Monday, June 7, 2010
Final Explanatory Piece
KAMSC Students Have the Resources to Garner The “Congratulations!”
By Jessica Maas
Anthony Spalvieri-Kruse opened his MacBook on the evening of March 26 to find his admission decision to NYU’s new Abu Dhabi program waiting. The tall, thin, Portage Northern senior, who is always brushing at the brown hair falling in his eyes, didn’t even have time to be anxious while he clicked on it.
The subject of the e-mail gave it away: “NYU Abu Dhabi—Congratulations.”
Thousands of other high school seniors around the country received their decisions to the country’s top schools within days of Spalvieri-Kruse. Most, though, were not as fortunate.
According to “The New York Times,” the number of applications submitted to many of the most selective colleges in the U.S. increased this year—by as much as 20 percent, in a few cases—and, as a result, the percentage of students accepted decreased.
But at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center (KAMSC), an accelerated school for some of the brightest students from 12 area high schools, including Spalvieri-Kruse, students continued to find acceptance letters in their mailboxes and e-mail inboxes.
Spalvieri-Kruse had actually already deposited to Cornell when he received his notice from NYU. He made the decision to revoke his acceptance there, though, for a full ride and the chance to be one of only 180 students to participate in the pilot program at NYU’s recently developed Honors College.
Another KAMSC student was accepted to Brown, whose admittance rate this year was only 9.3 percent after a 20.60 percent increase in applications. Spalvieri-Kruse and one other student were accepted at Cornell, one was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, and one is turning down Stanford to attend Harvard; all of those schools experienced increases in the number of applications this year, and the latter two each accepted fewer than eight percent of those.
In total, the KAMSC graduating class of 68 received 213 offers of admission from 72 colleges or programs. And the Ivy Leagues were not the only elite schools offering—KAMSC students also had offers at other prestigious schools such as Emory University, George Washington University, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, University of Chicago, and Vanderbilt University.
According to Spalvieri-Kruse, it isn’t their intelligence that necessarily gets them in; it’s about the resources that KAMSC and its college counselor Jon Streeter afford to the students.
“It’s really interesting—through the application process you kind of see how much it has to do with packaging more so than actual aptitude,” he said. “Like, I can almost definitively say that smartest kids at KAMSC weren’t the ones who got into the Ivy League schools. Just, for example, there’s this kid at my school…he’s like a genius, he’s brilliant, but he only got into U of M, and, you know, that’s excellent for him, but his issue is just with packaging himself. He’s obviously way smarter than all of us, but he didn’t constantly see Mr. Streeter, he didn’t do all the paperwork, he didn’t foster all of these relationships with the teachers that you need on your side. You need a lot of people on your side to get into big name schools.”
And the seniors have someone on their side in Jon Streeter. The students describe him as an invaluable asset to their application process, walking them through the process step by step.
“Mr. Streeter is dealing with you one on one, and he only has about 60, 70 students at a time, so he has the ability to sit down with you one on one in his office and say, ‘This is where you are, this is where you need to be, this is what you need to do to get to where you’re going, and if you need help, call me,’” said Portage Northern senior Chelsea Angel, who plans to attend Cornell in the fall. “He’s so accessible—he has his phone on him, he gets his e-mails all the time; if you e-mail him at 2 a.m., he’ll get it. And he gives you his home phone, his cell phone. ‘If you have an emergency, call me on my cell.’ If he’s in service, he’ll pick it up. It doesn’t matter where or when or what he’s doing. He’s there to help you, and he lets you know that that is his sole purpose—to help you succeed and get you where you want to go.”
According to both Angel and Spalvieri-Kruse, the differences between their home school guidance counselors and Jon Streeter are vast.
“Instead of being an advocate for you on the front lines of your college experience, she’s more of a behind-the-scenes assistant, I guess,” said Angel of her guidance counselor at Portage Northern. “She’ll do the filing for you, and she’ll get the forms turned in that she needs to turn in and whatnot, but you really have to be on her about it because she has so many people to worry about that if she forgets about you and you don’t remind her, then it’s not going to happen.”
Jon Streeter, though, does act as the advocate for KAMSC students. The 66-year-old man with thin white hair and a matching mustache begins the college search process with the students during their first year as freshmen. Students are asked to research careers and colleges twice in their first two years, and beginning in the junior year they are required not only to narrow down their choices, but also embark on a certain number of college visits and participate in personal essay and resume writing. Then, during their senior years, he walks each one individually through their application processes and keeps them on track.
“My goal is, anyplace you say you want to be? I want you to have that as a choice,” said Streeter. “You don’t want to go to Duke? Turn ‘em down.”
His method is one that works, and the students know it.
“It’s a great system,” said Angel. “KAMSC has been really helpful. I don’t think that I would’ve gotten into the college that I wanted to go to if I was just at my home school.”
Spalvieri-Kruse noted that though it’s a common misperception, it’s not the name of KAMSC that gets their applications in admission counselors’ “Accepted” piles.
“Obviously, going to a separate math and science center is a little bit beneficial itself and engineering colleges like that, but really it’s the resources that KAMSC lends you,” he said.
By Jessica Maas
Anthony Spalvieri-Kruse opened his MacBook on the evening of March 26 to find his admission decision to NYU’s new Abu Dhabi program waiting. The tall, thin, Portage Northern senior, who is always brushing at the brown hair falling in his eyes, didn’t even have time to be anxious while he clicked on it.
