College convention aims to attract minority students

Ana Maria and Mariana Espinal went from booth to booth, as college recruiters tried their best to woo them.

Many of the pamphlets on the tables promoted minority student groups on the campuses of the various colleges and universities. As Mariana took an application from Southern New Hampshire University, Jill Teeters, an admissions representative for the university, put a little red mark on the application.

Teeters said that would waive the application fee.

“That’s like having $40 in your pocket,” Teeters told Mariana.

Ana Maria and Mariana, seniors at Nashua High School South, were part of a group of students from the school who made the trek up to Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester for the College Access Convention.

The convention, organized by the New Hampshire College and University Council, is meant to give minority students an opportunity to get introduced to everything that goes into the college application process.

Ana Maria and Mariana, 17-year-old twins, have a very specific goal of opening a hair salon together. But they aren’t yet sure which colleges they want to apply to. They know they want to go to the same college and are looking for one with a strong business program, they said.

“We’ve been to a bunch of colleges and campuses and they all seem pretty good,” Ana Maria said.

They would be the first in their family to go to college, which they said would make their mother proud.

“She sees we’re trying really hard,” Ana Maria said.

They know there is a long way to go. They have to take their SATs, start looking at financial aid options and settle on a school. They hadn’t applied to any colleges yet, but were trying to narrow down their list.

Several of the college representatives, such as Kelly Alfaro from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, spoke Spanish and were able to communicate with some of the students who weren’t fully fluent in English.

Esteban Lopez, director of the New Hampshire College and University Council’s Latino initiative, said this is the eighth year of the Access Convention. For the first five years, it was focused specifically on Latino students, but has since been broadened to students of all minority backgrounds.

The minority students population is growing tremendously in the state, specifically in larger cities such as Manchester and Nashua, said Lopez. But many of those students feel like college isn’t a viable option, he said. Oftentimes, finances are an issue and they would be the first to go to college in their families, he said.

“In order to achieve more people with higher education, we have to reach out to minority students,” Lopez said.

Lopez said the state has seen the number of minority students taking the SATs and enrolled at colleges increase over the past decade.

Part of the message students receive at the conference is the importance of taking rigorous courses in high school, something Ana Maria and Mariana have made an effort to do.

Still, Hispanic students are overrepresented in the lowest-level courses at the city’s high schools, courses that are not defined as college preparatory by the school district.

Larissa Baia, associate vice president of enrollment management at Manchester Community College, was the keynote speaker at the convention. Like many of the students in attendance, Baia was the first in her family to go to college. Her parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic and had not graduated from high school, she said.

Baia asked the students: If somebody has told them that they are not college material, “are you going to let that person determine what kind of future you have?”

Students often hear they either aren’t smart enough or can’t afford college and after a while, they start believing it, she said.

“Over time, it has the effect of making kids not only question themselves, but question their capabilities,” Baia said.

Baia said part of the solution is changing “a cultural reluctance among some Hispanics to foster education.” Much of that stems from a lack of role models for Hispanic students to look up to in their communities, she said.

At the conference, the students heard from minority students who have moved on to college. One of those speakers, Ruth Vargas, 23, graduated from Nashua High School in 2004 and recently graduated from Northeastern University. Vargas said time management and personal responsibility are critical to success in college.

“You’re definitely on your own more,” she said. “It’s a different kind of freedom.”

Michael Brindley can be reached at 594-6426 or mbrindley@nashuatelegraph.com.