By Kayla Cockrel Staff Writer
While many Cass Tech seniors are getting just beginning to get their after-high school plansin order, senior Adrian Thomas has been planning her higher education since middle school. For her, college is not just an educational achievement it’s a final step in a long journey.
For those students who plan to go to college, applications for acceptance, scholarships and the FAFSA are a seemingly endless list of forms that dominate the latter of senior year. A few select students, have been using their senior year to prepare for admittance into some of the top colleges and universities in the U.S. but getting there has taken a lot longer for Thomas whose aimed her arrow right at the top.
“My top two choices [for college] are Yale and Harvard,” Thomas said. “But I’ve always wanted to go to Yale.”
“In middle school I was looking at colleges like everybody else and I loved what Yale stood for,” Thomas said. “It was like instinct, after learning more and more about Yale, I just knew that it was the school for me.”
Thomas admits that it was emotionally and physically stressful preparing her resume for future applications, having built up an expansive list of courses and extracurricular activities that made her stand out from most minority students.
“Before this whole process started, I did a lot,” Thomas said. “From playing tons of sports like rowing, sailing, to joining ecosystem clubs, tutoring and helping others.”
As a person of color, Thomas is also aware of the struggles she may have to face in a competitive environment at an elite school, but she is prepared.
“In a lot of the sports I've played I was the only person of color” Thomas said. “So I definitely know how to handle the awkwardness.”
Detroit social worker Eric Johnson often finds himself dealing with these adjustment problems among teens and new college students. He points out that adjusting to any new academic institution can be very challenging, especially if there is a lot of pressure to do well and a student hasn't experienced that before.
“It’s always difficult to accept a new environment but when education comes in its a little different,” Johnson said. “You can’t be afraid to accept that you're having a hard time with something, whether its grades, your social life, or homesickness. If you have problems seek out solutions.”
Many of the students attending college next fall will begin at predominantly white universities, a big change from Cass Tech’s majority-minority environment. Colleges and universities often have many different organizations for people to congregate, not just with people of color but with people of their color. Black, Latino and Muslim students unions and others are often founded by students to help incoming freshmen feel more at ease with the transition from high school to college.
Counselor Enid Johnson informs students that highly competitive universities usually attract students in the top percentage of their high school, with these institutions typically admitting the best of the best.
“Coming into a university, students have to accept that they are learning in a much more difficult and competitive environment,” Johnson said. “They can't be too proud to acknowledge that they need help, even if they've never had to before.”
A competitive academic environment has not steered Cass Tech student and former Quest Bridge scholar Hamidul Islam off of his course for academic success.
“Just studying at such a popular university will be hard, but its worth it.” Islam said, “It will boost my morale and just give me something I can be proud of.”
For Cass Tech students like Adrian Thomas and Hamidul Islam, attending any Ivy Leaguer is more than a chance to further their academic goals, it’s a dream.
“Going to a school like Harvard or Stanford is a really big deal for me,” Islam said “It’s a chance to do something that no one in my family has done before, to make them proud.”
