nygearup.syr.eduJuly 7- 13, 2010

Your summer college guide to college readiness

�/ NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, �010

The New York State Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) is the

state agency that has been designated by the Governor’s office to administer the NY GEARUP Program. Funding for

NY GEARUP is provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

NY GEARUP at Syracuse University receives $567,000 in funding that is matched 100 percent by in-kind ser-

vices for a total funding of $1,340,000.HESC helps people pay for college

by providing a comprehensive range of financial aid services, including the

Tuition Assistance Program, guarantee-ing student loans, and administering the nationally recognized New York’s Col-

lege Savings Plan.New York State is a leader in the na-

tional financial aid community, providing more grant money to college students

than any other state.

STAFFMarissa Joy Mims

Director

Nikolas Allen Office Coordinator

Marilyn J. Grab Budget Manager

Tammy Toellner Program Coordinator for Fowler

and Corcoran High Schools

Lynn Dew Program Coordinator for Nottingham High School

Kelina ImamuraMedia Editor

Carolyn ClarkWriting Program Coordinator

Mariel FiedlerWriting Program Coordinator,

Radio show Coordinator

Caitlin DonnellyEagle Newspapers

Editor

What is NY GEARUP?NY GEARUP is based out of Syracuse University’s School of Education. NY GEARUP works in the Syracuse City School District with the class of 2011 at Corcoran, Fowler, Henninger, ITC and Nottingham high schools.

GEARUP stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. It’s a national initiative to create innovative programs with the goal of increasing college awareness for students and their families. GEARUP also helps students develop the skills necessary to pursue education after high school.

To achieve its mission, NY GEARUP organizes college visits, tutoring and mentoring, college awareness and exploration activites, and educational planning and workshops.

Table of contentsMessage from the

Director......................... 2Calendar............................. 3Summer College................ 4Comparison worksheet..... 5Q&A with David Morgan... 6The Writing Program........... 7College of the week.......... 8

Interested in Writing?For those students in the NY GEA-

RUP program that are graduating in 2011 and are interested in writing for Eagle Newspaper’s NY GEARUP edi-tion, please contact Caitlin Donnelly at cdonnelly@cnylink.com.

Message from the

DirectorEven though summer has rolled

around, and classes have ended, NY GEARUP still has lots going on. Sponsored by HESC and Syracuse University’s School of Education, NY GEARUP never relents in its goals for education. We see summer as a chance to explore different opportu-nities, like our radio show or our new writing program.

This summer NY GEARUP is proud to announce its new partnership with Eagle Newspapers. Through this partnership, NY GEARUP will have more access to students in its cohort. Newspapers will be mailed to stu-dents’ homes each week and included in the City Eagle. This publication represents the first issue in this new partnership. You can look forward to some great pieces written by students in our cohort and great ideas to get on top of the college application process, like David Morgan’s idea about shar-ing college brochures (on page 6 of this issue).

Or you can take a look at the calen-dars on page 3. This will give you an idea of things to do now, like visiting

school, asking teachers and others for recommendation letters, and starting college essays. There are so many things to do to prepare for even applying to schools, but we’ll make it a little easier for figuring what to do and when. NY GEARUP and Eagle Newspapers are looking forward to guiding the Class of 2011 toward college while providing them with information about program activities and student perspectives!

NY GEARUP’s new writing pro-gram will be running from July 7, to the middle of August. The students will be exploring Syracuse while learning how to write stories, both personal narratives and journalistic articles. You can read about the co-co-ordinators for the program, Carolyn Clark and Mariel Fiedler, on page 7. They’re both busy at work getting everything ready for the students to begin!

Also be sure to check out our radio show every Saturday! Mariel leads a group of students from our cohort every week as they discuss issues like diversity and community resources.

You’ll also hear more about our col-lege of the week and find out what’s going on in the community. While the show is currently pre-recorded and aired Saturdays 7-9 pm, we’re looking forward to the show going live! That way the students get to hear from you and answer any questions you might have!

