两个家庭背景相同的学生，为什么一个进了大学，一个没有呢？
Guadalupe Acevedo 正要从罗斯福高中毕业，像其他低收入家庭的学生一样，她没想过申请大学这件事。
然而，LIZBETH LEDESMA, 也要从CHADWICK 学校毕业，对于86名毕业生来讲，他们的问题是去常青藤，还是著名的文理学院？
虽然两所学校相隔30公里，但是天差地别。
罗斯福高中边上有美容店，折扣商店。唯一的咨询老师忙着帮学生就读于社区学校。
而CHADWICK 学校坐落在45ACRE 的私人山顶区域，俯瞰洛杉矶，学校的4个咨询老师帮助同学们如何申请常青藤学校。
GUADALUPE 的母亲来自墨西哥，从事护理残疾人的工作，GUADALUPE 梦想成为BEYONCE, 但这没那么容易，当意识到上大学才能找到更好的工作时，她有些茫然，完全不知道大学是怎么回事。
LIZBETH 也来自墨西哥家庭，还有5个兄弟姐妹。她从公立小学开始一直是优秀学生。在6年级时，她获得了青年奖学金，让她9年级转到CHADWICK 念书。
刚到CHADWICK, 她不能适应，因为老师默认他们都会做实验报告，但是在以前的公立学校根本没有实验室。过了一年后，LIZ 就适应了很多，并获得不错的成绩。然后学校的资深咨询师开始帮助她如何申请著名大学了。
Guadalupe Acevedo is about to graduate from Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School, where most of the students come from low-income homes and the idea of applying for college blindsides many of the 368 or so seniors.
Lizbeth Ledesma is wrapping up her high school education at Chadwick School, where the only question for many of the 86 seniors is whether to go to an Ivy League, UC or prestigious liberal arts school.
Guadalupe and Lizbeth come from similar backgrounds.
Roosevelt and Chadwick, just 30 miles apart, are different worlds.
At Roosevelt, a Los Angeles Unified School District campus in Boyle Heights that's surrounded by beauty shops, discount stores and a 400-foot-long mural depicting a fiercely anti-colonial history of the Americas, one counselor, his assistant and a counselor on loan from an outside group strive to help students find their way to higher education, often by way of community college.
At Chadwick, a private 45-acre hilltop retreat with an amphitheater that looks from Palos Verdes over much of Los Angeles, a team of four counselors preps members of the largely wealthy student body, beginning in ninth grade, in every nuance of how to win acceptance to the college of their choice.
The well-documented "achievement gap" in grades and graduation rates that separates rich and poor students at once affects and is affected by who gets into college. And by and large, those on one side of the gap get richer and those on the other get poorer, because people with college degrees make an average of 1.67 times as much money each week as those who don't, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the U.S., about 49% of high school graduates from low-income families enroll in college soon after receiving a diploma, compared with 80% of students from high-income families.
Recognizing the implications of that cycle for individuals and society, President Obama has set a goal for leading the world in college completion by 2020.
Meanwhile, with four years to go on that timeline, students nationwide — including Guadalupe and Lizbeth — still receive hugely disparate levels of support and coaching as they sprint or stumble across an uneven playing field toward their own college goals.
Guadalupe, a self-described "wild thinker," entered high school wanting to be "a dancer, the next Selena, the next Beyonce."
She lives in a house in City Terrace with her mother, who was raised in Mexico and works as a caregiver for people with disabilities.
Her mother, Guadalupe says, wanted to go to college but ultimately did not. Still, her mother motivated her with constant reminders about the importance of staying in school. Her father is out of the picture.
It wasn't until earlier this year, when a teacher explained how hard it is to make a living in 21st century America with only a high school diploma, that Guadalupe snapped into reality, the 18-year-old says.
"I was so lost. I didn't know how college worked."
Raul Mata, the only full-time college counselor employed by Roosevelt, knows that "lost" story well.
