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.”