Enjoy this maiden issue and be sure to check back every week to see what the students are doing or find out how to stay on track for higher education. And have a great summer!

- MARiSSA JOY MiMSDiRECTOR

NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010 /�

Campus visit checklist

The College Board developed this list of things to do while on college visits. This list will help you get a sense of what the school — and the life of its students — is really like. Since summer offers an opportunity to visit colleges without missing school, most schools offer tours and information sessions.

3 Participate in a group information session at the admissions office.

3 Take an official campus tour.3 Collect business cards and names of people you meet for future contacts.3 Pick up financial aid forms.3 Sit in on a class of a subject that interests you.3 Talk to a professor in your chosen major or in a subject that interests you.3 Talk to coaches of sports in which you might participate.3 Talk to a student or counselor in the career center.3 Scan bulletin boards to see what day-to-day student life is like.3 Wander around the campus by yourself.3 Eat in the dining hall.3 Spend the night in a dorm.3 Read the student newspaper.3 Try to find other student publications. Many campusses offer more than just the daily or weekly student newpspaer.3 Ask students why they chose the college.3 Ask students what they love and hate about the college.3 Ask students what they do on weekends.3 Browse in the college bookstore.3 Walk or drive around the community surrounding the campus.3 Listen to the college’s radio station.3 Imagine yourself attending this college for four years.

JULY AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

PAR

EN

TS

CALENDAR

• Take advantage of summer break and visit colleges on your child’s list. Call ahead for the campus tour schedule. Arrange to meet with a financial aid representative. Your child should (if necessary) schedule an on-campus interview with the admissions office.• Your child should finalize his/her list of colleges. Be sure your child’s list includes “safety” schools, as well as good “match” and “reach” schools. Request college applications and informational packets. Organize materials into separate files by college.• Keep a college calendar of all admissions deadlines.• If your child took AP Exams in May, scores will be avalibale in July.• Make sure to register your child early for fall SAT tests.

• Enroll in an SAT prep course.• Talk to your guidance counselor about colleges you might like to attend. He or she may have information available to help you develop a plan to get there.• Investigate financial aid opportunities: scholarships, grants, and loans.• SAT registration deadline for the October 9 test is September 10. Register early.• Collect all the information you can from those colleges you are interested in. Attend college open houses if possible to visit colleges in your area.

• Begin to rank the colleges you think you’d like to attend.• Start to put together your resume. • Organize the information that is likely to be requested on college applications.• Learn about the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).• Choose courses for your senior year that are challenging and that showcase your academic abilities. • Enroll in AP courses in your best subjects if they are available.• Continue to do your best in your classes.

• Combine vacation plans with campus visits. • Start working on your college application essays.• Decide who you’ll ask to write letters of recommendation. • Research schools at the library and on the internet.• Check out the college application process. • Talk with your friends who already spent a year or two at college.

• Request college applications from the admissions office. Or, use College Answer’s Online Application Search to see if your school’s form is online.• Arrange campus visits.• Register to take the SAT/ACT, if necessary. • Continue to search for free money (scholarships and grants) and others ways to pay for school.• Run Sallie Mae’s Free Scholarship Search. • Stay organized: File copies of applications and correspondence. Keep your calendar up-to-date tracking important dates and deadlines.

Parents play an instrumental role in helping your student get into college. Here are some helpful tips:

Calendar content has been compiled by the editor from various sources.

�/ NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010

Summer CollegeNY GEARUP sends students to SU’s summer program

By Caitlin Donnelly

Summer is finally here, and for many students that means relaxing with friends and sleeping in until noon. But for a group of students from the NY GEARUP cohort, it means continuing to hit the books for a few more weeks.

This summer, NY GEARUP has awarded 47 rising seniors from the Syracuse City School District with full scholarships to attend Syracuse University’s Summer College for High School Students.