The subject of the e-mail gave it away: “NYU Abu Dhabi—Congratulations.”
Thousands of other high school seniors around the country received their decisions to the country’s top schools within days of Spalvieri-Kruse. Most, though, were not as fortunate.
According to “The New York Times,” the number of applications submitted to many of the most selective colleges in the U.S. increased this year—by as much as 20 percent, in a few cases—and, as a result, the percentage of students accepted decreased.
But at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center (KAMSC), an accelerated school for some of the brightest students from 12 area high schools, including Spalvieri-Kruse, students continued to find acceptance letters in their mailboxes and e-mail inboxes.
Spalvieri-Kruse had actually already deposited to Cornell when he received his notice from NYU. He made the decision to revoke his acceptance there, though, for a full ride and the chance to be one of only 180 students to participate in the pilot program at NYU’s recently developed Honors College.
Another KAMSC student was accepted to Brown, whose admittance rate this year was only 9.3 percent after a 20.60 percent increase in applications. Spalvieri-Kruse and one other student were accepted at Cornell, one was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, and one is turning down Stanford to attend Harvard; all of those schools experienced increases in the number of applications this year, and the latter two each accepted fewer than eight percent of those.
In total, the KAMSC graduating class of 68 received 213 offers of admission from 72 colleges or programs. And the Ivy Leagues were not the only elite schools offering—KAMSC students also had offers at other prestigious schools such as Emory University, George Washington University, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, University of Chicago, and Vanderbilt University.
According to Spalvieri-Kruse, it isn’t their intelligence that necessarily gets them in; it’s about the resources that KAMSC and its college counselor Jon Streeter afford to the students.
“It’s really interesting—through the application process you kind of see how much it has to do with packaging more so than actual aptitude,” he said. “Like, I can almost definitively say that smartest kids at KAMSC weren’t the ones who got into the Ivy League schools. Just, for example, there’s this kid at my school…he’s like a genius, he’s brilliant, but he only got into U of M, and, you know, that’s excellent for him, but his issue is just with packaging himself. He’s obviously way smarter than all of us, but he didn’t constantly see Mr. Streeter, he didn’t do all the paperwork, he didn’t foster all of these relationships with the teachers that you need on your side. You need a lot of people on your side to get into big name schools.”
And the seniors have someone on their side in Jon Streeter. The students describe him as an invaluable asset to their application process, walking them through the process step by step.
“Mr. Streeter is dealing with you one on one, and he only has about 60, 70 students at a time, so he has the ability to sit down with you one on one in his office and say, ‘This is where you are, this is where you need to be, this is what you need to do to get to where you’re going, and if you need help, call me,’” said Portage Northern senior Chelsea Angel, who plans to attend Cornell in the fall. “He’s so accessible—he has his phone on him, he gets his e-mails all the time; if you e-mail him at 2 a.m., he’ll get it. And he gives you his home phone, his cell phone. ‘If you have an emergency, call me on my cell.’ If he’s in service, he’ll pick it up. It doesn’t matter where or when or what he’s doing. He’s there to help you, and he lets you know that that is his sole purpose—to help you succeed and get you where you want to go.”
According to both Angel and Spalvieri-Kruse, the differences between their home school guidance counselors and Jon Streeter are vast.
“Instead of being an advocate for you on the front lines of your college experience, she’s more of a behind-the-scenes assistant, I guess,” said Angel of her guidance counselor at Portage Northern. “She’ll do the filing for you, and she’ll get the forms turned in that she needs to turn in and whatnot, but you really have to be on her about it because she has so many people to worry about that if she forgets about you and you don’t remind her, then it’s not going to happen.”
Jon Streeter, though, does act as the advocate for KAMSC students. The 66-year-old man with thin white hair and a matching mustache begins the college search process with the students during their first year as freshmen. Students are asked to research careers and colleges twice in their first two years, and beginning in the junior year they are required not only to narrow down their choices, but also embark on a certain number of college visits and participate in personal essay and resume writing. Then, during their senior years, he walks each one individually through their application processes and keeps them on track.
“My goal is, anyplace you say you want to be? I want you to have that as a choice,” said Streeter. “You don’t want to go to Duke? Turn ‘em down.”
His method is one that works, and the students know it.
“It’s a great system,” said Angel. “KAMSC has been really helpful. I don’t think that I would’ve gotten into the college that I wanted to go to if I was just at my home school.”
Spalvieri-Kruse noted that though it’s a common misperception, it’s not the name of KAMSC that gets their applications in admission counselors’ “Accepted” piles.
“Obviously, going to a separate math and science center is a little bit beneficial itself and engineering colleges like that, but really it’s the resources that KAMSC lends you,” he said.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Workshop Four Responses
Andrea—
You have some really great stuff in here (the physical description of Lisa and the description of the neighborhood, for instance). I think that the thing is that you really need to decide what the heart of this piece is—is it the education issue that you allude to in the beginning and come back to in the end? Is it the disease itself and how it’s affected Lisa’s life? You need to decide what the most important tidbits to put into the article are based on what you decide the piece is about, and work with that.
I got really lost at times with some of your transitions. For example, when you start talking about education in the second paragraph and then move into you arriving at Lisa’s house. And when I do figure out where you’re going, sometimes it’s a little clunky. If you could find a way to smoothly move from one paragraph/topic to the next, I think the piece would really benefit. Overall, though, I think that this piece has really great potential and you’ve got a good start—the most important thing will just be deciding what you want to focus on.
