Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be
ASPIRE office, Ashland High School
“I’ve lived in Ashland all my life. I want to go away to college,” Emma, then a rising senior at Ashland High School (AHS), told me last spring. I had recently signed up to be a mentor in the high school’s ASPIRE program, designed to support juniors and seniors as they sort out post-graduation plans.
“My dream is study abroad,” Emma added.
Sarah, whom I’d met the week before, wished for the opposite. “I want to stay close to home,” she said. She’d moved from Phoenix to Ashland earlier in the year, joining her parents, both auto mechanics, who had come to Ashland the year before. “I love it here,” she said. Something else she knew for sure: she wanted to go into nursing.
Grace is a top student, interested in STEM, and a musician. At our first meeting two weeks ago she said she’d yet to begin her “college search.” A few sentences later, I learned why: Her parents, both devoutly religious, want her to go to the same small, midwestern Christian college they had attended. She was paralyzed.
As summer gives way to fall, the question of what comes next for Grace and her classmates grows in size. “One of the worst things about being a senior,” a student told me years ago, “are the questions from well-meaning adults who press you for your plans. It can feel suffocating.”
A Rubik’s Cube
Informally, I’ve counseled high school students about college for years, a byproduct of my work championing adolescent learning.
Years ago — before so many colleges became competitive; before the costs of tuition, room, and board soared and securing financial aid became so necessary and complicated; before the idea of “going away” for college took flight; before a college degree was heralded as a sine qua non to success — the decision to attend college, and which college, was comparatively straightforward.
Starting in the 1990s, college “going” began to resemble a Rubik’s Cube.
At one extreme, families with means, determined that their child would win admission to a prestigious college (a.k.a. the colleges that rejected most applicants), turned to paid “coaches” to line up the colors and polish their child’s resume. Meanwhile, attendance at community colleges, a choice that needed no coaching, increased (in 2022, approximately 20 percent of new high school graduates enrolled in 2-year colleges). Less than half of the students, however, enjoyed the benefits. Persistence rates at community colleges are chronically discouraging; in 2016, only 43 percent earned a credential from a two- or four-year institution within six years.
And, as the number of students from families with little or no college experience but college dreams grew in number , the notion of providing unpaid “mentors” for these “under-resourced” students rose. With a 300 to 1 ratio of students to counselors in most of the nation’s high schools, college counseling for students who sought it was an understandably catch-as-catch can affair. For families with little means, where college attendance often came with debt, volunteer mentors — retirees, professionals, parents, college students — promised critical support.
“I’m only seventeen”
Providing encouragement, guidance, and backstopping: This was my mission when I signed up for Ashland High School’s ASPIRE program.
Oregon’s official college and career mentoring program, ASPIRE began with four pilot schools in 1998 and now boasts 115 sites statewide. Ashland High School joined in 2011.
This fall, as part of my orientation, I sat in the high school’s ASPIRE office, tucked into the school library, and watched as students on a free period came to chat with the program’s director, Jen Marsden, check out new resources for college or careers, or sign up for an upcoming event, including visits from college admissions officers.
“For some, it’s exciting to contemplate their next steps, for others it’s completely overwhelming,” Marsden said.
She walked me through a PowerPoint on “FAFSA,” the proverbially complicated federal form to apply for college financial aid. She explained that the “Common App,” once reserved for students applying to competitive private colleges, had expanded to public universities, a mixed blessing it seemed.
That night, the PBS News Hour broadcast a segment on how one in four American teenagers suffer from insomnia and how the pressures surrounding college contribute to this youth mental health crisis. One of the students profiled explained: “Every night before I go to sleep, I just stare at the ceiling and I think, what have I not done? What assignment have I not finished? What extracurricular activities are coming up?”
What she didn’t say but could have is “I’m only seventeen.”
A newcomer from the Northeast with its own college culture, I had a lot to learn beyond the intricacies of FAFSA or what made a stand-out college essay.
I learned, for example, that the acceptance rate at Oregon’s “flagship” state universities averages a surprising 93 percent. Getting in is less of an issue than paying the bills, which hover around $30K before aid and $18 K after (not including room and board, which can outpace tuition).
I studied Oregon’s largest need-based grant program that helps students pay for college at public community colleges and universities along with participating private institutions statewide; it helped support 30,00 students last year. I learned about the generosity of local service clubs, businesses, alumni groups, and foundations whose scholarships often make the difference for a student.
I made a list, too, of considerations for students to keep in mind. The importance of finding the “right fit.” Public vs. private. Big vs. small. Close-to-home vs. away. Taking the SATs/ACTs or not (they’re optional at 80 percent of colleges and universities today). Grants and debt. College essays. GPAs and Advanced Placement courses. Majors. “Stretch” schools (colleges likely out of reach) and “Safeties” (sure bets). And more.
One variable I’d failed to appreciate was the extent to which paying for college, for many students, was the biggest stretch of all — and how that reach begins in high school.
Last spring, Sarah started working at a Starbucks in a supermarket near the high school, working every afternoon until 7 pm and most weekends. It would be hard to imagine a more affable or reliable employee: “I see doing my job well as contributing to my community,” she told me. When she opens at 4:30 am on weekends, sometimes with only eight hours’ notice and six hours sleep, she gets a small bonus. But she’d probably do it anyway.
The day after school ended last June, Emma began a job at Ashland Y’s summer camp for kids, working ten-hour days. When we met this September, she was about to head to one of three Y Kids’ Clubs across town where, every weekday until 6 p.m., she plies crafts, games, and more. “Weekends are for catching up,” she said. (Did I tell you that Emma is president of the high school drama club?)
College visits
As I write this, Grace is on her way to visit her parents’ Christian alma mater in upstate Michigan. The college has already offered her admission and a full scholarship. “I guess I could survive it,” she told me, “but I’m quietly thinking about Boston.”
(I spent last weekend learning all I could about Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts including polling friends who went or teach there. I sent Grace my notes, prefacing it by saying, “something to file away.” I am well aware of the dangers of coming up against Grace’s parents.)
Next weekend Emma is headed, with her mother who teaches elementary school in Ashland (and whose salary qualifies Emma for free and reduced lunch…), on a “college trip” to the Bay Area. This is the “away” she hopes for. But the school that attracts her most, the private University of San Francisco, seems financially out of reach. Her mother wants her to take a second look at Sonoma State College, her alma mater, which they visited last summer but left Emma unimpressed.
With Sarah, I have pushed her to think beyond Rogue Community College and an associate’s nursing degree, her starting place when we first met. Sarah is an ambitious student, earning four dual college credits in her science courses and macroeconomics. She was recently offered a part-time caregiver’s job at a well-regarded nursing home ten miles away — which she had to turn down, lacking wheels and a license. I have arranged for Sarah to spend a day shadowing an AHS alum at Southern Oregon University who is gearing up to join a three-year bachelors in nursing program on the campus, the best in the state. The other day, I shared with Sarah an article in the Rogue Valley Times about nursing scholarships that promised support to students like her.
Where you go is not who you’ll be
Award-winning New York Times journalist Frank Bruni, in 2015, wrote a book called Where You Go is Not Who You’ll Be, a manifesto about everything wrong with today’s frenzied college admissions process and the anxiety it provokes. He demonstrates how many kinds of colleges serve as springboards and how to make the most of them.
Years ago, a college sophomore I interviewed for a book my nonprofit was writing for students who would be the first in the family to go to college told me: “I used to think that it’s the name on the diploma that matters. That’s wrong. It’s my efforts in and outside the classroom that count.”
I hope Emma, Sarah, and Grace take this to heart.
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