Show Me The Money!

You have the brightest child in the neighborhood and everyone knows it.  Any university in the country would be lucky to have your child.  Without exception, though, all of the top flight schools cost a fortune to attend.  We’re not talking about new car kind of money.  We’re talking about the kind of money to buy a decent house—the kind where you have to keep paying for it forever and ever.  The kind f money it takes a regular working family decades to prepare for.

What are you going to do?  You make decent money—at least enough to keep the rest of your family living comfortably—but it’s not really enough to keep them living comfortably and leave enough to pay for that college education.  The cost of living here in the Bay Area eats up most of your paycheck—when you get a paycheck—and leaves little to sock away to pay for a decent education for your children.

You and your child could take out loans to pay for that top flight education but what kind of life would that be for your child to graduate owing almost as much as the National Debt?

Your child could get a job but what kind of money could an 18 year old make before acquiring the skills that the college education will help provide?

What’s a parent to do?  How are you supposed to take care of your family and provide them with a quality education—the kind of education that will open the right doors once your child has that sheepskin firmly in her grasp?

What are you supposed to do?  You’re supposed to turn to The Ivy League Connection’s very own Sue Kim—a professional educational consultant specializing in admissions and financial aid counseling since 1991.

Sue has helped many dozens of ILC students and others from the WCCUSD find the perfect fit of a college and then find a means to pay for that education.  She knows what she’s doing and she’s good at it.

On Thursday June 16^th Sue hosted 39 ILC and WCCUSD students and parents in a financial aid workshop where she helped point the way for the parents to find ways for other people to pay for the education of their children.

Between grants, scholarships, gifts and other options that may be available to the students and parents in our area, more and more of our students have opportunities to attend better schools than they might otherwise have been considering.

Sue explained that although California has an outstanding 10 campus University of California and a 23 campus state university system, both systems have little money to offer students in the way of financial assistance.  The cost to attend these schools is prohibitively expensive and the costs are steadily rising.

On the other hand, there are numerous private colleges spread throughout the country that have large endowments designed to help the very kinds of students we seem to have an abundance of: smart but needy.

Tonight’s session was only a primer but it laid the foundation so parents and students can start their preparations.  Once their students enter their senior year of high school, the college application process becomes a full time job requiring a tremendous amount of dedication and attention to detail.  There are openings at these schools and there is money to be had but if our students and their parents don’t do the necessary homework and prepare themselves, those opportunities may go elsewhere.  We want everyone around the world to have the option of getting a top education but if there are limited funds and limited openings, then we’d rather that our people be taken care of first.  Call it selfish if you will—and you’d be right—but such is life.

Preparing For Adventure: Final Briefings

As my cohort Julia Chang stated earlier, it is truly the beginning of an end of our preparation for our trip to Vanderbilt. Last Thursday, June 2^nd, at El Cerrito High School, the Ivy League Connection had its official Orientation.

This time I made sure to arrive early, and to my surprise my father Derrick Duren had already beaten me to the school. I was extremely excited to find out the details of our trip and to see the other Ivy League Scholars. For the first time in the program's history, everyone was present and on time. We were able to proceed smoothly to the point when all the different groups separated to go talk to their chaperones about their trips. I couldn’t wait for this portion as we crowded into our designated room and sat down quietly.

After some small problems with the lights in our room, (the lights would not stay on), we began the meeting. We learned that despite our conversations with Vanderbilt, we would not be able to go on college tours during the weekend. Instead we would make time for the trips before and after we went through our course.

We would visit Emory University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Georgia Tech. We discovered our flight information, where we would be eating, our hotel arrangements, and even our rental car which will be subject to change because of its size. 

We discussed Don Gosney’s various collection of loaner items which I do plan to take advantage of, and what our daily schedule and Vanderbilt will include. The Orientation was very exciting and has aroused feelings of dramatic anticipation within me. I truly can’t wait till July.

Orientation: The Beginning of an End

The students and parents of the ILC gathered at the El Cerrito High School library Thursday evening for an orientation. The parents were to finally be given the opportunity to be informed of what their children are really getting into this summer and the great experiences that lie ahead of them.

Everyone was prompt and on time to our relief, and soon, the orientation commenced with a few words of introduction from Mr. Ramsey and Ms. Kronenberg.

Mr. Don Ellis was also present at the meeting and spoke to us about a new concept of his—a program in which high school students like ourselves could submit literary works to have the opportunity to get them published and distributed in book stores as well as the Internet.

I think the idea is fantastic—it will allow students’ literary creations, ranging from poems to short stories, the chance to be published and received by people far beyond the boundaries of their own school.

Soon after, we broke into groups and dispersed to separate classrooms to discuss our travel plans for the summer.

We received our itineraries and went over the guidelines of our stay at the University. Since we will not be allowed to leave the campus during the duration of the program, we had to cancel some of our side-trips to a few colleges in Georgia, including Spellman and Morehouse. However, we will have time to visit the great Emory College of Arts and Science, as well as the Georgia Institute of Technology. I am extremely excited to visit both, especially the Emory School of Medicine.

After we concluded going over our schedule of our time down South, we congregated once again in the library with some finishing words from Ms. Kronenberg and Mr. Ramsey. They reminded us that we all have an obligation to not only ourselves, but to everyone—our school, our District, our peers, the ILC itself—and we must all be thankful for this opportunity and each do our part.

El Cerrito Meetup - Itineraries and Answers

Last night was the final meeting for many of us before our summer departure. We met at the El Cerrito High School Library to answer those long-awaited questions from parents and students, as well as to give out the itineraries for each group.

