Struggling Bed-Stuy student got help,
wins speedy admission to top college
wins speedy admission to top college
BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, January 6th 2008, 4:00 AM
Not long ago, Lamarana Diallo thought she was destined for failure.
At age 12, she was grossly overweight, tormented by her classmates and so depressed she was failing in school.
"I was at a low point. You feel like you're ugly or you're not going to go anywhere in life, nobody's going to want to hire you," she said. "You're big. You're fat, like, just forget it. Forget about life."
In seventh grade, she flunked math, social studies and gym, but today, thanks to an eighth-grade math teacher and the staff of a small high school, she is healthy, confident and bound for one of the nation's top liberal arts colleges.
"When I want something, I go for it," Lamarana said. "I know there's more to life than just being in the streets, standing there on the corner and chilling with your buddies."
The 17-year-old senior at Brooklyn's Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice was just accepted through the early-admission process to Hamilton College.
Early-decision programs, in which students apply months before the deadline for general admission, increase chances of acceptance because they allow colleges to cherry-pick applicants.
But because acceptance, which comes by mid-December, is binding and arrives well before financial-aid packages are resolved, critics claim it favors the rich.
Lamarana, who lives in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, didn't know about the controversy, she said.
Her school is one of 19 Urban Assembly schools run through a public-private partnership that employ full-time college advisers and take kids on college trips.
"That school was like, 'College, college, college, college, college,'" Lamarana said. "That's all you hear all the time. Everybody got to the point where they were just sick of it."
Lamarana, who plans to major in economics or media and communications, said she was given a financial-aid estimate that will cover almost all of her expenses for the school's nearly $50,000 tuition and room and board.
Even at Urban Assembly schools, early decision is an option unavailable to most kids, said Carla Shere, Urban Assembly's director of college planning.
"Ninety-eight percent of our students are first-generation college students," she said, adding that a lot of planning and "savvy" are required to complete the complicated application process by October.
Hamilton, in upstate Clinton, was ranked 17th among the nation's liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report.
In addition to the help from her high school, Lamarana credits her success to an eighth-grade math teacher named Donald French.
When she struggled in his class in 2003, French offered to tutor her, Lamarana said. He helped her until she started to thrive.
"I realized, 'Oh, my God! I'm not dumb!" Lamarana said. "It was like a little spark, and I just picked it up and ran with it."
Still teaching math at Brooklyn's Intermediate School 113, French didn't know how he had affected his student, he said.
"I'm delighted. As a teacher, I try to reach out to all of my students if I can.... She probably just needed that reinforcement and that encouragement."
eeinhorn@nydailynews.com
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, January 6th 2008, 4:00 AM
Not long ago, Lamarana Diallo thought she was destined for failure.
At age 12, she was grossly overweight, tormented by her classmates and so depressed she was failing in school.
"I was at a low point. You feel like you're ugly or you're not going to go anywhere in life, nobody's going to want to hire you," she said. "You're big. You're fat, like, just forget it. Forget about life."
In seventh grade, she flunked math, social studies and gym, but today, thanks to an eighth-grade math teacher and the staff of a small high school, she is healthy, confident and bound for one of the nation's top liberal arts colleges.
"When I want something, I go for it," Lamarana said. "I know there's more to life than just being in the streets, standing there on the corner and chilling with your buddies."
The 17-year-old senior at Brooklyn's Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice was just accepted through the early-admission process to Hamilton College.
Early-decision programs, in which students apply months before the deadline for general admission, increase chances of acceptance because they allow colleges to cherry-pick applicants.
But because acceptance, which comes by mid-December, is binding and arrives well before financial-aid packages are resolved, critics claim it favors the rich.
Lamarana, who lives in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, didn't know about the controversy, she said.
Her school is one of 19 Urban Assembly schools run through a public-private partnership that employ full-time college advisers and take kids on college trips.
"That school was like, 'College, college, college, college, college,'" Lamarana said. "That's all you hear all the time. Everybody got to the point where they were just sick of it."
Lamarana, who plans to major in economics or media and communications, said she was given a financial-aid estimate that will cover almost all of her expenses for the school's nearly $50,000 tuition and room and board.
Even at Urban Assembly schools, early decision is an option unavailable to most kids, said Carla Shere, Urban Assembly's director of college planning.
"Ninety-eight percent of our students are first-generation college students," she said, adding that a lot of planning and "savvy" are required to complete the complicated application process by October.
Hamilton, in upstate Clinton, was ranked 17th among the nation's liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report.
In addition to the help from her high school, Lamarana credits her success to an eighth-grade math teacher named Donald French.
When she struggled in his class in 2003, French offered to tutor her, Lamarana said. He helped her until she started to thrive.
"I realized, 'Oh, my God! I'm not dumb!" Lamarana said. "It was like a little spark, and I just picked it up and ran with it."
Still teaching math at Brooklyn's Intermediate School 113, French didn't know how he had affected his student, he said.
"I'm delighted. As a teacher, I try to reach out to all of my students if I can.... She probably just needed that reinforcement and that encouragement."
eeinhorn@nydailynews.com
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