Latino College Assistance Guide

By Bob Howitt

Are you Latino? Thinking about college? Don't know quite where to begin?
Start here. The Latino College Assistance Guide will help you prepare for the college application process, examine your financial alternatives, identify the schools right for you, succeed at higher education, and move ahead on your career path.
For over 20 years author Bob Howitt, Executive Director of the WKBJ Foundation, has worked one-on-one with hundreds of Latino students—many who were new to the country or had documentation challenges—in their pursuit of higher education. The Latino College Assistance Guide gathers together the lessons learned by these students into a valuable resource for high schoolers considering college. Their stories and insights will help guide you through the process and enable you to make the choices that are right for you. Includes an extensive library of website links to connect you to additional sources of useful information.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Howitt
• Release date: Jul 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310521874

Bob Howitt

Bob has had a varied career: partner of a respected Wall Street firm, Executive-Director of a well-known youth agency, initial funder of what became Uncommon Schools, board member of a longstanding non-profit organization, and leadership of the WKBJ Foundation. WKBJ has assisted over 250 financially challenged young people to attend college. The diversity of both his books and the subject matter of his essays is indicative of the breadth and depth of his interests.

Book preview

Latino

College Assistance

Guide

by Bob Howitt

Executive Director, WKBJ Foundation

Published by Bob Howitt at Smashwords

Copyright © 2015 Robert Howitt

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

INTRODUCTION:

How This Book Can Help You

This book is for Latino high school students who are thinking about going to college. Maybe you already know what college you want to attend, your major, and what your career will be. Or maybe you’re still undecided about college and how to pay for it. Or perhaps you’re thinking about pursuing another option, like training for a specific marketable skill or signing up for the military.

Whatever your situation, this book will help you decide whether college is for you. If you choose to go, this book will show how to select the right one, how to pay for it, and how to achieve academic success once you get there. But college may not be the best choice for everyone; this book may help you decide why another path may be better.

What makes this book different from other books about college is that it contains the voices and experiences of Latino students who are currently in college or who have graduated from college. They faced and overcame many of the same worries and challenges that you are facing in making the college decision. Throughout this book, you’ll hear about their experiences with choosing and paying for college, doing well academically, campus life, and preparing for a career.

After each chapter, there are lists of websites to help with your research. In working with students for many years, I have found that, regardless of the amount of college-related information that is on the internet, almost every student wants to have a meaningful conversation with a person as well. Take advantage of both websites and people.

Finally, this book is not just for you—we encourage your parents and guidance counselors to read it and discuss it with you.

I began my career working on Wall Street, but eventually became interested in problems facing young people. I was a volunteer in a homeless shelter in New York City for several years. Quite often I stayed overnight at the shelter to help people in the morning. Then I had to put people out on the street with all their possessions in a shopping cart; after, I donned my expensive suit to work on Wall Street. And that got to me. I realized that one reason why people became homeless was because they lacked educational opportunities, and I decided to do something about it.

I raised money to start a program to help disadvantaged young people achieve their educational dreams. We started the program in Dover, New Jersey, a town near to where I live. Dover is a low-income town with a large Latino population. Through the programs I started, I came to know the culture, problems, and dreams of young Latinos. My experience in helping them go to college inspired me to write this book.

As a Latino, you may face issues that students from other backgrounds may not face:

■ You may have attended a below-average public high school.

■ Be in a family with below-average income.

■ Be the first in your family to attend college.

■ Be especially concerned about the cost of college and going into debt to pay for it.

■ Have language issues that make college seem a difficult choice.

■ Be relatively new to and perhaps not fully adjusted to the United States.

■ Have documentation issues, which affect every aspect of your life.

My belief is that the Latino student has particular needs:

■ A greater need for information about higher education options.

■ A greater need for help in how to apply, finance, and graduate from college.

■ A greater need for remedial and/or English language courses in college.

■ A greater need to understand the importance of advocating for yourself.

■ A need to be aware that lesser known colleges can be as good as the big names.

■ And, when necessary, help in becoming documented, a hugely important issue.

Looking for the right college can sometimes feel overwhelming. For Latinos this challenge can be much more difficult, because you have to take into account a college’s diversity and commitment to minority educational advancement. Given the historically low higher education achievement rates for Latinos, it is crucial for Latino youth to become smart consumers of education. This book will help you become such a consumer and save you a lot of time and headaches, by giving you the tools and information to make the right choices about college.