Before we dispersed into our separate rooms, Mr. Don Ellis introduced his new idea to us all. He is planning to publish the poetry and stories of ILC participants. These books would be printed and/or available online, and available for sale. He said that it was a possibility that book signings and newspaper reviews could ensue. This is an extremely generous and fantastic opportunity. Teen writers can finally spread their works out, past their diaries and journals, past their blogs and websites, past the school’s literary magazines. Their literature would actually be published and made into a book. People from all around would be able to read these students’ works.

The rest of the evening was spent in our separate class rooms, giving information about the trip, answering questions, and passing out the itineraries.

Ms. Bulls, our chaperone, asked the Vandies to go online or look in travel books to find some sights we would like to see - museums, historical sites, famous places, or entertainment. I am looking forward to researching what side trips we can make while in Tennessee and Georgia.


Attending this meeting only makes me more excited to leave for Vanderbilt already. I want to be on that plane tomorrow. But unfortunately, my tomorrow won’t include me traveling on a plane. Tomorrow I will be taking two SAT Subject Tests back at El Cerrito High School, and studying for finals.

Ah, summer. Please hurry along.

Preparing for Adventure: Introduction to the Ivy League Connection Class of 2011

As a class of Ivy League Connection scholars, I believe we, as a group showed our brilliance tonight. First impressions are everything I hear, and we made one that will go down in history, as the best Ivy League Connection class to date.

The Yalies, with their extremely challenging course, tonight looked ready to face any obstacle as they were introduced. The Brownies with their sheer man and woman power intimidated the room with their radiant smiles and confident stances. The Vandies, though small in size, but big in heart, stood up ready to face the horizons of an unexplored program as ambassadors of the ILC. The Columbians and Cornellians arose and took their stand practically inspiring everyone on the round table of School Board members that there will be leadership when they have passed on.

That is the message we sent to not only the Board members, but our sponsors and supporters, our chaperones, our administrators, even our parents, we are ready and willing to step out into the world to make change for the better. Within our group, dwell the lawyers, doctors, professors, hotel managers, politicians, moms, dads, and 3 future presidents of the future. I feel this program and group are special—all  we have to do is believe, taking every opportunity that comes our way.

During the intermission after our group picture, I noticed how as a group we all migrated to the mingling adults with jobs varying from coaching to architecture, with a mix of a few Vice Presidents and Board Members, but we moved to chat with them to acquire the secrets that they had obtained about life, which in turn would make our lives more convenient.

Our precocious hunger for knowledge is amazing, and since knowledge is power, that speaks volumes to how far we will go. There are truly no limits for any of us, whether a Yalie, or Cornellian, even a Vandy. So in the words of Matisyahu, (Chasidic reggae artist) let us smash the lies of those saying we can’t, and awake our dreams to make them reality, and as the Ivy League Connection class of 2011 we will truly be successful.

Preparing for Adventure: "ILC in depth and the true Don Gosney"

After weeks of planning for Don’s blogging tutorial, we finally settled on a date, Saturday May 14^th at 9:00 AM. I immediately agreed when Ms. Bulls made the proposal, to prevent further frustration for everyone involved especially Don, yet when I reached home and looked at my schedule, I realized that I had overbooked my football practice which was at the exact time of the tutorial. I knew what I had to do, I thought I would definitely miss some football practice, but after the meeting I would be able to go which would make me skip all the stretching and running that I loathe, and get right into the serious business of actually playing the sport. At this fact, I smiled as I went to bed that Friday evening.

I awoke the next morning in the same high spirits, anxious to see what the blogging tutorial would teach me since I already have a pretty good knowledge base in computers. After putting my sweats on, and getting ready for the day, Ms. Bulls picked me up and I was off to the tutorial. Upon our arrival, we saw that Don and the others ( Milani Lyman and Ms. LaDonna Williams) had already arrived.

We promptly began the tutorial at about 9:30AM due to some technical conflicts between our schools technology and Don, yet with a little luck we were able to begin.

He started the session by distributing a thick compilation of papers titled “Mandatory Tutorial Agenda.” The document contained 37 topics from blogging itself to a section titled “this and that,” and some of the topics had subgroups within its contents. Immediately I thought, this is not just a tutorial, but an information session on all that is the Ivy League Connection, and that I probably would not be attending practice that day.

I didn’t mind though, the information session was extremely informative; we even had a crash course in photo shop worthy of being in any community college curriculum.

We went through issues that may arise on our trips back East too. I was excited to hear all the plans and fail safes that were in place for situations like forgetting your toothpaste or a flash drive, or even needing a fan. It made me feel more comfortable with the program seeing that they would treat me as their own when need arose, not just as an adult in the real world even when I make mistakes.

I also learned about the administrators of the program through Don Gosney. One can think of him as a mean critical person, but watching him speak that morning allowed me to see that he is simply passionate about what he does. He and his associates are passionate about the Ivy League Connection and they want to achieve the goal of sending young men and women to great schools fit for them, not only in California but across the United States and if a person isn’t doing what they are supposed to be doing in the program, then that person is simply obstructing the way to the goal. I would like to apologize for anything I’ve done to obstruct the Ivy League Connections path and I will try not to get in the way of people that are trying to help me.

Anyway, the Ivy League Connection blogging tutorial was an eye opening experience and a stepping stone toward a truly invigorating experience back East that I can’t wait to attend.