Brown Bound…

Jocelyne, a senior in the IB Program at St. Petersburg High School (FL), attended our summer College Planning Boot Camp as a rising 6th grader. She went on to join our college planning cohort program as an 8th grader, served on our youth leadership board throughout high school, founded a College Cohort Club at her high school, contributed to both our “Who I Am” book series and the ACT Study Skills and Learning Strategies project. The many years of leadership and community service Jocelyne contributed to our foundation supported her application to Brown.

A Fortuitous Meeting

I met Jocelyne during the summer of 2019, when, as a rising 6th grader, she attended our 5-day College Planning Boot Camp through our partnership with Pinellas County Schools (FL). Intellectually curious, deeply pensive, and with an infectious laugh, she was destined to become a mainstay in our program. She attended our boot camp again as a rising 7th grader where she volunteered to serve as a discussion group leader. As an 8th grader, she formally joined our College Planning Cohort Program for high school students. As a 9th grader, she became a Co-President of our Youth Leadership Board. As a sophomore, she founded a College Cohort Club at her high school to assist expand the college knowledge of other first-generation students.

Jocelyne has become one of the most accomplished students in the history of our program. If not the most successful in processing and applying the information in every aspect of her approach to schooling. She embraced our 3 pillars of scholarship, leadership, and service in ways that have had an indelible and lasting impact on our foundation, in the lives of students at her school, in our national program, and in the lives of her family.

Plan Your Recommendation

As a middle school and first-generation student, Jocelyne was completely unaware of the potential impact a recommendation could have 7 years later during Brown’s review of her college application—but we did. During her 7-year middle through high school progression, Jocelyne followed our guidance and developed a long list of achievements in our program—all of which I was able to recount in the recommendation letter that I wrote to support her application to Brown.

Jocelyne wrote the bylaws and started the first chapter of our College Cohort Clubs at her St. Petersburg High School. Promoted the club via TikTok, resulting in over 50 students at each eat and learn lunchtime meeting. Her outreach efforts have resulted in amazing outcomes for many first generation students at her high school, one of whom was recently offered admission to Caltech. Jocelyne’s coaching guided her older sister as the first in their family to attend college into Johns Hopkins University.

Jocelyne has served as a literary and artistic contributor to our “Who I Am” series of books developed to provide guidance for students in grades 6 – 12 across such topics as personality types, multiple intelligences, temperament, mindset, grit, and learning styles. She has also served as a discussion group leader in our monthly virtual meetings of students from throughout the country and as an instructor for both middle school and high school students at our summer college planning and study skills boot camps. In all of these roles, Jocelyne has demonstrated patience, has prepared lesson plans, and has created surveys to assess her effectiveness in working with students. All of these actions have been done with a genuine desire to help others and to make a difference in their lives.

As a small CBO, our foundation is unable to devote significant time to training or monitoring our student volunteers. We seek students with whom we can share an idea and plant a seed. We then trust students to nurture the seed and achieve results using their own skills, creativity, and critical thinking. In Jocelyne’s situation, despite balancing our program with the academic demands of the IB Program at her high school, her incredible work ethic has consistently produced results, no matter what the task. She brought together 2 other first generation students from her community to create a podcast, “The Undebatable Relatables” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJei2XUTXEA) to provide college planning guidance; collaborated with students from Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina to create a Black History Month and Lunar New Year Tribute video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd4NPSmBjRI); and she led the collaborative effort to write the script and develop a promotional video for our foundation ((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXWS9LMmTo8&t=4s).

Beyond these already significant accomplishments, Jocelyne led an ACT Study Skills and Learning Strategies project with the goal of assisting more first generation and under-resourced students with developing the skills to become better learners; expand their understanding of encoding, retention, and retrieval; and develop a working understanding of the forgetting curve—all focused on increasing academic performance in school and their performance on the ACT. When we presented this idea to Jocelyne, she took off to identify student contributors for each ACT subject area. She developed a collaboration with academically accomplished students in Florida, Georgia, and Iowa. Her leadership resulted in developing the foundation for the project and a 300-page working document that other students will continue to develop as she moves on in preparation for college. One of the contributors on the project is an alumna of our program who is a current PhD student in math who has agreed to continue collaborating with Jocelyne until the project is published. 