Marina—
I think this was a really great idea, and you’ve done a lot of really great reporting. I really like the opening, it really drew me in. I would be interested, though, to hear more about how the interpretation of The Tempest from the “feminist perspective,” being as my reading of The Tempest was very gendered (I actually wrote a paper once on gender and power in The Tempest as it relates to Miranda). So I’d like to hear more about what exactly how it is a “reclaiming,” so to speak—more than just changing the characters to females.
You’re right that you do need more description—you may be able to weave narrative in with one or both of the other two women. I also think that it would be great if you could get something more concrete in there about sexism on our campus (an example, for instance, of a place/time it occurs, or something that someone has said before, etc)—right now it’s a little abstract, but getting some more detail in there could really strengthen the piece. Great first draft, though—I look forward to reading the finished piece in a week or so!
Simona—
This is such a great topic! I’m a little jealous, actually. You do a pretty good job with the narrative, but I wonder if you could open in a different place (like when you show up at that house, for example)—I think that that could draw the reader in more and puts us right into the story from the beginning (as opposed to working us in more). You could still go back and give the background info, but I don’t think that we need the scene of you sitting outside the library—those are words that you could use to flesh out more detail later in the piece.
You work the background info about Farmworker Legal Services and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in well—it felt very seamless, and I didn’t feel bogged down in facts and background stuff. The piece really flowed well overall. I wonder if we could get more about the connection between the K students and the migrant workers—did you see a scene with them interacting? Did they talk at all about why they chose to pursue that option, or why it’s important to them? I think that making that connection could really strengthen the piece.
Steven—
This is really interesting. You capture some really great things, and your discomfort with the whole situation is really palatable. There is some really great description as well, though at points I feel like you go on describing for too long (third paragraph, maybe?). I wonder if there’s some way that this doesn’t have to be chronological, and you could weave in some quotes and dialogue in earlier.
My other issue is that it seems like you lose steam after you start talking to them, which was an aspect I was really interested in and wanted more of. For example, I was a little confused about the significance of the book and your conversations surrounding it that you detail at the end of the piece. I also wonder if there’s a different way you can open—you can still tell us where you are, etc., but start with something other than “I am at”—that gives away too much. Maybe start with description of the place, or your discomfort, and THEN make it clear where you are. The subject is really cool, though—I’d love to get more of them in the piece, and them talking about the community that they have.
You have some really great stuff in here (the physical description of Lisa and the description of the neighborhood, for instance). I think that the thing is that you really need to decide what the heart of this piece is—is it the education issue that you allude to in the beginning and come back to in the end? Is it the disease itself and how it’s affected Lisa’s life? You need to decide what the most important tidbits to put into the article are based on what you decide the piece is about, and work with that.
I got really lost at times with some of your transitions. For example, when you start talking about education in the second paragraph and then move into you arriving at Lisa’s house. And when I do figure out where you’re going, sometimes it’s a little clunky. If you could find a way to smoothly move from one paragraph/topic to the next, I think the piece would really benefit. Overall, though, I think that this piece has really great potential and you’ve got a good start—the most important thing will just be deciding what you want to focus on.
Marina—
I think this was a really great idea, and you’ve done a lot of really great reporting. I really like the opening, it really drew me in. I would be interested, though, to hear more about how the interpretation of The Tempest from the “feminist perspective,” being as my reading of The Tempest was very gendered (I actually wrote a paper once on gender and power in The Tempest as it relates to Miranda). So I’d like to hear more about what exactly how it is a “reclaiming,” so to speak—more than just changing the characters to females.
You’re right that you do need more description—you may be able to weave narrative in with one or both of the other two women. I also think that it would be great if you could get something more concrete in there about sexism on our campus (an example, for instance, of a place/time it occurs, or something that someone has said before, etc)—right now it’s a little abstract, but getting some more detail in there could really strengthen the piece. Great first draft, though—I look forward to reading the finished piece in a week or so!
Simona—
This is such a great topic! I’m a little jealous, actually. You do a pretty good job with the narrative, but I wonder if you could open in a different place (like when you show up at that house, for example)—I think that that could draw the reader in more and puts us right into the story from the beginning (as opposed to working us in more). You could still go back and give the background info, but I don’t think that we need the scene of you sitting outside the library—those are words that you could use to flesh out more detail later in the piece.
You work the background info about Farmworker Legal Services and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in well—it felt very seamless, and I didn’t feel bogged down in facts and background stuff. The piece really flowed well overall. I wonder if we could get more about the connection between the K students and the migrant workers—did you see a scene with them interacting? Did they talk at all about why they chose to pursue that option, or why it’s important to them? I think that making that connection could really strengthen the piece.
Steven—
This is really interesting. You capture some really great things, and your discomfort with the whole situation is really palatable. There is some really great description as well, though at points I feel like you go on describing for too long (third paragraph, maybe?). I wonder if there’s some way that this doesn’t have to be chronological, and you could weave in some quotes and dialogue in earlier.
My other issue is that it seems like you lose steam after you start talking to them, which was an aspect I was really interested in and wanted more of. For example, I was a little confused about the significance of the book and your conversations surrounding it that you detail at the end of the piece. I also wonder if there’s a different way you can open—you can still tell us where you are, etc., but start with something other than “I am at”—that gives away too much. Maybe start with description of the place, or your discomfort, and THEN make it clear where you are. The subject is really cool, though—I’d love to get more of them in the piece, and them talking about the community that they have.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Workshop Three Responses
Myles—
I wonder if there’s some way you can fuse the two parts of this together (the visit and the interview). You have so much description in the first half and it’s not until the second that that it really becomes interesting to me, that I really feel like I should care, and then it ends so quickly—I was just getting really into it and then it was over! So I’m wondering if you can find a way to get some of the context or quotes in earlier, break up the description a little bit (you may also be able to use less description, and then you could do more of the story). If you do that I think it could be a really great piece.
