<p>Just a brief article stating that Latino high school students are the least likely to attend college in the US:</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to results of the NRCCUA-HHF College Preparation 2007 study, nearly 98 percent of Latino high school students say they want to attend college and nearly 95 percent say they realistically believe that they will graduate from college. These results mirrored those of high school students across all ethnic groups. However, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, Latino students attend college significantly less often than their peers in other ethnic groups with Latino student enrollment in higher education only reaching 25 percent in 2004. White student enrollment has remained steady around 40 to 41 percent while black student enrollment remained in the 31 to 32 percent range during the same time period.
<p>Possibly this might have something to do with it:
An article in the January 31, 2007 LA Times describes how many Latino students refuse to take out loans of any type, even federal student loans. While a general aversion to debt is often considered the sign of a strong work ethic, many Latino students delay or never complete their studies as they attempt to save the money to pay for college as they go instead of compiling a package of loans and grants like many of their counterparts. (<a href="http://www.amsa.com/fap/news/news_detail.cfm?aid=821%5B/url%5D">http://www.amsa.com/fap/news/news_detail.cfm?aid=821</a>)</p>
<p>Speaking from my more recent direct experience with 11th and 12th grade Hispanics this year, in English classes & advisories in low-performing publics, the vast majority are not ready for anything more than community college. Their grade proficiency in English/Language Arts is about "D." That compares with B's and C's for their African-American classmates, and B's and A's for their Asian classmates.</p>
<p>OTOH, in my professional opinion they are not being held to a higher standard than "D." If I were in charge of their classrooms or any of their schools, I would consider their level of English proficiency an emergency, yet no alarm bells are ringing in their schools.</p>
<p>However, yes; there is a preference for employment. (I don't know about any principle of not accepting loans, but it's certainly realistic on their parts to understand the need to pay those loans or even qualify for those loans without a work record history & financial history.)</p>
<p>That might explain why the two Latinos in the top 25 of our high school's class (ca. 650) are going to much less prestigious colleges than most of the others. It's possible also that their SAT scores were a lower. But one did sort of go "hunh" when number 25 is going to Brown, number 24 to U. Penn and number 12 to the City University of NY.</p>
<p>Or, as TallSon (former WashDadJr2) said when he transferred from a private school to a public Jr. High, "Dad, there are hardly any stuck-up rich kids here!"</p>
<p>The top Hispanic student from my daughter's graduating class will be going to Cornell.</p>
<p>But her family speaks English at home. So I doubt she is typical.</p>
<p>epiphany, do you think that the lower college enrollment of Hispanic kids is mostly an English language issue, or is it more a cultural or socioeconomic issue?</p>
<p>The language issue is interesting, on one hand I'm sure there are many Asia-Pacific posters here where English was not the native household language so to say that because English is not spoken in the home is the predominant reason why Hispanics struggle in school would be to dismiss the hurdles of the Asia-Pacific first generation kids. On the other hand, you don't see our schools doing Mandarin Chinese as a second language, or Korean as a second language or looking for bilingual teachers in those languages. For these kids it's much like our Ellis Island parents generation - sink or swim.</p>
<p>Well, the top Hispanic student in MY kid's class is going to Penn (having turned down MIT in favor of a better financial aid package). Not an English speaker at home. Another reasonably high-performing kid is going to USC.</p>
<p>I don't think the problem is with academically successful Hispanic kids. The problem is that there are so few of them. (And also that a meaningful portion of them are essentially frozen out of the higher education world because they are undocumented and do not have a lot of income or wealth.)</p>
<p>I read a while back a story in the local (calif) newspaper. A Hispanic girl had a hard time convincing her parent to let her go to a East coast elite school. Money was not the issue because there was financial aid. However her parent thought that going so far away to college meant abandoning her community.</p>
<p>Marian,
I think it's all of that. However, there are young Hispanics quite interested in college & quite discouraged at what they understand to be their lack of proficiency; some of these do not apply at all, therefore. In addition, even to "make it" in business -- & assuming even that some of them have chosen to bypass college in that effort -- it's essential to be fluent in English to do well in a combined North American market. So for any graduating student, I don't consider it acceptable for a high school to continue to pass them, grade to grade, without offering intervention within the school year. JMO.</p>
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[quote]
Maybe they rather be with friends than arrogant strivers?
[/quote]
Maybe. Though I hope you aren't implying that there are only arrogant strivers are at the better known colleges. There are many possible explanations. I was a little surprised that another kid in this same group was going to a very middling school right in our town. I'd just have thought that any Hispanic student in the top .5% of our class could go anywhere and probably get very good scholarships too.</p>
<p>so I'm curious, if there is a small number of low-income and/or Hispanics, and if apparently (supposedly) they are looking for more low-income and/or Hispanics... does that give the low-income and/or Hispanic who is in admissible range an advantage in admissions? Or is the talk of these colleges just talk and less action?</p>
<p>There is a WORLD of difference between a middle to upper middle class hispanic student whose family has been in the U.S. for several generations (or even one generation), and an hispanic student who is low income, will be the first in his or her family to attend college, and whose parents may have arrived in the last 10-15 years. There are also differences among hispanic groups - Puerto Ricans, Cubans, South Americans, Mexican, etc. Yet, colleges lump all of these groups together.</p>
<p>I think it is important to separate out these groups when discussing access and achievement in higher education. A middle income hispanic student whose parents and perhaps grandparents were raised in this country, who only speaks spanish in spanish classes at school, who has parents who have a high school or even a college education, and who has grown up fully assimulated into American culture is coming from a very different place than one who is low income, whose parents have relatively recently arrived in the U.S., whose parents may have only an elementary school education, who speaks Spanish exclusively at home and in their neighborhoods, and who, in many ways, has never assimulated into American culture.</p>
<p>For the first group, setting your sights on the Ivy league and heading off across the country to college is often no different than ANY American kid's journey to college. For the second group, however, it's an entirely different story, and the cards are truly stacked against them. Even when they do manage to land in a high school where they are encouraged to attend college, and have access to AP and honors courses, and support to excell, it's a giant leap from the barrio, not just to Harvard but to San Diego State.</p>
<p>So, I think in this discussion, we probably need to identify which groups we're talking about when we give examples.</p>
<p>Wow. That Courant.com article was annoying. The girl, Aurora, sounded very, very judgemental. Implying that people were racist and the Yale Financial aid office was full of liars... I don't know about that. Maybe the writer made her come off as something she's not but she seems like more of a snob than a lot of people I've met - rich and poor.</p>
<p>This is kinda depressing since i'm half latino and half pacific islander (flip). I think we're a very underrepresented race with perhaps some correlation to the immigration laws in the US. Iono, but ya it hurts me personally to read stuff like this.</p>
<p>I'm alright, but then again my parents are rich and I don't speak flip or spanish (i actually failed Spanish 1 at school hahaha).</p>
<p>Somebody posted the SAT averages from Harvard in a report on athletics. About 100 point advantage on old SAT for Hispanics overall. About same as a recruited athlete.</p>