While Latinos face challenges, they also have great advantages and opportunities in college and the work world. The U.S. is becoming increasingly Latino. The country’s Hispanic population grew from 14.6 million people in 1980 to nearly 53 million in 2012.

In 2025, nearly 25% of all college-age Americans will be Latino, up from 19% in 2010, according to Excelencia in Education (www.edexcelencia.org). Yet, while millions of Latinos are college-age, not enough of them are completing college degrees. Only 13.9% of Hispanics held a Bachelor’s degree or higher in 2010, compared with 39% of whites and 21% of blacks. By the year 2043 Latinos may be one-third of the workforce; educational attainment must rise dramatically to fully participate in this growth.

Guillermo Reina understands the importance of education for Latinos. He came to the U.S. from Colombia in 2002 and attended Farleigh Dickinson University, where he earned an MBA in marketing. In his home country he knew lawyers and engineers, and one of his dreams was to earn a Master’s degree outside his country. "Coming to the U.S., I had to start from zero. I knew I wanted to go to college. That wasn’t something I had to really think about. It was a question of how to make it happen.

"Your life changes when you go to college. Your world becomes bigger. In high school you might want a career in computer science or biology or law, but until you go to college you still don’t have a clear idea of the big picture, the big dream. By going to college you will meet people from other countries and connect with the world.

"Nelson Mandela said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ I truly believe in that quote. Latinos are a growing population in the United States, and we need to be well educated for the challenges that we’re going to face. By earning a college degree, you become an asset for change.

With the U.S. undergoing great demographic changes, the educated bilingual, bicultural Latino will have an increasingly important role to play in the American and global economy of the 21st century. College-educated Latino students will have an advantage in finding attractive careers in today’s workplace, as companies expand products and services to the growing Latino population.

Another positive of a college education is that Latino students have the opportunity to move themselves and their families up the income ladder. Someone with a B.A. degree earns over a million dollars more in his working life than someone with just a high school diploma. Even with the high cost of a college education, a college graduate will still come out ahead of someone who doesn’t have a college degree. And there are benefits to a college education that go beyond what you earn: according to the College Board, college graduates are more likely to volunteer and vote, and are even healthier.

I hope this book helps you determine if college is right for you, and to achieve success whether you choose that path or another kind of education after high school.

Bob Howitt

CHAPTER ONE:

Should You Go to College?

Whether to go to college can be a hard decision to make. Today, college costs are very high and you may be wondering whether the price is worth it. You may be wondering whether you need to go to college to get a good job and earn a good salary. And if you are headed for college, you may have no idea how to go about choosing one, applying for admission, and doing well once you get there.

To make your decision, you need to ask yourself some important questions: Since there are many challenges about getting into college and paying for it, why should I bother? Is it really worth it? What are the benefits of going to college?

To help answer these questions, let’s hear about the experiences of Latinos who are either in college or who have graduated from college. By listening to them, you may find your decision easier to make.

What Students Say About Whether You Should Go To College

Carolina Poveda started college in her native Colombia and came to New York in 2002 at age 21. She then finished college at Montclair State University in New Jersey, majoring in economics. She’s now getting an MBA degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Your income increases significantly after you go to college, Carolina says. You can make three times what someone makes who doesn’t have a college degree. A lot of times it’s a requirement for a job interview. College also makes you a better person, because you learn to analyze things from different perspectives and question them rather than take them at face value. I’ve never met anybody who has said: I wish I hadn’t gone to college. But I have heard the opposite.

Amanda Maldonado, 22, graduated from Iona College in May of 2014; she majored in mass communications. She wants to be either an actress or a film/TV show producer. Amanda went to high school in the Bronx and always knew she wanted to go to college.

Amanda and her parents were born in the U.S. but her grandparents were immigrants. Her mom’s side was from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and her father’s side was from Puerto Rico and Spain.

"My mom always wanted me to go. She told me, ‘You need to get a bachelor’s degree so you can survive in this world.’

"I chose college because I’ve always enjoyed learning new things and it’s very hard to get a good paying job without a college degree. I’ve worked for the minimum wage and it’s very hard to pay for rent and everything else.

Leave your options open and explore college as one option. Once you get to college, you can discover your true passion. A lot of kids are unsure about what they want to do when they grow up. But that shouldn’t scare you--you have enough time to find out.

Deep Shah, 19, is a sophomore at Rutgers University majoring in computer science, with a minor in