Helping low-income, first generation students get to college takes many hands

Oct. 9—College had been set in Maria Mutesi's mind since a 10th-grade visit to Dartmouth-Hitchcock to learn about health careers.

Mutesi, a Manchester Central graduate, said she had a serious leg injury as a child, and it took her a long time to learn to walk again. Learning about physical therapy, the idea of helping other people be in their bodies, felt like meaningful work.

"I was like, 'This is magic!'" Mutesi said.

But to become a physical therapist would require higher education, maybe even a graduate degree. Students whose parents or older siblings have been to college can ask their families for help navigating the rules and unspoken customs of college applications and life on campus.

New Hampshire students without college-educated families to guide them through applications, acceptance and enrollment can look for support from teachers and counselors in their schools, and programs like the federally funded GearUp and TRiO.

Mutesi remembered a counselor who helped her figure out how to apply to college and fill out the financial aid forms once she got in. She participated in a pre-college program at Saint Anselm College and carefully evaluated programs to figure out where she could study physical therapy as an undergraduate. Plymouth State was her choice, and Mutesi is now in her junior year.

Mutesi and other first-generation students said mentors and support staff have been key to a successful college career. Data collected and published by the U.S. Department of Education show that first-generation students and those from low-income families are more likely to leave college before graduating.

Being part of a smaller cohort of students with similar experiences helped, Mutesi said. An older student connected her with tutoring and helped Mutesi find her niche on campus. "She literally was like directing me and showing me things I didn't know about on campus," Mutesi said.

The suite of federally funded programs known as TRiO works with students from low-income families and first-generation students to get to college and get through. Some high schools have TRiO programs, as do Plymouth State and many other colleges and universities around the country.

Students in TRiO can come to campus a week or so early to get acclimated during a pre-orientation program. TRiO connects students with an on-campus network of other students to mentor each other, formally or informally. Support staff make sure the students are getting plugged into all the resources a campus has to offer.

Visiting campus, picturing herself at Plymouth, during a tour with her high school TRiO group was a big part of what made Emily Roy, a Manchester Memorial graduate, decide to pick Plymouth State. The campus was beautiful, she said, and the price was within reach — not the case for all 12 colleges she applied to, Roy said.

The support services for Plymouth State students were also a big part of the appeal. "That's one of the reasons I chose Plymouth over other schools, because they have that student support."

Roy is also the first one in her family to go to college, and while her family was happy to support her, she had to find guidance from counselors and college-readiness programs at school.

GearUp works in a handful of New Hampshire school districts that have high proportions of students from poor families, beginning when students are in early middle school. Mentors work with the same students for years, helping them go through high school in a way that will enable them to pursue higher education.

"That's really valuable for students. They have that one more extra caring adult," said GearUp New Hampshire director Stephanie Lesperance.

That person can help make sure they're choosing classes that will impress colleges, and help them figure out how to get ready for the SAT, plan college visits and help navigate the applications.

Unspoken rules

Most of these students didn't grow up with parents regaling them with stories about their college years. Campus visits are important to show students what college is all about, to help students imagine themselves on campus, Lesperance said, and not just in a lecture hall.

GearUp has taken students from Manchester on college visits in Boston and overnight trips at Plymouth State to sit in on classes and talk with students who come from similar backgrounds. They can get a look at dorm life, experience a college football game and get a taste of dining-hall food.

Roy and Mutesi started college in fall 2020, and both said COVID made it hard to engage in the campus community. National data show that since the pandemic slightly fewer students who start college are continuing, though the metric called "persistence" is increasing aftter a huge drop-off in fall 2020.

"TRiO has been really really helpful with academics, social life — like name a thing, TRiO has helped us," Roy said.

Lesperance said GearUp also tries to help students actually get enrolled once they've been accepted. She said a lot of low-income students in particular can fall through the cracks before the first day on campus.

"It's that gap between enrollment and actually showing up (where) a lot of low-income students get lost," she said.

Students who have participated in GearUp can text in questions anonymously as they're getting ready to enroll and even once they start school.

Questions run the gamut, Lesperance said: How to get the immunization records required by colleges if you've never really had a primary care doctor? What an adviser is? What office hours are? What to do if you're a few hundred dollars short on a tuition bill?

"There are so many of those unspoken rules," Lesperance said. "If your parents didn't go to college and you don't know anyone who went to college, you don't know."

Support in other states

GearUp and TRiO are available for students all over the country. But Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives at the National College Attainment Network, said some states do more to ease the friction between high school and college or other postsecondary educational opportunities, which can make it easier for low-income and first-generation students to get to college.

Some states have set up portals where students can apply to every public college in the state in one fell swoop. Others have set up automatic admission to state universities, based largely on high school grades.

New Hampshire is taking some steps. Starting with the class of 2024, all high school graduates will have to complete a FAFSA — the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the key form that unlocks Pell grants and other need-based aid as well as federal student loans. DeBaun said that's a major step.

DeBaun wondered whether New Hampshire's focus on local control has prevented closer coordination between high schools and higher education. Other states have more prescribed college-and-career readiness programs, which come with resources like formal training for guidance counselors.

"There is a level of coordination, when we're talking about college and career readiness, and the K-12 to higher ed pathway, that benefits from state support," he said.

Other states also have lower tuition at public universities. New Hampshire has the second-highest cost for in-state students to attend public university, second only to Vermont.

Worth it

Although the Plymouth State students who spoke to the Union Leader said affording college was a huge concern, they thought it was worth the cost — and all the work it took to be the first ones in their family to get to college.

In just over two years in Plymouth, Mutesi said she has come out of her shell. She feels less self-conscious about speaking English with an accent. She's pursuing education toward a career, in physical therapy, that feels important. She's figured out how to balance demanding courses and make friends with different kinds of people — all those intangibles that come with being on campus.

"I'm proud of the woman I'm becoming, the growth," Mutesi said.

Making the Grade is a reporting effort dedicated to covering education in New Hampshire, with a special emphasis on Manchester and the challenges students face in the state's largest school district. It is sponsored by the New Hampshire Solutions Journalism Lab at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and is funded by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Northeast Delta Dental, the Education Writers Association and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.