A Longer Road to Acceptance

Every day, 17-year-old Dezaree Sherman sifts through her mail, hoping that somewhere in UCLA’s admissions office, someone looking for a diamond in the rough took the time to carefully read her personal essay.

The gifted Dorsey High School senior’s life has suffered some difficult twists and turns over the last few years--circumstances she feels help explain her weakened grades and SAT scores.

In the past, a strong recommendation and a well-written personal essay helped boost many minority students like Sherman into the UC system. But this year--the first year of Proposition 209’s ban on affirmative action in California government institutions--is different. Sherman’s race no longer can be taken into account by admissions officers.

She and a handful of Dorsey’s primarily black and Latino students, who came of age in a world of affirmative action, have spent the past several weeks in limbo, waiting anxiously for word on whether they got into their first choices--UCLA or Berkeley, in most cases.

Sherman has already been accepted by several other colleges farther from home, but UCLA, which will notify her of its decision later this week, is her first pick.

“I spent hours writing and rewriting that essay,” she said.

To sit in Dorsey’s career and college center this winter and spring has been to watch the new rules of Proposition 209 trickle down to the grass roots. Of the school’s 300 graduating seniors, about two dozen have applied to UC campuses. Dorsey’s college counselor, Gloria Taylor, says as many as 20 seniors have been admitted in a year; she is anticipating far fewer when the 1998-99 academic year begins.

Those students on the margin of eligibility for California public colleges--students whose acceptance might have hinged on their race--are now grappling to find ways to become more competitive.

Students at the southwest Los Angeles campus, which has the most concentrated African American enrollment of any Los Angeles Unified School District high school, still receive a degree of preference from UCLA because they come from what has historically been a relatively low-performing school. But a student’s race can no longer be factored into the admissions equation.

“Dezaree is definitely a child who with a good essay would have been accepted in UCLA under affirmative action,” said Taylor.

Arthur Orozco was another example of a student Taylor said would have made the UC cut last year. Instead, he was rejected by UC San Diego despite a 3.6 GPA and a 1090 SAT score.

Orozco, who is still awaiting word from Berkeley, said he will pass on the lesson of Proposition 209 to his younger siblings.

“I’m going to warn my brother and sister that much more is expected of them,” said Orozco, whose father is a mechanic and whose mother operates a video game store. “It’s my responsibility to teach them the tricks of the system.”

Dezaree Sherman’s life started to crumble around the same time the rules of the college admissions game changed.

So the soft-spoken girl, who at times seems painfully shy, put much of her faith in an essay to UCLA detailing her hopes for the future and explaining some of the hardships of her past.

She would be the first in her family to attend college, she wrote. She planned to study medicine in order to make a difference in her community--a place of “aging apartments, modest single-family homes and schools in need of much repair and resources.” She’d already begun making a difference by collecting and distributing food for the poor, she told admissions officials.

She told them, too, about how her mother and father had separated, how her older sister left home after having a baby, and how she missed time in school after being injured in a car accident. She told them how she juggles schoolwork and outside activities with the need to help her mother financially, and to care for her newborn niece.

“I have the ability to perform exceptionally well in school, but I have not been able to realize this potential because of my economic and educational background,” she wrote. “College is all about giving me choices.”

Her life experiences have given her strength, she wrote. “I am a woman in process and my strong personal integrity and desire for success through a few challenges will propel me forward into the 21st century.”

Battle Lines Are Clearer Than Ever

To proponents of affirmative action, Sherman’s letter is an example of why Proposition 209 is a moral outrage, robbing minorities of a level playing field.

“How are you going to compare me with someone who went to prep school?” asked another Dorsey student, Ischimina McCullom, whose father died when she was young and who plans to be the first of her mother’s three children to go to college. “I’m less advantaged. They have a mother and father, they can practice for the SATs, afford workshops. Compare me with someone in my situation.”

But to advocates of Proposition 209, Sherman’s letter has equal symbolic value: Let her be evaluated and assisted on the basis of her individual hardships, they say--not the fact that she is black.

Sherman is among the dozens of students who stream in and out of the campus bungalow that serves as the school’s career center.