I’m also not sure that I like your voice in the piece. It might actually be a stronger piece if you take yourself out of it (and especially your friend). You can still say the same things, just don’t use the “I”—I think that it’s unnecessary, and might hurt the piece more than it helps. But we should still be able to get the same feeling about what the building is like.
Joel—
I feel like maybe I kind of know what your overall point is, but having a more clear structure might really help that. You have huge paragraphs and kind of jump from point to point without any logical progression, so I think your piece could really benefit from breaking it up and a greater structure.
I also feel like, though you have these large paragraphs, I know very little about the band or the people in it. There are a lot of points that I feel like you could make in fewer words, and that would help you add more to the piece. There are some key aspects that I really feel are missing: How many people are even in the band? What city are we in? How old are they?
I’m also a little confused by the opening—who is he taking the guitar from? You ? Someone else? I think that having that clarification could make it a stronger opening.
I think that they could be a really cool subject if you can break things up a bit and get more information in there. They seem interesting, but I think you just need to find a way to rework to piece a little bit.
Anna—
I almost feel like this last paragraph could be the intro—I feel like this is almost the heart of the piece, so to speak. There’s action here, and you encompass a lot, and this is where I really felt like there was something, like I knew what the piece was about. Before that, it was just these different areas of a building, and I didn’t feel very invested in what was going on there. You kind of bounced from place to place and there’s a lot of description and less about the overall, and it’s not until the end that I really felt like I understood—I want to understand earlier.
So, I think that if you can make the overall point clearer in the beginning (and this last paragraph might work, if you just tinker with a few things), then you could go into different areas of the building and how it’s all entwined, and also give information about the building itself. But I need to understand why I’m reading the piece earlier. This is a great subject, though, so I think that if you just rework some things your piece could be really cool. Great start!
Claire—
I like this piece. I think that it’s great that you went to all three places and talked to a bunch of people. I’m unsure how I feel about having your voice in the piece—I think it could work okay without it as well, I don’t know. You could be telling the same story without your voice, but I’m really just undecided about it—I can’t decide if it’s distracting or not.
But in general, there are two things I’m concerned about: transitions and take home message. Your transition from Waldo’s to The Strutt works well—I’m most concerned about the first one from Fourth Coast to Waldo’s because it’s so abrupt. You need to find a different/smoother way to get us from one place to the next.
In terms of take home message, I guess that I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to think about changes associated with the smoking ban after reading this piece. Is the message simply that they’ll get over it? You seem to be saying that at points, but it needs to be clearer. I think that you’ve got a really great start, though, and I’ll be interested to read this piece again after you revise it.
I wonder if there’s some way you can fuse the two parts of this together (the visit and the interview). You have so much description in the first half and it’s not until the second that that it really becomes interesting to me, that I really feel like I should care, and then it ends so quickly—I was just getting really into it and then it was over! So I’m wondering if you can find a way to get some of the context or quotes in earlier, break up the description a little bit (you may also be able to use less description, and then you could do more of the story). If you do that I think it could be a really great piece.
I’m also not sure that I like your voice in the piece. It might actually be a stronger piece if you take yourself out of it (and especially your friend). You can still say the same things, just don’t use the “I”—I think that it’s unnecessary, and might hurt the piece more than it helps. But we should still be able to get the same feeling about what the building is like.
Joel—
I feel like maybe I kind of know what your overall point is, but having a more clear structure might really help that. You have huge paragraphs and kind of jump from point to point without any logical progression, so I think your piece could really benefit from breaking it up and a greater structure.
I also feel like, though you have these large paragraphs, I know very little about the band or the people in it. There are a lot of points that I feel like you could make in fewer words, and that would help you add more to the piece. There are some key aspects that I really feel are missing: How many people are even in the band? What city are we in? How old are they?
I’m also a little confused by the opening—who is he taking the guitar from? You ? Someone else? I think that having that clarification could make it a stronger opening.
I think that they could be a really cool subject if you can break things up a bit and get more information in there. They seem interesting, but I think you just need to find a way to rework to piece a little bit.
Anna—
I almost feel like this last paragraph could be the intro—I feel like this is almost the heart of the piece, so to speak. There’s action here, and you encompass a lot, and this is where I really felt like there was something, like I knew what the piece was about. Before that, it was just these different areas of a building, and I didn’t feel very invested in what was going on there. You kind of bounced from place to place and there’s a lot of description and less about the overall, and it’s not until the end that I really felt like I understood—I want to understand earlier.
So, I think that if you can make the overall point clearer in the beginning (and this last paragraph might work, if you just tinker with a few things), then you could go into different areas of the building and how it’s all entwined, and also give information about the building itself. But I need to understand why I’m reading the piece earlier. This is a great subject, though, so I think that if you just rework some things your piece could be really cool. Great start!
Claire—
I like this piece. I think that it’s great that you went to all three places and talked to a bunch of people. I’m unsure how I feel about having your voice in the piece—I think it could work okay without it as well, I don’t know. You could be telling the same story without your voice, but I’m really just undecided about it—I can’t decide if it’s distracting or not.
