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When
Harry Pachón’s brother asked him which college he would attend after high
school, Pachón said he thought colleges would get in touch with him. Dr.
Pachón, now president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, said his
anecdote illustrated that lack of information should not be confused with lack
of ability.
This
sentiment echoed throughout the TRPI conference on Latino college access held
late last week and was well received by the more than 600 scholars, students,
administrators and education experts in attendance.
Some of
the barriers to college access speakers identified included lack of access to
information about college admissions, financial aid and scholarships, as well
as parental inexperience with the college application process. Overshadowing
all of these challenges, however, was the specter of socioeconomic
disadvantage.
Patricia
Pérez, a Ph.D. candidate at the
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According to Dr. Lisa Chavez of the Center for Latino Policy Research at UC-
Berkeley, 87 percent of Latinos who entered a
“Many
students stumble because they don’t know how to navigate the transfer
process,” said Armida Ornelas, associate professor at
Ornelas
recommends community colleges develop what she terms a “transfer
culture” in which students clearly know what to expect so they can
transfer to a four-year university. Ornelas and her UCLA colleagues also said
transfer students should be encouraged to take advantage of academic
preparation programs like PUENTE (www.puente.net/)
and First-Year Experience (FYE) (http://www.sc.edu/fye/).
Institutions must do more to understand the demographics of their students and
reach out to families in order to help students that are “embedded in a
culture of deficit,” she added.
Representatives
from the
Francisco
Estrada and Araceli Simeón-Luna of the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund (MALDEF) said undocumented students, whose citizenship status
prevents them from receiving state or federal financial aid, should look into
private loans and grants or scholarships while attending a public university.
MALDEF maintains a list of scholarships that do not require citizenship and
encourages college counselors and financial aid officers to learn more about
in-state tuition bills like AB-540.
Documented
and undocumented high school, college and graduate students can also take
advantage of the scholarship information collected by TRPI at their Latino
College Dollars (http://www.latinocollegedollars.org/)
Web site. There, California Latinos can search for scholarships based on
educational level, GPA and citizenship requirements.
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