Applicants to College See If They Made the Grade : Education: Acceptance--and rejection--letters are landing in the mailboxes of local students. Competition for admission has increased as more high schools offer advanced classes.

Ventura High senior John Dinkler felt pretty confident when he sent out five college applications last year. After all, as a student with a 4.4 grade point average, high SAT scores and varsity letters in basketball and volleyball, he knew his chances were good.

But he was still surprised when he received acceptance letters from all five schools: UC Davis, UC Irvine, Azusa Pacific, Westmont and Wheaton. He eventually picked Davis, impressed with its biology department.

“I wasn’t quite sure what school I wanted to go to,” said the aspiring physician. “But it was nice to have a big selection.”

In the past month, letters of acceptance and rejection from colleges nationwide have trickled into Ventura County mailboxes, setting the course for college-bound students for the next two or four years.

Statistics from prior years show that about 20% of graduating seniors will attend two-year colleges, 33% will attend state universities and 12.5% will attend University of California schools.

Increasingly, local high schools are offering more advanced courses to help students prepare for higher learning.

Westlake High School, for example, offers advanced-placement government, English, calculus and biology classes and an honors anatomy class that is the only one of its kind in the county.

But though more than 80% of the students in the Conejo Valley Unified School District graduate and go to college, counselors say getting into top universities is no easy task.

“It’s much more competitive and it is because there are more kids, and there are more kids taking (college preparatory) classes,” said Jack Loritz, a counselor at Thousand Oaks High School.

Many of the district’s students in those programs and other preparatory courses come from homes in which parents have college or advanced degrees. From the moment these students start school, one message is clear: College attendance is expected.

“We have a very college-oriented curriculum,” said Susan Loganbill, a Westlake High School counselor. “I think you will find our grade point averages are higher, the number of AP (advanced placement) exams are astronomical.”

This year, 435 students will graduate from Westlake High and most are planning to go to college, Loganbill said.

Ventura student Jenny Gutierrez, on the other hand, is not a typical college-bound student. She emigrated from Honduras seven years ago and got involved with gangs when she lived in Oxnard and later in Ventura.

After experimenting with drugs and fighting with her parents, she eventually landed in a group home, said Jenny, 17, a senior at Buena High School. That’s when she decided to turn her life around and clean up her act, Jenny said.

She said she repeated courses she had failed in summer school and took extra units this year to make up for lost time. And she applied to four colleges, three Cal State campuses and UC Santa Barbara.

Her first choice was Santa Barbara, but she said she was turned down because her grades were not high enough. So she went with her second choice, Cal State Long Beach.

“I wanted UC Santa Barbara real bad because of the name,” she said. “But Long Beach is OK too.”

Given rising state school tuition and fees, attending college out of state has become a more attractive and affordable option for an increasing number of students, Loganbill said. And then there are some students who are leaving California simply for the prestige of Eastern colleges, no matter what the price.

So what is the trick to acceptance in the Ivy League or Stanford?

“It takes being very, very bright and also being an athlete, a musician, an actor or a minority,” said Jean Wise, a counselor at Buena High. “Or the other half is to be a relative of an alumnus.”

“You have to be tops at everything, but you have to have something really special too,” said Katie Spayde, one of 11 valedictorians with a 4.0 grade point average who will graduate from Westlake High on June 16.

For Spayde, basketball was the unique factor that won her admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A varsity guard on Westlake’s team for four years, Spayde has earned a spot on MIT’s women’s basketball team.

Westlake High senior Brooke Shirey will attend Duke University next fall. Like Spayde, Shirey has a unique background that caught the attention of officials at Duke: The 17-year-old is a former international ballroom dancer, ranked third in the world at one time.

“I think it just showed I was different,” she said. “I stood out.”

So far, acceptance letters from Yale, Stanford and “a massive number of UCs” have been reported to the counseling office at Westlake High, Loganbill said. Stephen Bennett, a counselor at Nordhoff High School in Ojai, said the bulk of his college-bound students will be attending University of California schools.

“We do very well at all of the UCs, including Berkeley,” Bennett said. “But Stanford continues to be difficult for most of our students.”

Students have until May 1 to commit to their schools of choice.

In the meantime, college sweat shirts and other attire have become springtime fashion on most high school campuses as the main topic of conversation turns to who is planning to go where, students said.

“I see people with USC hats and sporting the clothes,” Spayde said. “I don’t know anybody who is just going to work.”

Times correspondent Catherine Saillant contributed to this story.