In Search of Standouts Who May Not Stand Out Enough
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Published: May 24, 2006
(Page 2 of 2)
Mr. London is the son of Guyanese immigrants who moved to the United States before he was born. His father runs a property management business; his mother died not long ago. Mr. London is an intense, thoughtful young man — lately he has been reading Philip Roth's "Plot Against America" on the J train to and from Bard High School Early College. Years ago, he decided to focus on homework and not potential distractions in his neighborhood.
"It was always a choice I had to make," he said. "The high school I went to was very demanding, and I decided that I had to do well to get where I wanted to go."
Steffi Romano, 18, is a first-year Posse student at Lafayette, whose pretty campus is perched on a hill overlooking Easton, Pa. Before going through the selection process, she had never heard of the college.
Last year, Ms. Romano was valedictorian at Health Careers and Sciences High School in Upper Manhattan and was thinking about applying to Columbia and New York University. But her SAT scores were low for those schools, and lower than the average score of an entering Lafayette student, which was 1279 out of a possible 1600, according to the institution. Regardless, in her first semester at Lafayette, she made the dean's list.
Ms. Romano, who moved to Harlem with her parents from the Dominican Republic when she was 3, said that before entering Lafayette, she was nervous about attending an overwhelmingly white college. Of Lafayette's roughly 2,300 students, more than 1,900 are white, and Posse students make up more than 10 percent of the non-foreign minority population. Ms. Romano described her high school as "98 percent Hispanic."
"I knew it was going to be predominantly white," she said about Lafayette, "but you don't really get a feel for that until you're there."
Campus culture was a shock, but not just because of demographics or academic challenges. One of the biggest problems, Ms. Romano said, was the social scene, with its emphasis on drinking, a phenomenon that was new to her.
In their first and second years at the college, Posse students regularly meet as a group and individually with a faculty mentor. The idea is to talk about whatever challenges the students might face, said Ed Gamber, an economics professor at Lafayette who is mentor to Ms. Romano's group.
Ms. Romano's group, the fourth to attend Lafayette, recently invited other professors to one of their meetings, with the idea of dispelling misconceptions about the program. Several Posse participants expressed frustration that on campus, the program is regarded as an all-minority program even though some Posse students are white. "Some of us got into Columbia University," Ms. Romano said at the meeting. Negative attitudes toward the Posse scholars were much stronger for Posse 1, the first New York City students to arrive on campus four years ago.
"People didn't know what Posse was," recalled Rasheim Donaldson, 21, a senior at Lafayette. "Some students of color actually opposed Posse," he continued, because they thought that full scholarships ought to go to students who went through the institution's conventional admissions process.
"We were under a microscope," said Mr. Donaldson, who grew up in Washington Heights and graduated from Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem.
Mr. Donaldson recalled that in those early days, the members of his group were extremely close, creating what he described as a haven for each other. He recalled a debate over affirmative action in a class in which he was the only black student, during his freshman year.
"I was very fervent in my position," he said; he argued that policies to address racial inequality were necessary. He added that he had honed his arguments during Posse training sessions.
Now Mr. Donaldson, who is tall, articulate and constantly in motion, heads the black student organization, is a resident adviser in a dormitory and coordinates a program that works with children in Easton.
Mr. Donaldson and his classmates are thinking about what they will do after graduation in a few weeks. One plans a bicycle ride across the country to meet a variety of nonprofit groups; another will start work at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Donaldson is considering law school, although he would have to attend without his posse.Mr. London is the son of Guyanese immigrants who moved to the United States before he was born. His father runs a property management business; his mother died not long ago. Mr. London is an intense, thoughtful young man — lately he has been reading Philip Roth's "Plot Against America" on the J train to and from Bard High School Early College. Years ago, he decided to focus on homework and not potential distractions in his neighborhood.
"It was always a choice I had to make," he said. "The high school I went to was very demanding, and I decided that I had to do well to get where I wanted to go."
Steffi Romano, 18, is a first-year Posse student at Lafayette, whose pretty campus is perched on a hill overlooking Easton, Pa. Before going through the selection process, she had never heard of the college.
Last year, Ms. Romano was valedictorian at Health Careers and Sciences High School in Upper Manhattan and was thinking about applying to Columbia and New York University. But her SAT scores were low for those schools, and lower than the average score of an entering Lafayette student, which was 1279 out of a possible 1600, according to the institution. Regardless, in her first semester at Lafayette, she made the dean's list.
Ms. Romano, who moved to Harlem with her parents from the Dominican Republic when she was 3, said that before entering Lafayette, she was nervous about attending an overwhelmingly white college. Of Lafayette's roughly 2,300 students, more than 1,900 are white, and Posse students make up more than 10 percent of the non-foreign minority population. Ms. Romano described her high school as "98 percent Hispanic."
"I knew it was going to be predominantly white," she said about Lafayette, "but you don't really get a feel for that until you're there."
Campus culture was a shock, but not just because of demographics or academic challenges. One of the biggest problems, Ms. Romano said, was the social scene, with its emphasis on drinking, a phenomenon that was new to her.
In their first and second years at the college, Posse students regularly meet as a group and individually with a faculty mentor. The idea is to talk about whatever challenges the students might face, said Ed Gamber, an economics professor at Lafayette who is mentor to Ms. Romano's group.
Ms. Romano's group, the fourth to attend Lafayette, recently invited other professors to one of their meetings, with the idea of dispelling misconceptions about the program. Several Posse participants expressed frustration that on campus, the program is regarded as an all-minority program even though some Posse students are white. "Some of us got into Columbia University," Ms. Romano said at the meeting. Negative attitudes toward the Posse scholars were much stronger for Posse 1, the first New York City students to arrive on campus four years ago.
"People didn't know what Posse was," recalled Rasheim Donaldson, 21, a senior at Lafayette. "Some students of color actually opposed Posse," he continued, because they thought that full scholarships ought to go to students who went through the institution's conventional admissions process.
"We were under a microscope," said Mr. Donaldson, who grew up in Washington Heights and graduated from Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem.
Mr. Donaldson recalled that in those early days, the members of his group were extremely close, creating what he described as a haven for each other. He recalled a debate over affirmative action in a class in which he was the only black student, during his freshman year.
"I was very fervent in my position," he said; he argued that policies to address racial inequality were necessary. He added that he had honed his arguments during Posse training sessions.
Now Mr. Donaldson, who is tall, articulate and constantly in motion, heads the black student organization, is a resident adviser in a dormitory and coordinates a program that works with children in Easton.
Mr. Donaldson and his classmates are thinking about what they will do after graduation in a few weeks. One plans a bicycle ride across the country to meet a variety of nonprofit groups; another will start work at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Donaldson is considering law school, although he would have to attend without his posse.