Scholarly Pursuits : Education: Volunteer program helps talented low-income high school students get scholarships from prestigious private colleges and universities. ‘They offered me a life,’ says one recipient.

There was stunned silence at Tina Tolbert’s house when letters postmarked from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania started pouring in.

Amherst, Wellesley, Swarthmore, Yale. Nine prestigious Ivy League colleges had written to invite the Mar Vista teen-ager to enroll. And each was waving a scholarship worth up to $100,000 at her.

“I didn’t think I’d even get in when I applied,” said the Venice High School senior. “I never dreamed I’d get into an Ivy League school. And I certainly didn’t think any school would offer me so much money.”

Eighteen-year-old Tolbert is graduating from one of the most unusual high school programs in Los Angeles--one that sends teen-agers from low-income families to high-priced private colleges.

The program is run by volunteers from a Santa Monica-based group, which for three years has worked to link high-achieving inner-city students with admissions officers at prestigious colleges.

So far, the One Voice organization has helped 11 youngsters win full scholarships to places such as Kenyon College in Ohio, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and Yale in New Haven, Conn.--the university that Tolbert picked.

Tuition money is there for the taking, said Susan Silbert, head of One Voice and coordinator of the annual scholarship search. She started the nonprofit group in 1981 as an outgrowth of a sociology class she was teaching at Cal State Northridge.

“Schools are looking to diversify. They have money available for scholarships and grants. They are looking for qualified students,” said Silbert, 48, of Brentwood.

Although numerous private school scholarships have been endowed by alumni, many colleges cannot afford to send recruiters to inner-city high schools to hunt for high-achieving youngsters, she said.

The idea to become scholarship detectives came from Sherry Banks, a USC student adviser. Banks, of Brentwood, had worked as a consultant to wealthy parents anxious to get their children into top-drawer private schools.

“I knew there were private colleges with money available for students not from families as privileged as those I was working with,” Banks said.

“They’re looking for students who can give their campuses more diversity--ethnically, geographically and economically.”

Silbert and Banks have recruited high school principals and counselors to help them find candidates. They target 10th-graders whose work can be monitored during their junior and senior years to make certain grades do not slip.

“Sometimes these kids don’t have the support at home--no one in their family has ever gone to college. Sometimes their parents don’t know how to help them with academics or how to encourage them,” said Irma Breakfield, a Santa Clarita resident who counsels the teen-agers weekly before they send out their college applications.

Students also get personal mentors and free help in preparing for college entrance tests from Stanley Kaplan Educational Centers. Financial assistance is sometimes available. One volunteer even loaned a scholarship seeker his car to drive to the senior prom.

The students cannot believe their good fortune.

“They offered me a life,” said Leticia Orozco, 19, a Venice resident who in 1992 won a $25,000-per-year scholarship to Wellesley College in Boston. She returned Saturday for a reunion with Silbert and the other volunteers.

“Without these people, I probably wouldn’t be in school--I’d be out working. When I was in high school, I worked 30 hours a week at a theater and at Staples to help support my family. My life was headed for a trap.”

One of this year’s scholarship winners, Jason Glasgow, 17, of South-Central Los Angeles, credits the volunteers’ perseverance. He was recommended as a 10th-grader for the program by Venice High School Principal Bud Jacobs.

“Back then I wasn’t even thinking about college,” said Glasgow, who came close to accepting a scholarship to Dartmouth before picking Occidental College. “They told me they’d help me stay on track. They made me take the hard classes. My parents still don’t believe it.”

Robert Rodriguez, 18, a Venice High senior from Inglewood, said his mother and father were shocked by his good fortune, too. He has received a full scholarship to top-rated Carleton College.

“My parents were skeptical. They didn’t realize it was possible,” he said. They became believers when officials of Carleton and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., paid for airline tickets so the youth could check out their campuses.

Others receiving scholarships this year are Rosa Luna, 18, of Manual Arts High School, who will attend Claremont McKenna College; Kinikia Gardner, 18, of Dorsey High, who is headed for Kenyon College; Silvestre Salas, 19, of Manual Arts, who will attend MIT, and Priscilla Munoz, 18, of Kennedy High, who will enroll at Mt. St. Mary’s College.

Silbert said the program is aimed at students at Venice, Dorsey and Manual Arts high schools, although she hopes to expand it.

Connie Semf, college counselor at Venice High, said the program is one that could be valuable at any city campus.

“I was very hesitant in the beginning because you always hear offers of things people are going to do and you never know what their agenda is,” Semf said.

“But this is a community group that works.”