But in general, there are two things I’m concerned about: transitions and take home message. Your transition from Waldo’s to The Strutt works well—I’m most concerned about the first one from Fourth Coast to Waldo’s because it’s so abrupt. You need to find a different/smoother way to get us from one place to the next.
In terms of take home message, I guess that I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to think about changes associated with the smoking ban after reading this piece. Is the message simply that they’ll get over it? You seem to be saying that at points, but it needs to be clearer. I think that you’ve got a really great start, though, and I’ll be interested to read this piece again after you revise it.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Writing Process - Explanatory Piece
So, I felt like I was writing a news article for this. Like, I figured out a structure and then just plugged everything in. And I think that's my biggest concern right now--that it reads too much like a regular feature, and that it's lacking in narrative. I'm not sure what would be an appropriate story to put in, though--sitting in Streeter's office, maybe, or getting an acceptance letter in the mail?
There's also so much that I could talk about in relation to Jon Streeter's process--what he requires them to do, how it's structured, everything that he's developed and set up for them. It's all really cool, and I can't decide how much of it is necessary for the piece within the word limit that's imposed.
I also want to talk to a couple more kids, so word limit might be a problem there as well. I'm trying to contact at least one kid who's going out of state (I'd really like to do the Harvard girl, or the Cornell kid), so that I have that kind of perspective to add. I might be able to cut down some of the quotes (though I really like the way Jon talks, I think that he's really amusing), and that oculd help make more space for such an addition.
I'm also unsure about the part I have in there about money--this might be an aspect that could be subtracted. I originally thought that it was important to note that though they don't have trouble getting in, they still do, like everyone else, have trouble deciding where to go due to financial concerns. But I'm not sure it really fits, and I was hesitant about that part.
So basically, it wasn't that hard to necessarily put the piece together--it felt pretty normal to me--but there's a lot I'm unsure about. So we'll see.
There's also so much that I could talk about in relation to Jon Streeter's process--what he requires them to do, how it's structured, everything that he's developed and set up for them. It's all really cool, and I can't decide how much of it is necessary for the piece within the word limit that's imposed.
I also want to talk to a couple more kids, so word limit might be a problem there as well. I'm trying to contact at least one kid who's going out of state (I'd really like to do the Harvard girl, or the Cornell kid), so that I have that kind of perspective to add. I might be able to cut down some of the quotes (though I really like the way Jon talks, I think that he's really amusing), and that oculd help make more space for such an addition.
I'm also unsure about the part I have in there about money--this might be an aspect that could be subtracted. I originally thought that it was important to note that though they don't have trouble getting in, they still do, like everyone else, have trouble deciding where to go due to financial concerns. But I'm not sure it really fits, and I was hesitant about that part.
So basically, it wasn't that hard to necessarily put the piece together--it felt pretty normal to me--but there's a lot I'm unsure about. So we'll see.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Explanatory Narrative First Draft
Amidst Smaller Acceptance Rates, KAMSC Students are Still Getting In
By Jessica Maas
College acceptance rates may be down throughout the country this year, but the high school seniors at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center (KAMSC) had a secret weapon—Mr. Jon Streeter.
Streeter, who has been at the center since a year after it opened in 1986, has acted as the college consultant to KAMSC students for the last 14 years. He meets students in their very first semester and continues to interact with them until they make their college decision choices as seniors.
“If you come in as a freshman I give you a little monologue, I give you a little assignment which essentially is, ‘Where do you think you want to be 12 years from today? Go find a guy doing that—talk to him, pick his brain. ‘What’s your life like, what’s your job like, any chance I can shadow you?’” said Streeter, who continued that the students are then required to find undergraduate programs for that specific career. “So if you want to go to Yale, what do the other Yale applicants look like? Here’s the top quartile—gods, goddesses, people from other planets—here’s us, 25th to 50th, mainstream who they accept—that’s what you need to look like by the beginning of your senior year. If I can do anything—summer experiences, enrichment plans, travel, research teams, whatever we can do to make the field level aside from a decent GPA and some test scores, that’s what we’ll do, and you tell me that in your freshman year.”
Streeter knows the kids. And, maybe more importantly, he knows other people.
“I’ve visited over 100 colleges, I’ve done over 175 visits over a 12 year period. And I know admissions people, I know who handles our applications, I know who runs the store, and I know what kids I have where, so if you’re a junior or senior Math/Science Center and Dartmouth is on your mind, I can hook you up with both of the women we have there, you can do a visit, you can follow them to classes, you can meet Dan Perish, the dean, you can meet Caroline Kur, the reader for Michigan—I can help,” he explained.
And his process works. So while “The New York Times” is reporting that the number of applications at some of the most selective colleges in the U.S. is going up and the acceptance rates at those same schools are therefore decreasing, the 68 high school students in this year’s KAMSC graduating class are still getting in.
One student was accepted to Brown, whose admittance rate this year was only 9.3 percent after a 20.60 percent increase in applications. Two students were accepted at Cornell, one was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, and one is turning down Stanford to attend Harvard; all of those schools experienced increases in the number of applications this year, and the latter two each accepted less than eight percent of those.
In total, the graduating class received 213 offers of admission from 72 colleges or programs. And the Ivy Leagues were not the only elite schools offering—KAMSC students also had offers at academically well-known schools such as Emory College, George Washington University, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, University of Chicago, and Vanderbilt University.
