Intellectually Entertaining. Socially Relevant.
“No entendemos inglés. Tienes que hablar español.” This was the first thing my 7th-grade math class made sure I knew as I introduced myself for the very first time. I took over midyear for a teacher who’d just retired. I’d taken the previous 18 months off to go back to school full-time. So not only Read More
You just didn’t come home with anything less than a 90 on your report card: that was the rule at my house, and needless to say, it worked. At some point after middle school, my parents didn’t really need to remind me about the “you-better-get-all-A’s-or-else” rule, because it became mine. I could talk about my Read More
When they say the wealth gap is widening and that race and class are interchangeable terms in America, they’re not exaggerating. The good folks at Face the Facts USA have published an infographic highlighting the effects the Great Recession has had on wealth disparity in the United States. It shows that the median net worth Read More
I’ve been talking lately about how to improve a college application through academic preparation as well as volunteering. This week we’re talking about a more mysterious quality admissions committees look for: leadership. What exactly counts as leadership? There are some obvious examples, such as serving as an officer of a school club. An officer is Read More
Latinos are getting their learn on. From the Pew Hispanic Center: “For the first time, the number of 18- to 24-year-old Hispanics enrolled in college exceeded 2 million and reached a record 16.5% share of all college enrollments. Hispanics are the largest minority group on the nation’s college campuses, a milestone first achieved last year Read More
Last week we talked about being academically prepared for college, how taking a rigorous course load not only sets you up to do well in college, but also increases the attractiveness of your college application. This week we’re covering volunteering experience, and how it can make a college application stand out. While some high Read More
As we’ve recently pointed out, Latinos are making enormous headway in educational attainment, but we still lag behind non-Hispanic whites. While there are certainly institutional barriers to reaching a higher education, we’ve shared before that there are also steps high schoolers can take to better their college application, and be prepared for the demands of Read More
The news broke her heart. Even though my cousin was well on her way to becoming the first person in our family to go to college, my aunt was dismayed that her youngest, my male cousin, had decided not to follow in his sister’s footsteps, but enter the workforce instead. He was lured, my aunt Read More
Here’s some welcome news from our friends at Fox News Latino concerning Latino educational attainment: “A new study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley revealed that the number of Latinos holding a doctorate degree rose 161 percent from 1990 to 2010, outpacing the non-Hispanic rate by almost double as that finished at 90 percent.” Read More
There are many things in life that occur with near universal certainty. One of those is our propensity to experience irrational fear. When irrational fears dominate public and political discourse, lasting painful legacies are often left in their wake. We have been down this road before with the state of Arizona, most notably with their Read More