Cross Campus

Lawrence High Students Rely on Alumni for College Guidance

Fifty Lawrence High School (LHS) Seniors travelled through the Greater Boston area this week to visit several LHS alumni attending area colleges and universities.

Nearly 90 percent of Lawrence High School students will be the first of their families to apply to and attend college. As many of their families can’t provide them information about colleges, Humanities and Leadership Development (HLD) students often make use of alumni connections for college guidance.

“It was a good opportunity to see the next step of our education and see what it’s going to be like from a real college student’s perspective,” said Shannell Sanchez LHS ’14.

The Gear Up program and Melissa Martin, LHS Readiness Counselor, organized this year’s college trip. While organizing so much alumni involvement proved to be difficult, it was important to offer the LHS students that direct alumni connection, said Martin.

The trip began with a tour of Boston College (BC) by Phong Tran LHS ’13. Tran took the students through the main campus venues, most notably the library and her dormitory room.

Students experienced first-hand the atmosphere of both a small and large student body. While 9,100 students attend BC, only 1,800 attend Emmanuel College. Despite its small student body, the students were impressed by the size of Emmanuel’s academic buildings and student dining room.

The bus stopped at other Boston schools such as Lesley University, Boston University and Northeastern University. While not as intimate as an on-campus tour, the students still noticed the consistent hustle and bustle of college students rushing to class.

The last stop on the tour was Suffolk University. Drawing upon three years worth of experience at Suffolk, Tevin Cruz LHS ’11 answered the students’ questions about sports and dorm life.

Once again on the bus, the students received drive-by tours of Lesley University, Boston University and Northeastern. Outside you could see the hundreds of college kids rushing around the busy sidewalks trying their best to get to class on time. The next tour that they went on was of Emmanuel College, which was a much smaller school than Boston College. The students learned the differences between a huge school with 9,000 plus kids and a small liberal arts school with around 1,800 students. They broke up into groups and took tours of the College of Science buildings and learned about the pharmaceutical building on campus. The tour guides brought them to the schools huge café and they got to peek into the women’s basketball team having practice. It seems as if everyone was in a hurry because the student tour guides had to get going to their next class just like Phong and ended the tour in order to make it in time.

Driving down the busy streets of Boston, students had a chance to view the other four schools apart of the Fenway Contortion, which is made up of the colleges in the Fenway area, including Emmanuel College.

The one aspect of the trip that Martin was especially proud of was getting alumni to help out with the tours.