The program runs July 6 through August 13 and offers programs rang-ing from two, three and six weeks for high school students looking to earn college credit before they actually graduate. Approximately 240 students from seven different countries and 24 states are enrolled in the program this summer.

Students chose a “major” and list the top three courses they would like to take. Then, depend-ing on space in the classroom, they are assigned the two classes for the term. While many of the courses are specifically for the Summer College high school students, some larger courses, such as the sci-ences, will be taken with college students earning credits over the summer.

“I’m taking biology and cultural differences, said Ornella Rutagara-ma from Nottingham High School. “I wanted to take biology because I like science, and I want to take the cultural class because I come from a different culture than most people, and I want to learn more about others.” Rutagarama is from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, and moved to the U.S. in 2000.

Students will also eat 19 meals each week in the new Ernie Davis Dining Center and stay in Booth Residence Hall as part of the full college experience. The floors will be divided by gender, and each will have a designated Resident Advisor,

or RA. For many, it is the first time being away from home and the watchful eyes of their parents.

Moses Clark is the father of a Summer College student, and is comfortable with his son staying in the dorm while studying engineer-ing this summer at SU.

“This is a chance for him to get the college experience before he actually goes, so he’s better pre-pared,” Clark said.

While the students will experi-ence a new freedom from their parents, curfews to be inside the dorms by 11 p.m. and no partying with drugs and alcohol will still be strictly enforced by the RA on duty.

“People say they are high school students, not adults. But within the context of the program, they are essentially college students, so they need to be responsible and take pre-cautions,” said Kelina Imamura,

NY GEARUP media editor, during the June 8 NY GEARUP Summer College Orientation.

Also during the orientation, Chris Cofer, director of Summer College, addressed concerns about roommates, safety, classes, and what goes on during the weekends. Overall, the students appeared anx-ious to get the program started, and for very different reasons.

“It will look good on my ap-plication for college,” said Tierra Williams from Nottingham High School. Williams is enrolled in the law program this summer.

“I want to be an aerospace en-gineer,” said Denzel Gregg from Nottingham High School. “I think I want to go to SU.”

And Rutagarama said: “My drive is when I look at people in my coun-try, and education isn’t really there. I want to take advantage of it before it’s too late.”

CAITLIN DONNELLY

Students walk along the path up to the Hall of Languages at SU.

CAITLIN DONNELLY

Students take advantage of the nice weather and study on the Quad

NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010 /�

College comparison worksheet

To aid your college plannning, College Board provides this comparison worksheet in its 2010 College Handbook. The handbook profiles more than 3,800 schools. Find the one that fits your personality and your budget can be a challenge, but this chart can help. Use online resources and collected infor-mation to fill in information about the colleges of your choice.

NAME OF COLLEGE

LOCATION

TYPE OF INSTITUTION

UNDERGRADUATE ENROLLMENT

PERCENTAGE OF ADMITTED APPLICANTS

APPLICATION FEE

REQUIRED GPA

MID- 50% SAT SCORE RANGE

+ CRITICAL READING SCORE

+ MATH SCORE

+ WRITING SCORE

ROOM AND BOARD

TUITION AND FEES

ARE SUBJECT TESTS REQUIRED? WHICH?

ARE THERE COLLEGE-SPONSORED

SCHOLARSHIPS?

ADDITIONAL COSTS

ACT SCORE

COLLEGE 1 COLLEGE 3COLLEGE 2

>

�/ NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010

What is Partnership for Better Education?

Partnership is both an indi-vidual campus-based effort on SU’s part and a collaborative effort with a number of institutions in the re-gion: Lemoyne College, SUNY ESF, OCC, Oswego, and Upstate Medical, to build a stronger college-going cohort in the school district. All six of those institutions are currently engaged in a variety of projects and programs in the district to both get students better prepared to go to college and to continue to get them to think about it as a realistic future.

When do you think students should start thinking about college?

