Chapter 13 “The Talent Is Out There”
J.B. Schramm, United States: College Access
1. Detail the system that your subject encountered: The system that J.B. Schramm encountered was the system of college admissions for the underprivileged youth that did not have the best statistical grades in the world but have the skills to get them through college. Usually only the exceptional students who are underprivileged are the ones that colleges want in their student body and the average ones are the ones that get the short end of the stick.
The system is as follows: Many students who are underprivileged have the possibility to go to college but they do not have the statistical grades to help them get there. Instead of using other means to try to get into college, they never try to get there and end up on the streets or working for minimum wage. Those who do try to not know how to play up their strengths, end up being rejected, and have the same fate as those who did not try.
2. Explain the need and the problems that your subject encountered: J.B. Schramm encountered the problem of getting these kids accepted into college when the college did not want them in the first place. The need for this problem to be fixed was extremely high because there are many underprivileged kids around the country that deserve the same opportunities that the more privileged people of America already have.
3. How did they attempt to change the understanding of the situation?: They attempted to change the understanding of the situation by finding the source of the problem and starting there. They realized that the reason that these children were not being accepted into college was because the admissions officers were not being shown what types of people that they are. What Schramm focused on was teaching these children how to write well developed college essays that capture the essence of who they are within it. They set up a college writing seminar for some of the kids that wanted to get into college but did not have the means to. The first year that this was in existence, only four people were enrolled and all of them were accepted and enrolled in college.
4. How did they change the system?: The system was changed because of the overwhelming number of students that have gone to these College Summits in order to further their educations. Opportunities were created by Schramm and all of the people that he recruited to help him. Those people include the writing instructors that taught the kids how create well developed essays that told the story of who they are, the people who donated money to help fund the College Summit and fly the kids to a college where the seminar actually took place, and the kids that had the will and the drive to further themselves to reach the next level of education that probably would not have been possible without the help of everyone around them. The most dramatic change of the system was being able to change the way that admissions officers look at applications and try to see what type of person an applicant was instead of the numbers that they put up in the classroom.
5. What problems did they encounter? What setbacks?: Some of the problems that Schramm encountered were as follows. Finding funding was one of the major problems that he encountered. He had signed up approximately forty kids to go to the workshop at a college that they would have to be flown to but Schramm still did not have the funding. He was on the verge of cancelling the workshop all together but then he met with a woman who said that she would fund the entire College Summit, all $13,800 needed. Now he does not have a funding problem because he has grants from the Department of Education and many other smaller benefactors. Another problem that Schramm faced was that he needed a substantial amount of kids to sign up in order for this to be a success. He ended up getting a large amount of people to sign up not from advertising, but from word of mouth from those students who had attended the summits and told their friends, who told their friends, and so on. This has become a very large program because of the amount of people who have joined and the amount of money that has been donated to this wonderful cause.
6. Who were the allies? The opposers?: The allies of the project were the students that wanted to go to college, pre-existing programs that supported the same cause, teachers and administrators that wanted their students to succeed, and the communities of underprivileged children that wanted to give them a better life than the people living in them have had. The opposers to the project were few and far between. These people were not really opposers; they just needed to be shown a different way of thinking in order to let these kids into college. The admissions officers are a prime example of this. When they learned to look at applications differently, they could see what type of person the applicant was and let them into their college or university.
7. Explain how the new system works: The new system is as follows. Many students who are underprivileged have the possibility to go to college but they do not have the statistical grades to help them get there. Students sign up for the College Summit that will teach them how to write a well-developed college essay that explains to the admissions officers what they are like as a person. The essays that these underprivileged children send in persuade the admissions officers into accepting them into that college or university so that they can make a better life for themselves once they graduate.
No comments:
Post a Comment