South Bronx HS helps students get jump on admission process
over 50% of their classes with early decision. Admissions chances are double or triple for some schools. That’s just a huge opportunity we didn’t want our students to be missing out on,” said Rebekah Bambling, the school’s director of college counseling.
In affluent high schools, early decision applications are standard. An analysis by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation found almost 30% of wealthy, high-achieving students applied to college early decision, compared to only 16% of low-income highschoolers with similar academic results.
Staff at KIPP, where most students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, say early applications not only boost students’ chances of getting in, but also make it more likely they’ll eventually graduate.
That’s partly because students have a better shot through early decision of getting into the colleges that do the best job at nurturing and retaining students. It’s also because the process of picking and committing to a single school early can help students find one that’s a true match, said principal Carlos Capellan.
“It goes both ways,” Capellan said. “The school is investing in you early, so there will be supports.”
Even so, only a fraction of the school’s senior class applied early, officials acknowledged. KIPP college counselors target students who earn GPAs of 3.5 and above, Bambling said — a pool of about 40 students — and encourage them to visit their top choice schools and consider early decision.
For those students who opt in, the results can be transformative. Around 80% of students who applied early in 2017 and 2018 got in, Bambling said.