The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

Can Inner City Prep School Succeed? Answer is YES

January 03, 2010 by Jill Willis

Please take time to read the AP article on YES Prep's Senior Class and the College Counseling program in the Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Washington Post, ABC News, and many other news outlets. Tell us what you think!

By MONICA RHOR Associated Press

HOUSTON — It was Deadline Day at YES Prep North Central, the day college applications were supposed to be finished, the day essays, personal statements and a seemingly endless series of forms needed to be slipped into white envelopes, ready for submission.

The day the school's first graduating class would take one leap closer to college.

The seniors inside Room A121 were sprinting, scurrying and stumbling to the finish line. They hunched over plastic banquet tables, brows furrowed and eyed fixed on the screens of Dell laptop computers. Keyboards clattered, papers rustled and sighs swept across the room like waves of nervous energy.

So much was riding on this.

The reputation of a charter school built around the mission of sending every student to college. The hopes of parents who wanted more for their children than they had attained. The expectations of younger siblings, schoolmates and friends hungry for role models.

And above all, the dreams of 43 North Central seniors determined to turn stereotypes and statistics upside-down.

But first, those applications had to sparkle.

“We need that stuff ASAP,” said Chad Spurgeon, sounding more like a coach before a big game than North Central's director of college counseling. “You've got to make sure these are where they need to be.”

Around the room, jangled nerves seemed to jangle just a little more.

Eric Salazar, a soft-spoken student at the top of the senior class, gnawed absently on his cuticles.

Brandon Gunter, normally jovial, rummaged frantically through his backpack. “I'm getting the feeling I forgot my essay at home. This. Is. Not. Happening,” Brandon fretted, his voice inching higher with each word.

Fernando Luna hunkered in the back of the room, staring at his computer screen and thinking of everything he still needed to finish. He smiled serenely, but inside, he could feel the pressure. College, long a dream, was suddenly, tantalizingly, nerve-rackingly within grasp.

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