One of our BRYTE volunteers, Thom, successfully helped his tutee Jacques apply to college. Here are the steps he took. If you have questions about any of these steps, please email your coordinator.
- Jacques joined College Visions. Students can apply during their junior year and if accepted, the program follows them through graduation and provides a great degree of personal support including weekly meetings, advising and even some limited test prep. Thom highly recommend this program.
- Jacques also worked closely with his high school's College Advising Corps member. CACs are college graduates who serve as college counselors in public schools to provides basic college counseling with relatively good personal support (though less than College Visions does).
- Thom recommends that if your student’s schools has a Corps member (all PPSD high schools do) to get in contact with that person early and often. They can provide great advice about how to use your BRYTE time (in Thom’s case, for example, he decided to devote most of their tutoring time to SAT prep)
- Thom also recommended Upward Bound and College Crusade.
- Jacques got free waivers to take both the SAT and the ACT and so was able to take each multiple times. Almost all of our BRYTE students are eligible for these waivers, though they must be processed through the student’s college counselor. Definitely reach out to your student’s school’s college counselor to confirm that your student receives these waivers.
- Jacques applied to mostly test-optional schools including:
- Talent Development which is run through the University of Rhode Island which requires its accepted students to complete a rigorous summer pre-college to get their skills to college level. This program doesn’t consider SAT scores (it looks more at personal stories in application essays) but it does require applicants to take the SAT.
- Bryant which is a private university located in Smithfield, Rhode Island
- Providence College which is a private university located about two miles west of downtown Providence
- General Advice: Thom says the key to a successful college process is finding your student good professional advising, whether through CAC, College Visions, Upward Bound, College Crusade, etc. These advisors, rather than Thom, set Jacques up with realistic programs that matched his interests, initiated the application process, compiled a list of colleges for him to apply to, provided him with information about local schools, and informed him about deadlines.