I have treasured the 7 years that I have worked with Jocelyne and gotten to know her family. She comes from a loving and supportive household, through which she has been nurtured into an extraordinary young woman of impeccable character. While she is a passionate debater and full of ideas, she is respectful of both adults and peers; listens attentively; and articulates herself passionately. She is as aspirational in her personal goals as she is inspirational to peers. In so many ways I believe she will add value to your campus community, be an immediate contributor to campus-based organizations, and a joy to have in the classroom.

Lesson Learned…

The lesson to be learned from Jocelyne’s story is for every student to look beyond grades and test scores (although you must commit to pursuing academic excellence) towards committing yourself to an activity in which you can lead and serve in ways that make an impact on the lives of others. Then, as you apply to college or for scholarships, the faculty adviser, coach, supervisor, or organization can support your application through their first-hand testimonials of your impact on their club, team, workplace, or organization.

2 Full Scholarships…

Taylar, a senior at Kennesaw Mountain High School (GA), joined our College Planning Cohort program as a rising 9th grader. She has already been offered two full scholarships: The Dovey Johnson Roundtree Class of 38 Presidential Scholarship to Spelman College, and the Board of Trustees Scholarship to Xavier University of Louisiana. She is waiting to hear from other schools, but her hard work has definitively resulted in a cost-free undergraduate degree as she prepares to apply to medical school.

While establishing herself as a top academic student, Taylar was selected as first chair of her middle school band. Upon entering high school, she committed to long hours of practice and began regularly watching YouTube videos of the greatest flautists’ performances and solos. She wanted not only to learn how to master her instrument but to infuse emotion into each melody. Every day she carved out time to practice to perfect her craft and, by the end of the first semester, she was selected as the first chair flute in the Concert Band. The next semester she moved up to the Symphonic Band, and as a sophomore, she joined the Wind Symphony. In her junior year, she was the flute section leader of the marching band and entered her final year of high school as the Woodwind Captain.

Taylar demonstrated deep and emphatic thinking in her response to Spelman College’s prompt, “The Spelman tagline is ‘A Choice to Change the World.’ If you could create meaningful change around one issue in your school, community, or globally, what would it be and how would you approach making this change?”  Taylar provided a comprehensive response in which she identified underage substance abuse as a problem that plagues schools and communities, then she provided a set of strategies to address the problem.

Taylar is an example of a student who embraced our guidance of “be intentional in building your résumé.” Following this guidance resulted in significant and sustained involvement in such activities as:

• Founding LGND (Legend), a nonprofit focused on fundraising for underfunded school programs and creating volunteer opportunities for teens;
• Serving as a tutor for an annual SAT Boot Camp, requiring lesson plan development, facilitating sessions, and providing feedback to assist students in increasing their SAT performance; and
• Became the President of BOND (Black Organization Nurturing Diversity), where she organized Black History Month events, increased awareness of Black history, and scheduled guest speakers, including HBCU admissions advisers and social justice advocates.

Taylar’s leadership across these and other activities, as well as her engagement in meaningful community service, established her as a top candidate for the two highly competitive scholarships that she was offered. Her academic achievement demonstrated to her prospective colleges that she is academically capable; her leadership and service demonstrate that she will bring value to her college community.

Decisions…

Erin, a senior at the Kennesaw Mountain High School Academy of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (GA), joined our College Planning Cohort Program as a rising 9th grader. In addition to being offered admission to Rice University, she has been offered the Distinguished Presidential Scholarship to Tuskegee University. Erin is planning to attend medical school and finds herself in a quandary. Which school should she choose? What would you do?

Erin is not only smart, she is coachable. Throughout high school, she worked through our online curriculum, demonstrated genuine intellectual curiosity about the college planning strategies that we were proposing, and made a commitment to assuming leadership roles in our foundation as well as contributing many community service hours to supporting our efforts.

Erin was a contributor to our ACT Study Skills and Learning Strategies project and served as an intern researching HBCU early acceptance medical school pathways and dual degree programs. Erin wrote the student’s perspective forHBCU Healthcare Pathways.

