Opening Doors to College

Tariq A. Ramsey is a senior at Madison Park vocational high school in Boston who specializes in electricity—when he’s not poring over his classwork.

With students staffing the café, working on the ventilation and heating systems, and providing auto-body repair for each other’s cars, Madison Park seems almost wholly student-run. All the students receive both vocational and academic training.

Despite receiving preprofessional education even at the high school level, Ramsey said he does not intend to pursue a career in electricity.

“I’m going to school, going to college. I want to study sociology. I’ve always been interested in the study of people and things,” Ramsey said.

Vocational students like Ramsey, however, face an extra hurdle in the already competitive college application process: they often find themselves without the college-prep programs that students in strictly academic high schools have at their fingertips.

But Admission Scholars—a tutoring program staffed by Harvard students—has been providing this support to Ramsey and other students at Madison Park since the program’s inception two years ago.

Both students and administrators at Madison Park praised the group for making college less intimidating and for its positive impact in helping students on their path to college.

“[This program] is what education is all about. There are not words to describe how I feel. There are not enough superlatives,” said the headmaster of Madison Park, Chuck McAffee, before a recent tutoring session.

Ramsey interjected by exclaiming, ”SAT vocabulary!”

STARTING UP

Admissions Scholars, which is part of the Phillips Brook House Association and is comprised of about 30 students, is the brainchild of a Cabot House tutor and his colleague.

The idea began to take shape about two years ago, when Michael S. Aktipis, a Cabot House tutor, was studying in the United Kingdom as a Marshall Scholar with colleague Mark D’Agostino.

“Mark never finished high school, and I came from a family of immigrants and was a first-generation American. We realized what education had done for us, so we wanted to do something to try to increase the act of higher education,” Aktipis said.

The availability of often-expensive admissions consulting was one of the benefits that Aktipis wanted to bring to students from lower-income families in order to level the playing field.

After returning from England, Aktipis, who is currently a student at Harvard Law School, and D’Agostino e-mailed the superintendent of the Boston Public School System with their plan. He forwarded their plan to headmasters throughout Boston and within 24 hours, Aktipis had received 14 responses from headmasters. Aktipis and D’Agostino decided on Madison Park vocational high school as their pilot school.

“The reason we started at a vocational high school is that the disparity is even greater,” Aktipis said. “In a sense, we are trying to start where the problem is the greatest.”

ABCs of SATs

The Admission Scholars program introduces juniors and seniors to the admissions process, tutoring juniors and seniors for the SATs, proofreading college essays, and helping with financial aid applications.

More than 70 high school seniors from Madison Park participate in the program during its twice-weekly sessions, according to Damaris Colon, the college and career coordinator for Madison Park.

A current Madison Park senior and Admission Scholar participant, Oliver S. Celado, specializes in sheet metal. Yet for Celado, the sheet metal business is only a back-up to his college plans.

“I want to study criminal justice. If I don’t get to study criminal justice, I’ll probably do biochemistry,” Celado said, adding that he is also interested in forensic science.

Some of the first steps in a typical tutoring session involve registering on CollegeBoard.com, walking through the common application, and creating a list of 10 to 15 possible college matches, said Erik C. Belz ’08, a student co-director of Admission Scholars.

But Belz added that the SATs are the biggest hurdle for his students, since they do not take prep classes.

“Sometimes, the first time that they see the SAT is when they take the SAT,” Belz said.

Financial considerations also scare some students away.

“There’s the perception that colleges are completely unaffordable,” Belz said. “We want to show them that there are lots of schools out there that can make financial aid possible.”

LOOKING FORWARD

The students behind Admission Scholars said the program has been a success so far and they are looking to expand to other schools and states.

Colon said the program has reached a broad base of students, noting that the football players often head to the tutoring sessions before their Tuesday practices.

“The tutors are making the material interesting and are making SATs sound much less intimidating,” Colon said.

Isaura Castellano, who graduated from Madison Park last year, is currently a freshman at Emmanuel College.

“The [Harvard] students who came to Madison Park know exactly what colleges are looking for,” Castellano said. She said the program was a big reason behind her acceptance at a “good private school.”

“The tutors looked at our papers not like teachers, but instead put themselves in our place,” she said.

Aktipis said that based on his conversations with a few college admissions directors, there has been a noticeable difference in applications coming from Madison Park.

There have been some disappointments, Aktipis said, as not all students have gotten into the college of their choice.

But others have been luckier.

“One student got a full ride to Boston University,” he said.

“I hope that this program continues because Madison Park has great students and needs programs that help students get into college,” said Castellano, who describes herself as a proud Madison Park alumnus.

“Although we are a vocational school, we try to give our students options,” Colon said. “We try to change the mentality that all vocational students will go directly into the workforce.”

Admission Scholars hopes to start working with a new group of 60 or more high school juniors at Madison in January.

This past month, the program expanded to the Roland Hayes School of Music, and the group hopes to expand to more college campuses and more high schools, Aktipis said.

Students from Brown are already involved with the program.

“I’m very amazed at how well the Harvard students have been able to blend in with the Madison Park students,” Colon said. “Sometimes it is hard to tell who the tutors are and who the students are.”

—Bonnie J. Kavoussi contributed to the reporting of this story.       
—Staff writer Arianna Markel can be reached at amarkel@fas.harvard.edu.