Know anyone applying to college during COVID-19? This program gets good results in Fresno
Chie Moua has been working into the evening as a counselor at Fresno High School, reaching out to seniors via Zoom to make sure they are on track for college.
Applying to college this year is even more challenging due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has kept school counselors from holding in-person workshops and meetings, where they can help fill out applications.
And although some studies have suggested that undergraduate college enrollment has decreased across the U.S. due to the pandemic, some public universities such as Fresno State are seeing record enrollment.
Moua said she hadn’t seen such a decline at Fresno High, and in fact, she’s busier than ever.
“I found myself working later and more hours than normal,” Moua said, “but because that’s also when my students are available in order to help them meet these deadlines.”
Moua, like all counselors at Fresno Unified, uses the data system at CaliforniaColleges.edu to oversee her students’ applications.
The website is a one-stop-shop for career planning and applying for colleges and financial aid, meant for students in sixth through 12th grades. About 25 school districts in Fresno, Madera, Kings, and Tulare counties use the website, which is highly useful for counselors who can track student progress, such as incomplete applications.
College applications launched through the site are automatically populated with class transcript information, which cuts down on time students, and counselors spend tediously inputting the data.
Although the tools have been available for all Fresno Unified students and counselors since 2017, it has especially come in handy this year, according to Tessa Carmen De Roy, president of the California College Guidance Initiative, the nonprofit that runs the website.
“It’s always been a complicated process and particularly difficult for students who don’t have support in their family from someone who has navigated the process themselves,” Carmen De Roy said. “(But) this year, it’s much more complicated because they’re not on campus in many instances.”
Counselors such as Moua find the data and tracking features helpful. Moua believes that intervening at the right time could help students who are on the fence about furthering their education.
“Even before COVID, they were struggling with finding intrinsic motivation to look towards college or after high school,” she said, “so I think that if we can make it a little bit easier for them, they’re going to be more willing to try to complete that application or plan for the future.”
In the past, it would be easy to give students a pep talk by pulling them into her office and talking about their goals, she said.
“Now they can hide from us. They can ghost me online, and it’d be really hard to find them.”
In the 2019-2020 school year, over 2,100 Fresno Unified seniors launched almost 6,800 CSU applications through the site, and 3,861 sent community college applications, according to site data.
Students can also apply for the University of California and a small number of private colleges on the website.
The 2021 CSU application period began Oct. 1, and in less than a month, 972 students have launched 2,198 applications. Just over 1,300 have applied to a California Community College.
Why don’t more California school use this tool?
Statewide, only about 96 districts, or 20% of the state’s middle and high schoolers, use CaliforniaColleges.edu to learn and apply for college. But Carmen De Roy believes all students could benefit from the data and tools it provides.
So what’s stopping more districts from using the tools?
Currently, school districts must purchase access to use the website, Carmen De Roy said.
At Fresno Unified, access is subsidized by Fresno State. That’s also true for other school districts in the central San Joaquin Valley, who don’t pay for the use out of their own pocket.
But a push from Gov. Gavin Newsom could cement its implementation statewide, making it free for all districts, Carmen De Roy said.
The Cradle-to-Career Data System Act was passed by the State Legislature in 2019. It’s intended to ensure there is a data infrastructure in place to understand how students are career planning and applying for higher education.
The state has preliminary plans to use the CCGI tools for this purpose, according to Carmen De Roy.
“I find educators primarily making use of the actionable data for students,” she said, “and then everyone from researchers and policymakers, and advocates and others to have access to the analytical data.”
There’s a lot of useful data to be consumed, but at least for now, it’s hard to gauge just how the tools might be helping students get admitted into college.
For example, although Carmen De Roy is aware some students do not get into college because of incorrect transcript information, it’s difficult to measure.
“What’s hard about that,” she said, “is that unless a student knows why they were declined, they don’t know that the problem was their coursework.”
What she does know, is “that we are improving the quality of the data that’s being used for admissions,” she said.
Fresno-area student motivated to go to college
Selma High School senior Amiannah Martinez is hard at work on her college applications. She just finished applying to several California State University schools, and next up on her list is the University of California.
The 17-year-old hopes to study biology or education at either UC San Diego or UC Berkeley and she is using the CaliforniaColleges.edu website as a launching point for all her applications.
Despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, which has forced the class of 2020 and 2021 to live out at least a portion of their last year over a computer screen, she says she is staying positive.
“I feel motivated to go to college because I want to know what’s out there. I want to experience the college life outside of what I’ve known my whole life,” she says. “There’s a lot more to the world than just little Selma.”
She will be the first in her family, save for a cousin, to attend college. Martinez is getting help from school counselors on how to apply and support from her parents.
“Neither my parents went to college, so they don’t really know how things work,” she says, “but they support me in whatever I want to do, and they’ll do anything to help me get to where I want to go.”
After going through the process herself, Martinez said applying for college shouldn’t be something students dread.
“When you grow up (you) think that applying to colleges is gonna be like your worst fear, it’s gonna be the hardest, most difficult thing you have to do. But if you do it bit by bit and not procrastinate til the last minute, it’s not as scary.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Read more from The Bee’s Education Lab on our website.