Before researching graduate school and medical school pathways through HBCUs, I had little preexisting knowledge of such HBCU pathways, specifically into medical school. When Mr. Wynn asked me to research these pathways. I believed that even if these pathways existed, they would be out of reach for the majority of students and worse, scarce to find. Through my research, I have found myself to be wrong on both accounts. I was astonished to learn how successful HBCUs are in creating such pathways and how accessible they are to students who want to plan pathways into graduate school, medical school, dental school, optometry school, veterinary school, or nursing school. I am confident that such pathways also exist for law school, but that was outside of my research focus. The purpose of these pathways and partnerships is to rid students of socioeconomic barriers that prevent them from pursuing higher education and to provide assurance that if they commit themselves to doing the work to meet the admissions criteria for their desired program then they will be assured of the opportunity to fulfill their dreams.

HBCUs have partnerships with graduate schools within and outside of the United States. Several even have partnerships with Ivy League schools. These partnerships can come in the form of early assurance or dual degree programs. Early assurance for a pre-med student would mean that a student would get to apply to medical school early so that a medical school would be able to offer them an early decision and a guaranteed spot. For some programs, you can choose whether or not to take the MCAT. This is a great opportunity because applying to medical school is very expensive and filled with stress and uncertainty with such low medical school admissions rates. Applicants can spend thousands of dollars in transportation expenses traveling to medical schools for in-person interviews, MCAT study tools and preparation fees, exam fees, and so much more without any guarantee of being accepted into medical school. I learned that many early assurance programs invite students to all-expenses-paid summer programs where they can receive a stipend, attend MCAT preparation classes, and gain research experience. 

Dual degree programs allow students a guaranteed pathway to receiving an undergraduate and graduate, or undergraduate and medical degree. Many such programs are not only guaranteed but take less time and cost less money than would otherwise be required. For me personally, being assured of the institution where I will earn my undergraduate degree and the institution where I will earn my graduate degree or attend medical school prior to graduating from high school allows me to plan both my long-term career goals and short-term academic, leadership, and community service goals.

Many HBCUs are amazing in the sheer number of partnerships they have developed but the reverence with which they are referred to is nonpareil and are frequently featured on the websites of their partner institutions. Take, for instance, Jumoke Dumont’s article “50 Years of Medicine: The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership,” which describes the Brown University-Tougaloo College partnership:

“For 154 years, Tougaloo College, a historically black college (HBC) in Jackson, Mississippi, has played a leading role in the education of Black scientists and health professionals in the South and beyond. 

The private liberal arts college is among the top US schools for the number of graduates with doctoral degrees in STEM fields, and its alums form 40 percent of Mississippi’s African American physicians and dentists.

Brown became an active partner in this tradition in 1976 when it established the Early Identification Program in Medicine for Tougaloo (EIP). An expansion of the historic Brown University-Tougaloo Partnership (BTP), the EIP identifies Tougaloo undergrads for early acceptance to Brown’s MD program. 

The EIP in Medicine for Tougaloo is one of the BTP’s longest-standing active programs. It has produced two generations of physicians — MDs who are leaders in their fields and the communities they serve.”

During my research, I discovered that one HBCU had partnerships with 16 graduate schools (Xavier University of Louisiana). That means there were 16 different pathways available to students for early assurance and dual degree programs. Through my research for this project, I dispelled any preexisting notions about the quality of education or scope of opportunities offered at HBCUs and learned how committed HBCUs are to not only the success of their students, but in creating leaders like Vice President, and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who has already had a global impact. These schools work hard to ensure that after their students receive their undergraduate degree, they have the best opportunities for continuing their education into graduate school, medical school, law school, or beyond. 

As a result of my research, I now understand how and why HBCUs have such a rich and long history of producing Black professionals in virtually every career field from education to medicine and from the arts to STEM. The amount of support and tools HBCUs provide to help students pursue their educational and career aspirations is such an important feature of HBCUs. Based on indisputable outcome data, their strategies are arguably more effective for African American success than those of other highly selective schools.

Erin N.
Kennesaw Mountain High School Class of 2025
Academy of Mathematics, Science, and Technology