Mata grew up in Huntington Park. There were plenty of students who didn't accept the importance of college at Huntington Park High School, he says, but for some reason he wound up befriending the studious kids. His acceptance at USC — a school he chose for its football team — made him the first person in his family to go to college.
Today, too, he says, most students at Roosevelt grow up around adults who may not have finished high school, let alone attended college.
Last year, Mata started a program that tries to edge students who have decent but not stellar grades toward college. He has trained students to be peer counselors. And the next step, he says, will be targeting juniors to make sure they're already aware of the college application process.
On a recent morning the 38-year-old stood in his small office, nudging a group of seniors to complete at least five scholarship applications.
It can be disheartening, he says. Many of his students are poor and come from homes so crowded or chaotic that studying is tough. Many simply don't go to school.
"Some students are just resistant to the idea of college," he says. "It's hard to get ahold of them. But we try not to wash our hands of it."
Then there are the school's Guadalupes, who are ambitious but bewildered, and have the thinly stretched staff to turn to for help.
It does help, says Guadalupe as she stands outside the counselor's office.
"Mata," she says. "He has all the answers."
::
Like Guadalupe, Lizbeth Ledesma, 17, is the daughter of parents who have little formal education.
She lives in an apartment in Inglewood with her five siblings. Because her parents aren't fluent in English, they weren't able to help much with homework, she says.
Still, she got straight A's from kindergarten through eighth grade in the public schools she attended in the largely poor and Latino Lennox area. Grades alone do not ensure that a student is college-bound, but Lizbeth got an early break when, in sixth grade, she was selected for Young Eisner Scholars, a program that helps promising students get into private schools.
Lizbeth started at Chadwick in ninth grade — and struggled.
Almost all of the other students were wealthy, and expectations were high, she recalls. Teachers assumed she would know how to format a lab report — but at her old school there were no science labs, let alone reports.
By the time she hit 10th grade, Lizbeth became more comfortable, settling into a pattern of A's and Bs. That's also when she and her family first met with Alicia Valencia Akers, one of four college counselors at Chadwick — about one counselor for every 20 seniors.
Akers' office opens into a room with two plush leather sofas and a fireplace mantle bedecked with college signs.
Akers' curriculum vitae, like those of the other counselors at Chadwick, reflects high-level positions in the admissions offices of respected colleges — in her case USC's Marshall School and Scripps College in Claremont.
Having seen the mercilessly competitive process from the other side of the application, Akers and her fellow counselors make sure freshmen know about the counseling office and start meeting with families by sophomore year.
Those meetings ramp up in junior and senior year, when students and their parents gather to parse the esoterica of admissions criteria and discuss schools that are good fits. They host essay-writing courses during the summers and after-school wine and cheese nights to help parents cope with letting their kids go.
The Chadwick counselors advise students not to apply to more than 10 colleges. But many do. And at least some of the stress during applications and admissions season, Akers says, stems from families flying around the country visiting campuses and having to make the tough decision about which of many college choices to accept.
::
http://www.latimes.com/local/edu ... 20160512-story.html
评论
两个家庭背景相同的学生，为什么一个成了马云，一个成了浮云？
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生物多样性的表现。
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眼界啊，眼界……
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两个都会上的网民，为什么你这么小白会问这个问题而别人根本就不会呢。
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出生相同，智商各方面都有差异。这样的例子大把
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名校奖学金改变你的人生，提升你的格局?
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评论
这很正常
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同一个家庭出来的兄弟二人还天壤之别呢，喜欢世界的多样性
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智商的差别？
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奥巴马也是这样背景出来的啊，他妈妈带他每周去图书馆看各种政治经济法律杂志
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要是个白痴，他妈天天带他去也没用。家庭教育固然重要，最重要的是IQ、EQ。
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环境对人的影响不可忽视
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EQ是后天培养的，IQ才是天生的
布什不也当总统了？明明智商略硬伤的，全靠后天培养熏陶
天生再聪明，不会用的话，天才最后平庸的比比皆是。
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没细看文章 就想说
为什么一个上大学的最后给一个没上大学的打工呢?
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