But while the offers don’t seem to be an issue, deciding where to go can pose one. Streeter admitted that in-state schools currently look more attractive to families, given the current state of the economy.
“It is more difficult for a kid to spend 200 grand to go out of state than ever before,” he said. “I don’t care how well off your family is—that’s a challenge. You were just accepted to M.I.T.—I’ve had three of these in the last five years—‘$210,000 please. Shut up, write check. What do you mean merit? Everyone here merits money.’”
The numbers reflect this challenge. Of the 68 seniors, 52 of them are attending a school within Michigan, and Kalamazoo Central senior Radhika Sharma confirmed that, in many cases, money played a large factor in the decision.
“I know of a lot of students who stayed in-state for going to college if they had the [Kalamazoo] Promise simply because it was beneficial and economically suitable for their family to stay in-state,” she said.
Sharma will be attending Wayne State University’s MedStart program next fall, a program that already guarantees her acceptance to Wayne State University’s medical school in four years. Only 15 students in the nation matriculate into this program each year. She noted that having access to Mr. Streeter, who has office hours and gives students his e-mail and phone number, was much more beneficial than any conversation she had with her guidance counselor at Kalamazoo Central.
“My conversations with him were more in depth about where my next step would be, where I should apply, why I should apply, and it was more overall and in depth, whereas with my counselor at the home school it was more like, ‘Are you fulfilling the courses you need to fulfill?’ It was more getting me to graduation, whereas he was more taking me beyond and into college,” she said.
Streeter himself noted that though KAMSC students are forced to do a lot of outside work before their senior year—talking to people and writing papers, required college visits, resume prep, personal essay writing over the summer—most of them recognize the advantage of it when they actually start applying.
“Probably seven out of 10 seniors that walk in in the fall say something to this effect: ‘You know that thing you asked us to do Mr. Streeter when we were freshmen, and sophomores, juniors? Scared the crap out of me. I did a really good job, I did a whole new interview with everybody. Because if I had not evolved through that I would be here with my freshman list and I’d be dead just like my home school friends,’” he said.
The bottom line is simply this—Jon Streeter wants KAMSC students to be able to go where they want to go.
“My goal is, anyplace you say you want to be? I want you to have that as a choice,” he said. “You don’t want to go to Duke? Turn ‘em down.”
By Jessica Maas
College acceptance rates may be down throughout the country this year, but the high school seniors at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center (KAMSC) had a secret weapon—Mr. Jon Streeter.
Streeter, who has been at the center since a year after it opened in 1986, has acted as the college consultant to KAMSC students for the last 14 years. He meets students in their very first semester and continues to interact with them until they make their college decision choices as seniors.
“If you come in as a freshman I give you a little monologue, I give you a little assignment which essentially is, ‘Where do you think you want to be 12 years from today? Go find a guy doing that—talk to him, pick his brain. ‘What’s your life like, what’s your job like, any chance I can shadow you?’” said Streeter, who continued that the students are then required to find undergraduate programs for that specific career. “So if you want to go to Yale, what do the other Yale applicants look like? Here’s the top quartile—gods, goddesses, people from other planets—here’s us, 25th to 50th, mainstream who they accept—that’s what you need to look like by the beginning of your senior year. If I can do anything—summer experiences, enrichment plans, travel, research teams, whatever we can do to make the field level aside from a decent GPA and some test scores, that’s what we’ll do, and you tell me that in your freshman year.”
Streeter knows the kids. And, maybe more importantly, he knows other people.
“I’ve visited over 100 colleges, I’ve done over 175 visits over a 12 year period. And I know admissions people, I know who handles our applications, I know who runs the store, and I know what kids I have where, so if you’re a junior or senior Math/Science Center and Dartmouth is on your mind, I can hook you up with both of the women we have there, you can do a visit, you can follow them to classes, you can meet Dan Perish, the dean, you can meet Caroline Kur, the reader for Michigan—I can help,” he explained.
And his process works. So while “The New York Times” is reporting that the number of applications at some of the most selective colleges in the U.S. is going up and the acceptance rates at those same schools are therefore decreasing, the 68 high school students in this year’s KAMSC graduating class are still getting in.
One student was accepted to Brown, whose admittance rate this year was only 9.3 percent after a 20.60 percent increase in applications. Two students were accepted at Cornell, one was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, and one is turning down Stanford to attend Harvard; all of those schools experienced increases in the number of applications this year, and the latter two each accepted less than eight percent of those.
In total, the graduating class received 213 offers of admission from 72 colleges or programs. And the Ivy Leagues were not the only elite schools offering—KAMSC students also had offers at academically well-known schools such as Emory College, George Washington University, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, University of Chicago, and Vanderbilt University.
But while the offers don’t seem to be an issue, deciding where to go can pose one. Streeter admitted that in-state schools currently look more attractive to families, given the current state of the economy.
“It is more difficult for a kid to spend 200 grand to go out of state than ever before,” he said. “I don’t care how well off your family is—that’s a challenge. You were just accepted to M.I.T.—I’ve had three of these in the last five years—‘$210,000 please. Shut up, write check. What do you mean merit? Everyone here merits money.’”
The numbers reflect this challenge. Of the 68 seniors, 52 of them are attending a school within Michigan, and Kalamazoo Central senior Radhika Sharma confirmed that, in many cases, money played a large factor in the decision.
