CSUN University News Clippings

Advice For Low-Income and First-Generation Applicants, From Stanford Undergraduates

(October 26, 2009)

By Jacques Steinberg
Published: 10/23/09

For all the heavy-hitting deans of admissions prowling the hallways of the annual College Board forum here at the Hilton in New York City, it was refreshing to hear some real-world advice this afternoon from two people only a few years removed from the college admissions process.

They are Garrett Neiman and Jessica Perez, two seniors at Stanford University who founded an independent, nonprofit organization that counsels low-income and first-generation college applicants in particular. It is called SEE College Prep (the initials originally stood for Stanford Education Enterprises, but no longer), and it has helped more than 500 high school students prepare for the SAT’s, fill out financial aid forms and draft their college essays.

Among the tips, borne from experience, that they provided to a room full of counselors and others here:

—It is often possible for applicants who can demonstrate financial need to arrange fee waivers for the SAT and for college applications themselves, if only they knew to ask. “They should not fret about that,” Ms. Perez said.

—University science laboratories in particular are often only too willing to hire high school students as interns or assistants, especially those who think they might be interested in medicine.

—Signing up early for the SAT is crucial for low-income applicants in particular. The closer to the test date one signs up, Mr. Neiman and Ms. Perez said, the chances increase that the student will be assigned to a test center far from home, creating potential transportation challenges.

—Students taking the SAT should also be advised that “the average student misses 50 percent of the questions,” Mr. Neiman said. Knowing that “it’s hard,” Mr. Neiman said, can help prevent a student from becoming too discouraged during the actual test itself.

—Anyone seeking to develop a community-based program similar to theirs, Ms. Perez said, should be sure to enlist local alumni from various colleges as volunteers, “so the students can see that other people who look like them have done it.”

Asked how he had gotten the idea to start the program, Mr. Neiman said its seeds were sown while he was still in high school, working part-time at McDonalds. “My way out of McDonalds,” he said, was to begin tutoring high-school students on the SAT, while still a student himself.

After the panel, I buttonholed Mr. Neiman and Ms. Perez as they walked through the Hilton lobby. That McDonalds experience, he said, had actually come in handy, at least in terms of starting his non-profit. He said he had used the savings from that job to pay for the organization’s supplies and other initial expenses.

Publication: The New York Times