As soon as they’re born. I think that the sooner we expose students to the college and university en-vironment, the more they’ll feel comfortable with it and see it as a natural part of what their lives should be. So I don’t think there’s any age that’s too early to start bringing them to campus and to just see what’s going on. Kids are very observant—they’re little tape recorders! They record everything they see, and if they come here, whether it’s to a football game or a musical or a festival or whatever it is, having a positive experience at a college or university has the ability to pay dividends in the future.

What are some suggestions that you have for our cohort to do this summer?

None of them should be resting too much this summer. Read; read; read! Write; write; write! I strongly urge them to read. They should be reading at least a new book every other week. They can find on the College Board website a list of 100 books that they recommend stu-dents read. Many of those, if they haven’t read them in high school, will certainly be on their reading lists in college.

And write! They should write every single day. They should write for at least 20 minutes every day. They should have a journal. They can write about things that are very personal to them. They can write about current events.

They can get a jump on their college essays. Almost every col-lege and university asks about a significant person or event in their life. They can begin to work on that. They can do just autobiographical things that will help them during the college application process.

But they really, really need to write every day because part of writing is just feeling comfortable with your own voice. And that only comes from constant repetition. And I think another thing that students, particularly at the high school level, don’t understand is that writing isn’t a one-time item

– it’s a process. So it’s write, review, edit, and rewrite. Most students don’t think of it as a process that way, and until they do, they’ll never be able to reach their potential. Iknow that students are very liter-ate with technology, so I know that they write on Facebook and they write on all the different kinds of portals available to them. But it’s not the same as writing the paper. It becomes very different when you have to put pen to paper.

You have a project with shoeboxes? Can you explain that?

Virtually all students will be re-ceiving information from colleges. If we had a scholarship fund that was based on the materials that students threw away that colleges sent them, we’d be able to send al-most every student to college with a significant scholarship.

What I encourage students to do is sort them. Sort them into those that immediately strike you or ones that you like. But you have to read through them or at least glance through them. Keep a shoebox with the ones that appeal to you, and keep another shoebox with the other ones. This gives them the opportunity to share the ones that they don’t want with their friends because there’s that saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s trea-sure.”

For a whole variety of reasons,

one college will have one student’s name because they buy names from College Board based on a whole bunch of parameters. And I might be in one and you might be in an-other even though we took the test at the same time, we go to the same high school and we score relatively the same. So rather than throwing those away, they can share them with each other and have a way to expand what they’re actually able to expand what they’re able to see about colleges and universities. And they might be able to find their jam in some one else’s discards.

Or you can keep them and bring them to your school in a box so that the college counselor, or the post-secondary counselor, or the library has a library of those things that other students can use. And that’s really part of the thing: Students need to see this as a process, not an event. They’ve already put in a lot of work for a lot of the process, but the most significant part of the pro-cess is coming up. And they should be thinking about it.

I encourage students to get in touch with the people they want to write recommendation letters for them this fall. Because guess what’s going to happen this fall: The people they’re asking to recom-mend them are going to be flooded with all these other people. Well, if you have a good idea of who that is now, why not give them some advance notice?

David MorganQ&A

with

Director, Partnership for a Better Education

NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010 /7

There’s nothing lazy about the

days of summer around here!

Meet the cocoordinators for the Summer Writing Program. Both have their own styles and know that they’ll have a lot of fun this summer exploring Syracuse with students.

NY GEARUP’s Summer Writing Program is based loosely on the Freedom Writers Foundation’s idea. Carolyn and Mariel, the program coordina-tors, aim to give the students a chance to express themselves by helping to develop their writing skills.

And students don’t have to worry about choosing between this program, which promises to be filled with fun adventures, and getting a paid summer job. The students will be hired and paid through CNY Works.

For 25 hours a week, the stu-dents will earn money as they explore the history of Syracuse, experience and reflect on art, and learn about science. They will then get to see muchof their work in print in NY GEARUP’s pages in Eagle Newspapers. The students will also get a chance to learn about college admissions and work on essays that they’ll be able to submit during the ap-plication processes this fall.