“I know of a lot of students who stayed in-state for going to college if they had the [Kalamazoo] Promise simply because it was beneficial and economically suitable for their family to stay in-state,” she said.
Sharma will be attending Wayne State University’s MedStart program next fall, a program that already guarantees her acceptance to Wayne State University’s medical school in four years. Only 15 students in the nation matriculate into this program each year. She noted that having access to Mr. Streeter, who has office hours and gives students his e-mail and phone number, was much more beneficial than any conversation she had with her guidance counselor at Kalamazoo Central.
“My conversations with him were more in depth about where my next step would be, where I should apply, why I should apply, and it was more overall and in depth, whereas with my counselor at the home school it was more like, ‘Are you fulfilling the courses you need to fulfill?’ It was more getting me to graduation, whereas he was more taking me beyond and into college,” she said.
Streeter himself noted that though KAMSC students are forced to do a lot of outside work before their senior year—talking to people and writing papers, required college visits, resume prep, personal essay writing over the summer—most of them recognize the advantage of it when they actually start applying.
“Probably seven out of 10 seniors that walk in in the fall say something to this effect: ‘You know that thing you asked us to do Mr. Streeter when we were freshmen, and sophomores, juniors? Scared the crap out of me. I did a really good job, I did a whole new interview with everybody. Because if I had not evolved through that I would be here with my freshman list and I’d be dead just like my home school friends,’” he said.
The bottom line is simply this—Jon Streeter wants KAMSC students to be able to go where they want to go.
“My goal is, anyplace you say you want to be? I want you to have that as a choice,” he said. “You don’t want to go to Duke? Turn ‘em down.”
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Profile Final Draft
Crossing Community Borders Led Barraclough to the Front of the Classroom
By Jessica Maas
Laura Barraclough begins her Urban Sociology class one Monday morning with a question: “What is an ethnic enclave?”
Her students take notes, and answer and ask questions throughout the lecture, but many of them may not know that it was a class similar to this one that answered so many questions for the second-year sociology professor and led her to want to teach others.
Born in the San Fernando Valley in California, Barraclough crossed community borders everyday, from the rural area she lived in to the suburban area of her magnet school and even beyond that to the nearby Los Angeles city she loved.
But these borders didn’t just represent population size; crossing those lines also meant interacting with different groups of people and, maybe more importantly, different ways of thinking.
Barraclough recognized the racial and attitudinal borders at a young age. At school, her best friends were Mexican, Peruvian and Korean, but at home she listened to a barrage of derogatory comments from her father and neighborhood friends; she can still remember going out riding and picking up on the way other children talked about Mexicans.
“And I didn’t have anything to say back to it, I just heard the tone and I knew it was wrong, I knew I objected to it because I had Mexican friends at school, but I had none of the knowledge to, like, ‘Hey, what are you doing, why are you talking that way?’ So the only thing I could come up with was ‘Hey, they’re not Mexicans, they’re Hispanics.’ That was it—that was all I had to say,” says the now thirty-one-year-old Barraclough. “So I convinced basically everyone I knew to stop saying Mexican and instead say Hispanic, but there was no content behind that, it was just, ‘Here’s something bad, and I don’t know what to do with it.’”
It wasn’t until she went to college that she really began to understand.
“I took this class called Ethnic Diversity in the City by Professor George Lipson, who’s my mentor to this day, and he just laid it all out, you know?” says the UC San Diego alumna. “In ten short weeks he explained to me and everybody else why my parents were this way, and how this persists, and it was the piece I’d be looking for—both the p-i-e-c-e and the p-e-a.”
Today, Barraclough works inside the classroom and out to help students understand systems of inequality like those she grew up surrounded by. She teaches classes like Prisons and Public Policy and Race and Racism; she guides senior students on capstone projects, including one on the school-to-prison pipeline; she helped two students put together a documentary on prison re-entry in Kalamazoo over the summer; and she’s been working with one student all year on an independent research project related to homelessness.
On one Friday, the five-foot-six brunette hesitantly interrupts her energetic Urban Sociology students to start class; the beginning is the only time she ever appears nervous at the front of the classroom, and may contribute to the initial impression that some students get of her.
“I thought that she was a little bit soft at first, like kind of a soft teacher you could get away with, and then we were reading this really cool article…and no one read this article, and she got so angry…and she was like, ‘If you don’t do my reading, please don’t show up in my class. I give you attention, why don’t you give me your time?’ And it was just, like, ‘Damn,’” says Dana Robinson, who took a class with Barraclough last year and is working on the homelessness project with her this year. “And then she was like, ‘If you haven’t done the reading, class is dismissed. Please take the time to do something fulfilling.’ And it was so scary and then everyone was scared into place and did their reading for the rest of the quarter…So she’s really nice, but she cuts you down when you need to be cut down.”
Though she always looks shy in the beginning, it quickly ends. As soon as she launches into her lecture about gender and urban areas, Barraclough’s in her element, gesturing animatedly with chalk in her right hand and typed notes in her left. Her dress usually tends toward casual, and on this day in particular she sports jeans, sandals, a yellow sweater layered over a yellow shirt, and a pair of her trademark long earrings that hang near her shoulders.
She talks for 40 minutes before splitting the class into small groups and handing them envelopes containing identical scenarios. Each group reads about a recently-divorced woman with two children and a very low income, and they are then asked to come up with a “plan” for the woman, including a new job, new housing, and a childcare situation; Barraclough encourages them to be creative. The options are presented on note cards, and the students talk in groups for about fifteen minutes before engaging in a whole class discussion and presenting their thoughts. One group states that they weren’t able to come up with a scenario, but that they understand the take-home message about the woman’s situation.
