It Helps To Have a Guide On The Path To College

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS, The Kansas City Star

March 2, 2010

The University of Missouri sent Camry Ivory, a 2008 graduate, back to high school with directions for helping seniors map their college futures.

At the Paseo Academy for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, where Ivory works, the 24-year-old from Overland Park met Robert Brown, a bright senior from a single-parent home in Kansas City.

“I think he knew he wanted to go to college but he didn’t know how to go through the steps that would get him there,” Ivory said.

Brown, she said, is a talented writer and wants to study creative writing and theater at Columbia College in Chicago. Ivory helped him prepare for his ACT exam, apply to the school, fill out his federal financial aid forms, and has edited several of his scholarship essays.

“If I were on the admissions board at Columbia, I would give Robert a full ride,” Ivory said.

Ivory is a member of the Missouri College Advising Corps, an MU program reaching out across the state to prospective college students, then advising them on — and encouraging them through — the college admissions process.

Ivory is one of three MU graduates in the program who are working with scores of students at Kansas City high schools — Paseo, Van Horn, and Northeast Law and Public Service Magnet school.

Ivory and her fellow college graduates work a full day, five days a week in the high schools steering smart students from low-income households and minority populations toward more learning after high school.

“This is not about recruiting for the University of Missouri,” said Christian Basi, an MU spokesman. “This is about increasing the diversity in higher education in Missouri. The idea is to help students find their best fit. It could be a two-year, or a four-year or technical school but it would be college,” Basi said. “We are trying to help the state with a better educated work force.”

Fewer than 40 percent of Missouri’s residents 25 to 34 have college degrees, said Robert Stein, the state’s commissioner of higher education.

The graduate advisers are about two years out of college, so they’re close in age to the high school students they work with.

For the high school students, it’s like having a big brother or sister to talk to about how to apply to college.

“Many of my students really haven’t thought about college as an attainable goal for themselves, either because they think they could never afford it or maybe they are the first person in their family to even graduate from high school and they don’t even know how to get started,” Ivory said.

“Ms. Ivory does a wonderful job.” said Paseo Principal Juanita Hempstead. “She’s young and looks just like a student herself. She is able to relate to them. I’m begging the state to continue this program for next year. These students need all the support they can get.”

In schools across the country, a lot of high school students hardly know their guidance counselor and get little help in plotting their pursuit of college.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the national student-to-guidance counselor ratio is 488 to 1. As a result, the average student spends only about 20 minutes per year talking to his or her school counselor.

For students who would be the first in their family to go to college, not having someone to guide them through the process — preparing to take ACT, applying for scholarships and financial aid — often means they won’t go to college, even if they are among the brightest in their class. According to the College Board, nearly a quarter of low-income students who score in the top quartile on standardized tests never go to college, and many of the remaining 75 percent never attain bachelor’s degrees.

Brown said that if it hadn’t been for Ivory, “I think I would still be college-bound, but I might not have found the right school, one I’m going to love,” he said. “She helped me solidify the dreams that I already had about going to college.”