With a nurse for a mom and a sister who works in psychology, Lucia Alvarez always assumed she’d pursue a career in science—even if that wasn’t where her passion led her.
It wasn’t until Alvarez attended an inspiring legal career panel as part of the University of Chicago’s South Side College and Career Catalyst (C3) program that her perspective shifted. “There were a bunch of lawyers there,” Alvarez, then a student at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, remembers. “And we were doing rotations in these different groups and I sort of learned that, wow, science is not the only path that I have to take.”
This fall, Alvarez will attend Yale University on a full-ride scholarship, becoming a first-generation four-year college student.
“Through that first event, that legal panel, I learned that I did actually really, really, really want to pursue a career in law, and that's where I'm at now. My future major is political science and history on the pre-law track, and I owe that to C3.”
Alvarez, who lives in the city’s East Side neighborhood, is among 79 Chicago Public Schools students from 33 different schools who recently graduated from UChicago’s multi-year college and career readiness programs. Collectively, this year’s program graduates received 367 acceptances from more than 174 colleges and universities, including 34 highly selective colleges and universities like Yale.
Developed in part to tackle the longstanding problem of highly-qualified CPS students underreaching in their college applications, these free, year-round college readiness programs now support more than 300 CPS students annually through financial aid workshops, college and career exploration and planning, nationwide college tours, summer classes, and live-in programs on UChicago’s campus to introduce students to the college experience.
For Corey Collier, another soon-to-be first-generation student from the Ashburn neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, participating in UChicago’s Collegiate Scholars Program (CSP) offered an opportunity for direct exposure to college level coursework, instructors, and atmosphere.
“It just provided so much support that you wouldn't really get out of an ordinary high school experience,” Collier, who will attend Georgetown University on a full tuition scholarship this fall, said. Highlights included college tour trips to Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan; building a community of peers from across the city; and the end-to-end help CSP staff provided on navigating the college application process as Collier and his family had never done it before.
In the program’s summer Introduction to Neuroscience course, Collier says designing his own lab experiments and using college level equipment alongside real professors and grad students made college feel less intimidating.
“Just being on a campus, being in a college environment, taking classes over the summer, that really made me feel more comfortable and, like, I could see myself in a university student's shoes,” Collier said. “They made it such a fun experience and meeting new people that I can see myself relating to that also really affirmed my belief that, you know, I can belong in highly-selective institutions as well.”
More broadly, this year’s college and career readiness program graduates said they appreciated not only that realization that they could see themselves in a college environment but also that they could see themselves more clearly through the college application process the programs supported.
Recent Lane Tech College Prep graduate and Jefferson Park resident Nguyen Le credits two writing courses he took through CSP with helping him craft a personal statement essay that really showed how his experiences impacted him rather than just telling.
“I was able to write the best essays that I could have wrote,” Le said. “And I think that's because of those two classes that CSP offered. I don't think I would have gotten into University of Chicago [without them].” Le will be attending the UChicago on a full ride in the fall as a Chicago Public Schools Scholar.
That kind of support, as well as guidance on understanding the financial elements of the college application process, was particularly meaningful for Alvarez. “I just sort of felt lost knowing that there weren't that many people who knew how to go about this, and people that I could lean on that are in my close circle,” she said. “Besides navigating the process itself, being able to pay for college was the largest burden that I had. I was sort of afraid to apply to college because the fear of getting into a dream school and then not being able to pay for it loomed in the back of my head.”
The C3 team and workshops the program offers helped Alvarez and her family understand where to look and what type of research to do to aim for the Ivy League schools Alvarez had her heart set on, what would make her application and essays stand out, and how the financial aid and scholarship process worked.
This month, Alvarez says she felt confident when she got to visit Yale’s campus and meet future classmates at a special event for incoming students. “It was amazing,” she said. “I am honestly ready to go right now.”