“She cares deeply about students, and works with them, and really wants to take them to a new place in their thinking and this critical place of understanding the world,” says Kiran Cunningham, Barraclough’s department chair. “She’s got a lot of passion that she operates out of that I think is infectious, and students come away from her classes just wanting to know more.”
For Barraclough, it all goes back to crossing borders and that one class she had in college with George Lipson.
“…that has driven me to this day, that one class. It’s why I’m an urban sociologist, it’s why I study the stuff I do, because I feel like there’s probably a lot of students who are having similar experiences like I was.” She pauses.
“And I don’t know if that’s true,” she laughs, “but I feel like if they’re out there, I want to make this available, you know?”
By Jessica Maas
Laura Barraclough begins her Urban Sociology class one Monday morning with a question: “What is an ethnic enclave?”
Her students take notes, and answer and ask questions throughout the lecture, but many of them may not know that it was a class similar to this one that answered so many questions for the second-year sociology professor and led her to want to teach others.
Born in the San Fernando Valley in California, Barraclough crossed community borders everyday, from the rural area she lived in to the suburban area of her magnet school and even beyond that to the nearby Los Angeles city she loved.
But these borders didn’t just represent population size; crossing those lines also meant interacting with different groups of people and, maybe more importantly, different ways of thinking.
Barraclough recognized the racial and attitudinal borders at a young age. At school, her best friends were Mexican, Peruvian and Korean, but at home she listened to a barrage of derogatory comments from her father and neighborhood friends; she can still remember going out riding and picking up on the way other children talked about Mexicans.
“And I didn’t have anything to say back to it, I just heard the tone and I knew it was wrong, I knew I objected to it because I had Mexican friends at school, but I had none of the knowledge to, like, ‘Hey, what are you doing, why are you talking that way?’ So the only thing I could come up with was ‘Hey, they’re not Mexicans, they’re Hispanics.’ That was it—that was all I had to say,” says the now thirty-one-year-old Barraclough. “So I convinced basically everyone I knew to stop saying Mexican and instead say Hispanic, but there was no content behind that, it was just, ‘Here’s something bad, and I don’t know what to do with it.’”
It wasn’t until she went to college that she really began to understand.
“I took this class called Ethnic Diversity in the City by Professor George Lipson, who’s my mentor to this day, and he just laid it all out, you know?” says the UC San Diego alumna. “In ten short weeks he explained to me and everybody else why my parents were this way, and how this persists, and it was the piece I’d be looking for—both the p-i-e-c-e and the p-e-a.”
Today, Barraclough works inside the classroom and out to help students understand systems of inequality like those she grew up surrounded by. She teaches classes like Prisons and Public Policy and Race and Racism; she guides senior students on capstone projects, including one on the school-to-prison pipeline; she helped two students put together a documentary on prison re-entry in Kalamazoo over the summer; and she’s been working with one student all year on an independent research project related to homelessness.
On one Friday, the five-foot-six brunette hesitantly interrupts her energetic Urban Sociology students to start class; the beginning is the only time she ever appears nervous at the front of the classroom, and may contribute to the initial impression that some students get of her.
“I thought that she was a little bit soft at first, like kind of a soft teacher you could get away with, and then we were reading this really cool article…and no one read this article, and she got so angry…and she was like, ‘If you don’t do my reading, please don’t show up in my class. I give you attention, why don’t you give me your time?’ And it was just, like, ‘Damn,’” says Dana Robinson, who took a class with Barraclough last year and is working on the homelessness project with her this year. “And then she was like, ‘If you haven’t done the reading, class is dismissed. Please take the time to do something fulfilling.’ And it was so scary and then everyone was scared into place and did their reading for the rest of the quarter…So she’s really nice, but she cuts you down when you need to be cut down.”
Though she always looks shy in the beginning, it quickly ends. As soon as she launches into her lecture about gender and urban areas, Barraclough’s in her element, gesturing animatedly with chalk in her right hand and typed notes in her left. Her dress usually tends toward casual, and on this day in particular she sports jeans, sandals, a yellow sweater layered over a yellow shirt, and a pair of her trademark long earrings that hang near her shoulders.
She talks for 40 minutes before splitting the class into small groups and handing them envelopes containing identical scenarios. Each group reads about a recently-divorced woman with two children and a very low income, and they are then asked to come up with a “plan” for the woman, including a new job, new housing, and a childcare situation; Barraclough encourages them to be creative. The options are presented on note cards, and the students talk in groups for about fifteen minutes before engaging in a whole class discussion and presenting their thoughts. One group states that they weren’t able to come up with a scenario, but that they understand the take-home message about the woman’s situation.
“She cares deeply about students, and works with them, and really wants to take them to a new place in their thinking and this critical place of understanding the world,” says Kiran Cunningham, Barraclough’s department chair. “She’s got a lot of passion that she operates out of that I think is infectious, and students come away from her classes just wanting to know more.”
For Barraclough, it all goes back to crossing borders and that one class she had in college with George Lipson.
“…that has driven me to this day, that one class. It’s why I’m an urban sociologist, it’s why I study the stuff I do, because I feel like there’s probably a lot of students who are having similar experiences like I was.” She pauses.
“And I don’t know if that’s true,” she laughs, “but I feel like if they’re out there, I want to make this available, you know?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)