Yes, and yes. I’ve been a volunteer college mentor for years, since I was in college myself, with a variety of different organizations. The orgs I’ve worked with have almost always targeted underrepresented minorities - low-income, students of color or students from other disadvantaged groups. I was a first-generation, working-class, African American student who went through the college application process without any parental help, and not much support from guidance counselors or really any other adults (my high school had 4 guidance counselors for 1600 students…so a 1 to 400 ratio?). It was hard, and there were a lot of things I didn’t know, so I wanted to do my part to make sure other students didn’t struggle in the same way. (In fact, I joined CC in large part so I could do that.)
And yes, I ask questions here all the time on their behalf out of curiosity. I just keep it really high-level and omit any details that may identify my students. I didn’t ask for personalized college suggestions based on GPA or test scores, because I did not think it was my place to share those publicly. Instead, I watched a lot of other threads and learned about general groupings of colleges from other people’s questions, which helped me help my students make lists. You can also ask a question like one of those threads in which people ask “suggest some colleges similar to Rhodes” or something like that, with an upfront statement that you can’t disclose stats but giving a high-level overview of the student (SAT scores in the x percentile, high GPA, top 10% of class, etc.)
You can also encourage them to get an account of their own, even if it’s just to lurk. I wish I had known CC was a thing when I was a college-bound senior; I would’ve learned so much just from watching and reading.
Really, in my role as mentor, I have found these to be my primary tasks (in roughly this order of importance):
-Reducing stress and reinforcing a sense of reality in the student. What I mean by that is making sure they know that going to an elite college is not the only way to succeed in life, reassuring them that they are awesome, encouraging them to explore interests and hobbies rather than being overly obsessed with career prep, etc. This is my chief concern, quite frankly. Most of the ones who apply to and get into these mentoring programs are already pretty driven and ambitious; they just need a little guidance.
-Helping them shape a good well-rounded college list. Most HS students but especially disadvantaged ones aren’t aware of the vast number of colleges/universities out there, outside of the ones everyone has heard of and their local ones. You may have to push them a little to consider colleges outside of a local radius, since many are scared of leaving home. Part of helping them shape the college list is keeping in mind some financial aid realities (see below). Some of the very top ones will be candidates for colleges that meet full need…but most won’t. I almost always have to push my mentees to apply to at least one and hopefully more than one public university in their home state, knowing that many of them will actually end up there in the fall. They usually don’t want to.
-Helping them understand the realities of financial aid and costs for school, and help them avoid making decisions they will regret in 10 years’ time. One of my mentees got into a very prestigious arts school, but she was very low income and the school did not offer her much aid, to the point that she and parents would’ve had to borrow over $100K to go there. That was a heartbreaking conversation to have. Another mentee got into a dream school but was offered pretty much NO non-repayable aid, and she didn’t understand that from the award letter - she just saw “award” and some numbers and didn’t realize that the numbers were loans, not grants/scholarships. I had to get on the phone with her guardians and explain the financial aid award letter step-by-step. These are the kinds of issues you will have to contend with - it’s a very different kind of crew than the ones you encounter on CC.
-Helping them write the college essay. Most of the students I’ve worked with have had some wonderful ideas for their essays - truly compelling stories about hardship, passionate interests, talents or skills, or their journeys. The hard part is that on average, their writing isn’t very good because their writing instruction thus far has not been very good. My advice is to start really, really early; most of these students are going to need a couple months and several iterations to get their college essays right. If you can contact them over the summer, I’d advise them to start thinking of topics and writing them down (just topics) mid-summer. But if not, then definitely in early September.
-Helping them learn to be advocates for themselves. Very often they will need to call financial aid offices or housing offices or whatever else to find out some information, write an appeal, ask a question, etc. I try to avoid doing these things for them but give them the tools (even a script) to help them learn to do it themselves. The reason is because, sadly, once they get on campus a lot of times these students will be completely on their own to navigate issues that crop up. Their parents/guardians/families, if they are in contact with them, will often be unable to help them - they won’t know how or they won’t have the motivation to do so. So I have to help them learn now so they can do it when they get there. My goal is to give them the tools and the confidence to navigate college administrations in the future.