Minority Recruits Find Home

When Greta M. Solinap ’13 was applying to Harvard last fall, she asked her classmate’s older sister, Diana C. Robles ’10, for advice. They had overlapped for a year at Nogales High School in Nogales, Ariz. and had kept in touch sporadically since then, but Solinap did not know Robles was the Mexican-American coordinator for Harvard’s Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program.

Solinap says Robles helped her decide on a topic for her personal statement and gave her general application advice.

Though this time she was helping a friend, it was also all in a day’s work for Robles.

“I gave her advice that I would give anyone who would call the UMRP,” says Robles, who is also a senior coordinator for the program.

GETTING THE WORD OUT

The UMRP, a program associated with the Admissions Office, serves as a resource to minority prospective students. With two student coordinators in each of five categories—African American, Asian American, Latino/Latina, Mexican American, and Native American—the UMRP answers questions about Harvard, the application process, and financial aid.

UMRP also sends students to do recruiting in their local high schools and middle schools. Robles says she used her freshman year trip to visit schools that had not been contacted before. She spent her spring break driving across Arizona to visit fifteen high schools, six more than the average number of stops.

The UMRP usually sends students for winter break and spring break, but the calendar change means there won’t be winter break trips this year.

UMRP Director Roger Banks says the program usually plans hometown recruiting trips between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Banks says they did not want to plan the trips during final exams period this year. He adds that the UMRP will reconsider bringing back the winter break trips in the future.

Though budget cuts have affected the ten coordinators’ term-time wages, Banks says the program will continue to pay for students’ transportation home for the spring break recruiting.

During the school year, the ten coordinators log six hours a week answering e-mails and phone calls, giving tours and information sessions, and finding hosts for visiting prospective students.

Since Ronnye C. Rutledge ’12 started working as an African American Coordinator this year, she has shared her experience at Harvard and dispelled misconceptions about Harvard life, students’ socioeconomic status, and elitism on campus.

“I’m able to say from my own experience coming from modest means I have felt in no way hindered by my racial identity or economic status,” she says.

Similarly, Co-Coordinator for the Latino Division Lucerito L. Ortiz ’10 says that many of the calls she deals with are from prospective students wondering what it is like to be a minority at Harvard and if there is a sense of community.

FIELDING QUESTIONS

Ortiz, who is also one of two senior coordinators, says many students also ask what their chances are of getting in. “We just speak about our personal experience and tell them we’re not admissions officers, that we can’t gauge, but we always encourage them to apply,” she says.

One of the most difficult parts of the job for Karen S. Johnson ’11, the other African American coordinator, is speaking with students who weren’t admitted and want to know why.

“It’s just hard because it’s a process and I don’t know what the deciding factor was,” she says.“You have to make them aware that [...] it’s not that they weren’t a good candidate but they weren’t chosen.”

Though the majority of the queries the UMRP receives are admissions questions from prospective students and their parents, they also get their share of surprising calls. These range from parents wanting to know how to get their 7-year-old admitted to people in their seventies who dream of getting a degree from Harvard.

NOT JUST WORD OF MOUTH

The UMRP was founded in 1972 when the college was interested in increasing the number of minority students. According to Banks, 40 years ago the recruitment process was based on word of mouth, which accounted for the homogeneous student body.

“It was very informal, either through a coach, teacher, family member, or someone who was already part of Harvard,” he says. “There was not a lot of outreach.”He adds, “Colleges of this kind took a long glance in the mirror and figured this is really not representative of what the country could be.”

To change this, the College decided to involve its students in getting the word out about Harvard’s accessibility. The message resonated with Solinap.

“I always had a dream of applying to Harvard, but seeing someone from my own high school and my hometown do it motivated me to think I could do it too,” she says.

Inspired by her friend’s help, Solinap now acts as a resource to others through the UMRP. She works as Co-Coordinator for the Mexican American division alongside Robles.