at their school had
named those as priorities for college.
The Education Week survey also found that 83 percent of adults in schools believed students needed to
find colleges that were a good "fit"-something only
about half of students said came up during college discussions. Even when schools do try to help students
find schools that will fit them, Urquidez said, they
often end up encouraging students to judge the wrong
aspects of schools.
"There is an idea that you should talk about college fit in, do you want a big school or a small school
or sports or Greek life? But those are all luxuries," she
said. "I think that is a misguided discussion for students because it can't be about fit until you can afford
it."

How have health concerns associated with the
coronavirus impacted your college or job plans
for the fall of 2020? Select all that apply.
I was going to work/attend school in-person, but my
job/school switched to remote learning/work

26%

I stayed closer to home
than I planned

Health concerns associated
with the coronavirus did not impact
my college or job plans

I chose to work/attend school
from home - not in-person

I changed my plans to reduce the risk of infecting
family members with COVID-19

I planned to move, but have instead
continued to live with my family/guardian

I changed my plans because I am at risk of suffering
consequences from COVID-19

Financial Advice Scarce
Experts argue that schools need to start having "the
tough conversations with students"-about financial
aid, matching, and managing the logistics of higher
education during the pandemic-now to make sure
students don't miss out on college.
Indeed, the biggest disconnect that the EdWeek Research Center survey found was around how students
afford college. In the survey, 85 percent of adults in the
schools said they stressed the importance of applying
for financial aid to get a bachelor's degree-but only 58
percent of students said financial aid had been a priority in school discussions of college.
"Some of our seniors have taken on second, third
jobs to contribute to their family right now," Urquidez
CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 >

I changed my plans because I did not want to risk
paying for online courses instead of
attending college in-person

I changed my plans so I could care for family
members who have or are vulnerable to COVID-19

Other
I changed my plans because
I contracted COVID-19

SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center, 2020

Weighing College in a Pandemic:
Opening Decision Letters Alone in the Dark
By Sarah D. Sparks
On Ivy Day last March, Liz Ogolo had her pick of top
universities, including Harvard, Stanford, the University of
California Los Angeles, and the University of Texas. It should
have felt like a triumph for the valedictorian of Elsik High School
in Houston, the first in her family to attend college.
Instead, in the middle of the pandemic, it felt like one more
reminder of how isolated she'd become from her school
community.
"My mom was working. My sister was at college. I opened all
my decision letters, back-to-back, alone in the dark in my room,"
Ogolo, 18, recalled. "I was not happy at all."
"It had been a couple of weeks since the school had closed, to
the point that I knew for sure that it would be impossible for me
to go back to school because I knew corona[virus] was not going
to be a one-month thing," she continued. "So I was grappling
with the reality of that as well as, you know, the uncertainty of
what my future might look like in this pandemic, and then also
realizing that this transition was going to be unlike anything I had

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 21, 2020 | www.edweek.org

ever heard of, and I would most likely be going through it alone."
In fact, that thread of isolation had wound through Ogolo's
entire college decision process in 2020. The first-generation
Nigerian-American was senior class president and deeply
engaged in leadership and extracurriculars at her school, but
when she started to make plans for after graduation, she found
her school and classmates were not on the same page. An
Education Week Research Center survey of 2020 graduates
and the adults at their former schools has found significant gaps
between the priorities adults think they are laying out for college
planning and the information students think they've received.
"In my high school, we are a lower-income school, and they
kind of geared us towards going to in-state schools or our local
community college," she said. The guidance counselor could
give her relatively little information about top in-state schools
like the local Rice University, she said, and virtually none about
other highly selective colleges. "I felt like I was completely on
my own, honestly, in terms of, like, getting help from school to
venture out of state."
But last fall, Ogolo participated in the Questbridge National

College Match, a nationwide program to expose low-income
students to highly selective colleges. It helped her find out more
about competitive schools that might accept her and connected
her to them online. She also reached out to a virtual college
adviser through the nonprofit College Point, which provides
online advising.
In the end, Ogolo said she chose Harvard University not for a
specific program or financial aid package, but because she found
a group-chat of other students across the country who were also
considering the school. Connecting with them via a chat app
gave her the confidence that she would have community far
from home.
"I was looking for anything that would make me feel at home
or make me feel a sense of community with people I would be
going to school with," she said. "Those 11 people essentially were
the reason I found myself at Harvard. In the uncertainty of it all,
they were my only known variable."
While Harvard has started this fall with all-virtual classes,
it allowed freshmen like Ogolo to stay on campus in socially
distanced dorms. But the social distancing and remote

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Education Week - October 21, 2020

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