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| AVID students to tour SoCal universities |
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| Written by Maddy Houk / Patterson Irrigator / | |
| Friday, 02 May 2008 | |
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A whirlwind trip to more than a dozen Southern California colleges awaits Patterson High’s AVID students next month. Thirty AVID students and six chaperones will visit 15 four-year universities June 2 through 6, including University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles, U.C. Irvine, U.C. San Diego and University of San Diego, a private college. “It’s very important that the students visit the campuses to see if it’s a comfortable fit,” said Kit Chaney, who has taught AVID classes for six years. “We also visit because its fun. Advancement Via Individual Determination, better known as AVID, is aimed at middle-achieving students who want to attend college. Over their four years of high school, students work toward that goal by taking college prep courses, filling out college and financial aid applications and visiting campuses. This is the fifth year local AVID kids have taken the trip south. They will also make a stop at Disneyland. While 90 percent to 95 percent of the kids are accepted to four-year universities, Chaney said, 5 percent of them don’t go because of family or financial obligations. The first AVID class at Patterson High graduated in 2005, and one of those students, Ana Vargas, went to University of California, Santa Barbara. Vargas earned a bachelor of arts in Chicano/Chicana studies and bachelor degree in law and society with a minor in Spanish in September 2007. Through hard work, advanced college classes and scores, attending classes at Modesto Junior College when she was a high school senior, and a month-long stay at Migrant Student Leadership Institute in Los Angeles, Vargas entered Santa Barbara with almost enough credits to qualify as a junior. In addition, she received a $20,000 Dell Scholarship that enabled her to focus on her studies and take 20 credits at a time in college and graduate early. Vargas works at Hanshaw Middle School in Modesto for the migrant education program. Meanwhile, this year’s juniors are already busy filling out college applications and forms for the application process that will end Oct. 31. “From October to March, when they actually hear if they’ve been accepted, is a long wait,” Chaney said. As his classmates filled out forms for financial aid, PHS junior Zack Obeid, 18, said he wants to attend USC and major in pharmaceutical or business. AVID has prepared him for the college application grind, he said, by keeping him organized. One help has been putting information in California Colleges online. “We can do a folder, write down any community service, extracurricular activities and grades through our high school years,” Zack said. His classmate, Alma Lomeli, 17, wants to major in business and accounting at University of San Diego, a private college. Alma follows in the footsteps of older siblings who graduated from AVID and now attend four-year universities. She explained that students in eighth grade with grade-point averages between 3.0 and 3.8 can interview and write an essay to be accepted into AVID. Then, AVID students and their parents sign a yearly contract. Students have to keep up their grades — no F’s and few D’s. They then record them on the California Colleges Web site and have them on file for college admission folks to look at. AVID keeps students focused, Alma added. “Basically, it sets up a four-year plan, so you make sure at the end of the senior year you’re college bound,” Alma said. “You can see what classes you need to take in math, English and science. It brings your options out in the open, and it helps you narrow down your options so you can set your goal in a specific area.” In preparation for their college tour, students raised $370 per person for the trip through a yard sale, snack sales at school and a Lamp Post Pizza fundraiser. Adult chaperones pay their own way. Zack and Alma said they hope the trip will be as successful as last year’s, which included a visit to U.C. Davis and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. “We went to Cal Poly and saw a football game,” Alma said. “That was a highlight of the trip.” “It shows colleges are fun, also,” Zack agreed. To reach Maddy Houk at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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