The program will run July 7 to mid- August.

GEARUPfor the

Summer

One of Mariel Fiedler’s fa-vorite days is Sunday because that’s the day WRVO has its best programming. A lover of public radio, she graduated in May from SU as a Broadcast Journalism and English major with hopes of producing and editing audio documentary work. But, as some-one who loves people, this wasn’t an endeavor she wanted to enter into alone. When NY GEAR UP needed a radio coordinator for

its Step It Up! program, Mariel jumped on the opportunity. Mariel works with students to develop their voices and stances on issues, and gives them tips when it comes to recording in the studio. Mariel will also be co-running the writing program with Carolyn Clark.

She hopes to usurp the whole ordeal and have students write to the air, producing All Things Considered type work that will make Terry Gross personally come to Syracuse to offer every student a job on her program.

Mariel knows this won’t hap-pen, and accepts the challenge of teaching non-fiction, journalis-tic writing with open arms. She hopes to explore the Syracuse community like she hasn’t be-fore and to meet people who are making positive change. Mariel also loves art (more specifically illustration, prints and indepen-dent comics), cooking food, go-ing to see live music and playing Galaga at the Westcott Laundro-mat for 50 cents a game.

Carolyn Clark wishes she watched more movies. Once her budget allows, she’ll build her movie repertoire with DVD purchases and regular trips to the theater, but she’s accepted that this dream might take a few years.

Besides movies, Carolyn loves reading and writing. A senior at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, she aspires to write and edit for magazines such as Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.

Carolyn loves to hear other people’s story-- mainly because she finds other people far more interesting than she could ever wish to be. She doesn’t mind, though, and hopes to one day write profiles about interesting people.

This summer she’s coaxing high school seniors into telling their stories as she co-heads NY GEARUP’s Summer Writing Program with Mariel Fiedler. Carolyn’s excited to hear these students’ stories and experi-ences. She’ll have her grammar,

which she has a particular spot in her heart for, and some amaz-ing articles to inspire and moti-vate the students. She’s pretty sure that David Remnick of “The New Yorker” will be in touch for these students’ work. She has heard whispers that Mariel plans to take over the program and turn it into a radio project, and Carolyn has one thing to say to this faux-foe: Bring it.

Mariel FiedlerMeet

Carolyn ClarkMeet

�/ NY GEARUP, JUlY 7, 2010

Stony Brook University is a SUNY school on Long Island that was found-ed in 1957. It was ranked in the top 50 public universities by U.S. News and World Report, and has many of its undergraduates going to elite gradu-ate programs.

The school accepts about 40 percent of its applicants and has an incredible faculty with 98 percent holding doctoral degrees.

Stony Brook is best known for its sciences. Most notably, it is home to the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Six Nobel Prizes have been awarded for discoveries made at the lab, and it houses the world’s newest and big-gest particle accelerator for nuclear physics. Many of its undergrads in the sciences do research in the lab, and the school is known for its tra-dition of combining research and undergraduate education.

Some of the most popular majors do reside in the sciences, but oth-ers include business management, economics and English. There are 65 majors and 77 minors in total. The school is medium-sized with about 11,000 undergrads.

Just 60 miles east of New York City, the school also has a center in Manhattan. Students can take cours-es for credit there. Many of these classes conduct site visits. The center holds a lecture series for interested students as well.

Visit Stonybrook.edu for more information CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Be HeardThe Step It Up! staff has settled into a spectacular week-

end routine with its two-hour talk-based show about teen issues, college readiness and NY GEARUP. It’s entertaining and informative for anyone from students to parents and community members.

We’re always looking for people to interview and high school seniors to try their hand in the radio business. If interested, contact Mariel Fiedler at mfiedler@syr.edu

NY GEARUP @ Syracuse UniversityNYGEARUP

315.443.7848 NYGEARUP@syr.edu

CONTACT US

College of the weekStony Brook University

View of the Stony Brook campus