March 29, 2000

The Wall Street Journal ---

Camp Offers Poor Kids A Bridge to College Life ----

By Jim Carlton--Staff Reporter Wall Street Journal

PALO ALTO -- Ian Ehrenreich remembers the day he left the Sacramento mobile home where his family was living on welfare to attend classes at Stanford University, where everybody seemed rich -- or certainly richer than he.

"To be honest, I had a hard time because I didn't have that many people I could relate to," says 19-year-old Mr. Ehrenreich, a human-biology major.

Lourdes Flores, 22, has similar memories. The daughter of migrant workers who picked berries herself, Ms. Flores recently graduated from Stanford with a bachelor's degree in international relations.

What helped Mr. Ehrenreich and Ms. Flores get to where they are now? Attending a summer camp that is more like boot camp -- one that bridges the gap between growing up in a poor household and attending four years of higher education.

The Quest Scholars Program, a six-week, live-in course started at Stanford University in 1994, helped them cross the psychological and academic barriers that so many low-income students face at top universities.

It embraces both traditional and progressive approaches, employing rigorous academics and, at the same time, adopting such comforting techniques as group hugs and talk sessions. Stanford provides the program with facilities at cost and professors for some classes.

Underwritten with about $200,000 a year in private grants, Quest targets gifted high-school students from low-income families. There isn't any income limit because people making more money can face economic hardships if they have large households. For example, a family making $30,000 a year would be classified as low income if it includes as many as 10 members. The median household income among participating households has been $20,000 a year for the past three years.

"Our focus is to take the gifted kids who are low-income and at high risk not to fulfill their dreams," says Michael McCullough, a 34-year-old emergency-room physician and Stanford graduate who co-directs the program with his fiancee, 29-year-old Ana Rowena Mallari, a recent graduate of Stanford's law school.

With applications now being reviewed for this summer's camp, its alumni include Johnny Madrid, a Los Angeles teen who lived in 19 foster homes after his parents died in an accident. "This program has been a diamond in my rocky life," says Mr. Madrid, who is attending Stanford.

California has plenty of programs that aim to prepare for college so-called disadvantaged youth -- who are disproportionately black and Hispanic -- especially in the aftermath of Proposition 209, which barred racial preferences by state government, including its universities. But most of those programs, usually administered by public agencies, have shown only moderate success at increasing college matriculation. The privately run Quest boasts a perfect score: 100% of its 100 graduates have entered college, most to Stanford or such Ivy League schools as Harvard and Brown. And not one has dropped out.

By contrast, a 1999 U.S. Education Department study of Upward Bound, the federal program for low-income students, found no effect on such outcomes as college enrollment or quality of college attended. It serves about 42,000 students, with an annual cost each of about $4,200, about $700 more than Quest. (Upward Bound admits only students from households below the poverty line or in which neither parent is a college graduate.)

Similarly, University of California regents were recently warned by some academic experts to improve their outreach to elementary and high schools or face continued declines in the number of minority students attending the system's most competitive institutions. One of the experts, Patricia Gandara, a professor of education at UC-Davis, told the regents that many of the UC programs aren't rigorous enough.

UC officials defend their outreach efforts, saying spending has increased to a planned budget of about $250 million annually from just $60 million prior to passage of Proposition 209, with programs aimed at helping students beginning in early childhood. A recent report by the California Postsecondary Education Commission found that 65% of high-school participants in UC's largest outreach programs went on to college, compared with 53% for all high-school students in California.

One program, Mesa, which is designed to help high-school students prepare for math-based fields, has sent more than 90% of its graduates to college, UC officials say. They declined to break out the cost per student, saying it's difficult to calculate because the high schools assist in many of the programs. About 125,000 K-12 students are involved with UC programs, including about 25,000 in Mesa. "You could question if these are the best programs, but they are starting when the children are in kindergarten," says Karl Pister, UC's vice president for educational outreach.

Quest is more successful without having to spend very much. It costs about $3,500 per student to run the summer operation, and $10,000 each to support them through college. The program ignores race and ethnicity; some of the students are white and living in middle-class areas, but their families suffer hardships. Even so, it's no easy trick to getting disadvantaged young people to carry their drive over into college and -- perhaps as important -- attain academic parity with students from more affluent schools. There's a grueling regimen of dawn-to-midnight studies, speeches and reports, while being cut off from TV, radio and video games. Junk food is prohibited, as is flirting.

Dr. McCullough says he has worked more than 100 hours a week juggling his doctor duties with Quest's needs, while Ms. Mallari has devoted herself full time to the program. The staff of 16 is largely made up of Quest graduates, who act as mentors. The selection process begins each February; this year, enrollment is open to students anywhere in the U.S. rather than just California, where 1,200 high-school campuses are blanketed with applications. Others are recruited through its www.questscholars.org site.

The couple winnows the 400 to 600 applications a year to 125 finalists, who are subjected to four hours of interviews. Each summer's class is about 20 students. "We are looking for maturity and reflection," Ms. Mallari says. The final step: completing an eight-page entrance exam -- about three times longer than Harvard's.

The program's curriculum is loosely arranged around an environmental theme. This past summer, students had classes in population biology and rain-forest conservation. "It gives students something of a taste of urgency on getting on with helping others," Dr. McCullough says.

The students are so alike in background that they quickly bond. Group-hug sessions are held nightly, and they keep daily journals for Dr. McCullough and Ms. Mallari. Also in the evening, they gather round to talk about family struggles. At last summer's session, for instance, 17-year-old Golda Philip was mobbed by teary-eyed sympathizers after she confided about her efforts to gain more fatherly affection. "You guys," she responded, "I have been inspired by like the smallest action from you over the past five weeks."

Dr. McCullough says this helps the students build a support group that will help them in college. Both he and Ms. Mallari hope to oversee creation of similar programs at other universities in coming years. Already, Harvard officials say they plan to start a Harvard chapter of Quest this summer. But it could be tough to match the success of Quest, which has chiefly benefited from the couple's dedication. "Without the encouragement of Michael and Ana," recalls Ms. Flores, "I would have been afraid to try many things, afraid to believe in myself."

Quest Scholars Program Addendum to the Wall Street Journal Article: Quest will begin a new chapter at Harvard this summer (2000), called The Quest Scholars Program at Harvard. This effort is being spearheaded by Dr. Dari Shalon (President and co-founder of Quest at Harvard) and Dana Gavrieli (Director and co-founder of Quest at Harvard). Dr. Shalon is also the director of the Harvard Genomics Institute. Gavrieli was a Quest graduate in 1995.

The Quest efforts at Stanford, Harvard and our national expansion are being supported by the generosity of many private individuals and foundations, including Edward Fein through his Edward Fein Foundation, Helen and Peter Bing, Susan Ford, Heidi and David Hoffman and many others. For a complete listing of sponsors see our Quest support page. For ways you can help students in the Quest Scholars Program please visit our Quest sponsors site.

Thank you for your interest in the Harvard and Stanford chapters of the Quest Scholars Program.