Dream big, counselor tells the college-bound

The blowtorch caught everyone by surprise.

It glowed blue in the darkened classroom at A.M. Miller High School in Fontana as the man holding it asked, in a slightly unhinged voice: “Why am I using a blowtorch, and who the heck am I?”

No one answered.

“I am Danny Ruderman,” he proclaimed, “and, yes, I am an alumnus of Fontana High School, your archrival.”

Blowtorch. Archrival. Something unsettling was taking place here.

But Ruderman did not flambe any students at Miller that day. Just as in this story, the blowtorch -- which he quickly extinguished -- was nothing more than an attention-getting device.

Ruderman, a private college counselor, was on a peaceful mission, to let these high school seniors know that college isn’t a crazy dream, even for students of limited means, and that they should consider widening their horizons beyond the local community college or Cal State campus.

It’s kind of a personal thing with him.

Ruderman was a standout student at Fontana High, class of 1990, who dreamed of attending Stanford University. One day, he was summoned by the principal.

“She called me in her office and said, ‘Danny, I heard you want to apply to Stanford,’ ” he told the Miller students. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Don’t.’ ”

As he recalled it, the principal told him that schools like Stanford didn’t admit students from places like Fontana, a fast-growing corner of the Inland Empire where plenty of people earn less than the $33,000 that Stanford now charges in annual tuition. He remembers her saying: “I don’t want you to go through that kind of rejection, so why don’t you just apply to local schools?”

With the support of his counselor, Eileen Parker, he applied to Stanford anyway and wound up getting accepted off the waiting list.

When his father, a car salesman who never graduated from high school, said the family couldn’t afford the tuition, Ruderman applied for financial aid. His parents ended up paying only slightly more than they would have had he attended a public university.

Parker, now a counselor at Miller, says Ruderman’s memory is probably a bit off. She doesn’t believe the principal (who is no longer at Fontana High) discouraged him from applying to Stanford, but more likely told him to make sure he had backup schools in case he didn’t get in.

Still, Ruderman’s story has a core of truth. When it comes to applying to college, students in California public schools are often left to their own devices, at least compared with their counterparts at elite private schools.

California’s public school counselors have the largest caseloads in the nation -- about twice as many students per counselor as the national average. According to a recent report by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling, there is one counselor for every 994 high school students in the state.

By contrast, parochial schools average about one counselor per 250 students, and elite private schools have an even narrower ratio, about 1 to 65, according to Patricia McDonough, author of the association’s report and a professor of education at UCLA. They also tend to have counselors who handle nothing but college guidance, whereas many public school counselors do triple duty -- college counseling, scheduling and discipline.

The best, and best-funded, counselors do far more than just give students information and make sure they take the right classes. They help arrange college trips. They seek out the best college for a particular student and make calls to college admissions offices. They make sure that students take the right classes and participate in the right extracurricular activities. They shepherd them into SAT preparation courses and encourage them to retake the test if there’s a chance they can do better.

Moreover, McDonough said, students at the most affluent private schools are the ones who are the most likely to hire a private counselor -- someone like Ruderman, who charges up to $5,000 per student -- to get even more intense help. (Ruderman’s price varies according to the intensity of the counseling and the students’ ability to pay. Some pay nothing.)

“All kids deserve access to good college counseling,” McDonough said, “and for the most part, we’ve gutted the profession, and California has a lock on last place in counseling resources.”

Ruderman, 33, who works in Los Angeles, saw a marketing opportunity in this void and wrote a book, “The Ultimate College Acceptance System,” designed to take students step by step, in a teen-friendly style, through the process of applying to colleges.

He also, coincidentally, renewed a connection with a high school friend, Carlos Bravo, who never left Fontana and is now running for the school board. It was Bravo who suggested that Ruderman come to Miller, where a number of their old teachers are working, and conduct a series of mini-workshops for students.

Ruderman’s pitch to students can be boiled down to this: There is a college out there that is perfect for you. If you’re poor, there’s a pot of scholarship and grant money waiting for you somewhere. That money can make private colleges cheaper than public schools.

Finally, don’t write a college application essay about your grandmother, no matter how much you love her.

“I don’t know why,” he told the Miller students, “but everybody wants to write about their grandmother.”

The students listened intently, although for some, Ruderman’s advice covered well-worn ground.

Sulmy Pivaral, a senior, said she didn’t hear a lot that she didn’t already know.

“He made me feel like I’m on the right track,” she said.

Jesus Santoyo, though, was inspired by Ruderman and said he would now make Stanford his No. 1 choice. “When he told me how big the engineering department was, that really made me want to go,” he said.

As it turns out, Fontana schools may need Ruderman less than many. Parker, the counselor, said she has a caseload of about 400 students, far below the state average, and tries to spend time with each student every year, guiding them toward college.

Miller High holds workshops to help students fill out college applications and learn about financial aid, and encourages students to apply to a range of colleges, Parker said. Counselors make sure that low-income students take advantage of fee waivers for SATs and college applications.

“We tell them all the time: Just because you’re low-income, it doesn’t mean you can’t go to college,” she said.

Still, she conceded, there’s a limit to how much individual attention the school can provide. And Miller sends a relatively small portion of its students to four-year colleges, and almost none to the top tier of private universities.

In her more than 20 years as a counselor in Fontana, Parker said, Ruderman is the only student she has counseled who went to Stanford.

She can count the number of Ivy Leaguers on the fingers of one hand.

That’s OK by Ruderman, who stresses that students can thrive at lesser-known, less prestigious schools. “You don’t have to go to Harvard to get a great education,” he said.

And although he believes that affluent students at elite private high schools get a lot more help than most public school students, he sees a flip-side to the equation.

“Private school families are a lot more stressed than public school families,” he said. “There’s so much pressure on these private school kids to go to the Ivies. I tell them, ‘It’s just college, people! ... There’s 2,700 schools in the country. You’ll get into one of them.’ ”

mitchell.landsberg

@latimes.com