“She asks a thousand questions,” said college counselor Taylor.

“I’m a pest,” Sherman says sheepishly, admitting that she doesn’t get much help at home filling out college applications.

Over the course of the year, the college office becomes a home away from home, a bridge to the future. It’s the place where information on SAT tutoring programs is readily available and where information on scholarships can be found. It’s where students are encouraged to boost their grade-point averages by taking college-level courses at nearby West Los Angeles College.

It’s the place where a recruiter from Texas Southern stopped by to meet students, offering $85,000 in scholarships. It’s the place where former students now at Berkeley and UCLA return to retrace their roots and to encourage Dorsey’s best to follow.

Banners of campuses from Howard University to UC Santa Barbara adorn the walls, and booklets on summer programs at UCLA and Cornell University are there for the asking.

This week has been a crucial one, with acceptance or rejection letters scheduled to be mailed.

Orozco is still waiting for word on his first choice--Berkeley. If Berkeley rejects him, he’ll go to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he’s been accepted and would major in engineering.

McCullom anticipates a letter of rejection from UCLA, but maintains her optimism.

The daughter of a postal clerk, she holds down a full-time job at Burger King. McCullom expects to be admitted to Cal State Long Beach.

“If I were accepted there, I would make the best of it,” she said. “I know my SAT scores and GPA are not very competitive, but I’m not going to let that stop me. If I have to, I’ll go to Long Beach and then transfer to UCLA. “

McCullom said her early years of high school were hampered by several run-ins with the law in which she ended up in jail for stealing a car.

It wasn’t until after a teacher told her she would never amount to anything that she decided to change, became more focused and more successful in school, she said.

“‘It wasn’t like someone put a gun to my head,” she said. “I was just dealing with a negative crowd. Then I decided I wanted to be educated, highly educated. I wanted to be successful. Then career plans just set in.”

She said her mother and probation officer told her she had potential to channel her intelligence into something positive.

“They gave me the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “It was time that I gave myself the benefit too.” Her grades improved and so did her prospects for going to college.

She titled the essay she wrote to UCLA admissions officers “From Juvenile Delinquent to Honor Student.”

McCullom hopes to be an aeronautical engineer. “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone, but someone to be proud of,” she said.

Looking Beyond California

Counselor Taylor says that the flap over Proposition 209 has discouraged some students from applying to California state universities or UC campuses. “They say, ‘If you don’t want me, then I’m not coming.’ . . . These students have options where to go to college, whether to a UC or not.”

Aware of that sentiment, more historically black colleges have recruited at Dorsey this year.

Georgette Countee, a 16-year-old senior, is not worried about whether she will get into UCLA. With a GPA above 4.0 and an SAT over 1200, she has options. She hasn’t heard from UCLA, but neither has she heard from Yale, Stanford or Spelman.

If she had it her way, she’d be going to Spelman, in Atlanta.

“I want to go somewhere where there are smaller classes, you know your teachers. UCLA is too impersonal.”

Others do not view their inability to make it in the UC system as a failure, but as an opportunity to go elsewhere.

John-Paul Birch, 17, knew that with a C-minus average, he wasn’t going to UCLA. But he’s always been a good test-taker, so when he scored 1260 on his SAT--the highest in the school--he knew his future was picking up. He is exploring the possibility of going to one of the California state universities.

“I’ve seen friends of mine in college and it’s motivated me to succeed,” he said.

With California schools out of the picture in some cases, Taylor said she made the point of encouraging students to take chances.

“If you go fishing, you might get a bite,” she said.

Her favorite fisherman was Eric Irving, who works in the cafeteria and played on the basketball team.

“He is not angry, he’s a humble kid,” she said. In December he decided to change the direction of his life. He dropped off the basketball team and entered a tutorial program to improve his SAT score.

“He knows what is significant and what is important. He sets up his values and makes decisions. He learned,” she said.

Irving pushed his SAT score to 960 from 760 after one month of tutoring. He still has a shot at Cal State Fullerton, but has begun to relish the notion of going to college out of state.

“I think it will help me mature,” he said. “I want to see what is going on in other parts of the country, and not just being sheltered in Los Angeles.”