Columbia, Brown, Howard, Barnard, Bridgewater State and UMass Amherst are just a few schools that the African-American and Latino Scholars Program (AALSP) has organized college visits to in the last few years.
For many years now, AALSP has been organizing visits to college campuses across the East Coast, such as Friday, Oct. 17, when the program visited Brown University, or last year when they visited Howard University in Washington D.C. On these tours, students get the chance to fully immerse themselves in the campus and understand what they want from college.
For senior Maliah Thompson, who has been on many college visits with the program, these visits serve as an opportunity to not only tour a campus but also visit places of cultural significance. For example, while visiting Howard last year, students had the opportunity to visit the African American History Museum in Washington.
“It’s a unique experience,” Thompson said. “It’s kind of like a cultural visit within a college visit.”
AALSP Director Stephanie Hunt said that the goal of the visits is to help students understand what they want out of a school. According to Hunt, students frequently have the wrong perspective about college.
“Oftentimes we think about college as, ‘I hope a school picks me, I hope I’m the right fit,’” Hunt said. “What I want our students to realize is that the school also has to be the right fit for them.”
Hunt said the most important part of tours is to help students get a feel for the campus. Senior Cole Ortiz said that students get the opportunity to see the campus as a whole, including both the positives and the downsides.
“You learn more about the type of university you want to go to,” Ortiz said. “Whether that be in a big city or in a more rural area. You get a feel for the type of people you want to be surrounded by.”
On many of these visits, students have the opportunity to talk to alumni of the AALSP program who currently attend the university. According to Thompson, this offers a unique perspective on what being a person of color is like at these universities, and helps students paint the picture of what going to that school might look like. Ortiz said talking with alumni who attend these amazing institutions also helps motivate him to achieve his own goals.
“Seeing all these people in great places, getting scholarships, things like that, really just pushes me to finish strong, to make sure that I always put the next foot forward and continue to try,” Ortiz said.
For Hunt, a successful college visit is when a student comes out of the experience with a more defined understanding of what they value in a university. Even if they decide that they don’t like a certain place, that still helps them understand what they do want in a school.
“A successful trip is students just being on campus, being curious, being open and doing some reflecting,” Hunt said. “‘Could I see myself here?’ And if they leave and they’re like, ‘oh, that school is not for me,’ that’s still a success, because they know more about what they want.”
