Program works to counter low Hispanic attendance

A recent study found Hispanic students are choosing colleges and universities because they are close to home, which could be good news for schools like TCU that say they want to raise their minority student population.

TCU is in the middle of a community that has a high percentage of minorities - especially Hispanics - yet the number of Hispanic students at TCU remains low.

Fort Worth has a Hispanic population that accounts for nearly 33 percent of its total population, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Fifty-five percent of the students enrolled in the Fort Worth Independent School District are Hispanic, according to the district's 2006-2007 profile.

Last year 3,587 students graduated from FWISD schools. Sixty-six came to TCU this fall. Twenty of those students were Hispanic, said Amanda Sanchez, a research analyst in Institutional Research.

A study conducted by Excelencia in Education, an organization that aims to increase Hispanic achievement in higher education, found almost half of all Latino undergraduates are concentrated at 6 percent of colleges nationwide.

These colleges, which the study called Hispanic Serving Institutions, had low costs, close proximity to home and an approachable campus. All were located in large Latino communities. There are more than 37 Hispanic Serving Institutions in Texas, including private universities such as St. Edward's in Austin and the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. TCU is not one of them.

The Reasons

TCU is not alone in its low percentage of Hispanic students. Southern Methodist University had a student body last year that was 6 percent Hispanic, according to its fact sheets. Baylor's freshman class was 9.2 percent Hispanic, according to its factbook.

But this may not be because of anything TCU is failing to do, said Mike Marshall, assistant director of admissions.

"Not many (Hispanic) high school students are aware of how to prepare for college," he said. "The curriculum that they are taking in their high schools isn't preparing them for college, so they're not prepared to make the transition."

Although 26 percent of the Hispanic Serving Institutions named in the Excelencia study were private schools, for many Hispanic students private schools can be intimidating, said Greg Trevino, director of Inclusiveness & Intercultural Services.

"There's a perception that TCU is unattainable," Trevino said. "Many Hispanic students feel that because TCU is expensive, and because of their own financial situation, there's no way they can afford it."

Many of the students in FWISD high schools don't go to college because of citizenship issues, said Roxanne Wueste, academic coordinator for advanced programs at North Side High School.

"We educate a lot of kids who don't even have a Social Security number, and as soon as they graduate, they become essentially invisible," Wueste said.

North Side High School, located near the Stockyards, is 94 percent Hispanic. The school has a graduation rate of 40 percent, Wueste said. For many of the families, finances play a big role in whether the students go to college or not.

"A lot of Hispanic families can't afford for their kids to go to college because they depend on them to work and to help the family survive," Wueste said.

Despite all of this, North Side had the highest number of Hispanic graduates - five - come to TCU out of all FWISD schools.

Filicia Hernandez, a sophomore business major and graduate of FWISD high school Diamond Hill-Jarvis, said she thinks there aren't enough programs helping Hispanic students get into college.

"No one really talked to us about college," Hernandez said.

Another reason TCU isn't a prime choice for Hispanic students is because of its lack of Hispanic students, Trevino said.

"One reason more Hispanic students aren't coming here is because they know that TCU is a predominantly white campus, and that the minority population - the Hispanic population - definitely is not very big," Trevino said.

Hernandez said people find it surprising she was able to attend TCU.

"It seems that most people I talk to find it really rare and quite an accomplishment for me to be a student here," she said, "not because I had to compete with the largest incoming freshman class at the time, but because I am a Latina."

Maria Ibarra, a junior movement science major also from Diamond Hill-Jarvis, said one of the main reasons she came to TCU was because it's close to home.

"I'm very family-oriented, and I didn't want to go to a school that was too far away," Ibarra said.

Although TCU is less than 15 minutes away from her home, she said, she still suffered from a little bit of culture shock coming from a high school where the majority was Hispanic to TCU, where Hispanics are the minority. But Ibarra said that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

"I think it offers a different outlook on American culture for students like me who come from primarily Hispanic communities," Ibarra said. "You're forced to interact with people outside of your culture."

Getting Here

Despite the odds against local Hispanic students who want to come to TCU, there are students who make it here - many of them thanks to a program put in place to bring minority FWISD students to TCU.

The Community Scholars Program is for high-achieving minority students from nine participating local high schools - seven from FWISD, one from Arlington ISD and one from Dallas ISD.

"It was initially set up to go after high schools within FWISD that we didn't really get a lot of applications from," said Trevino, who works with sophomore and junior students in the Community Scholars Program.

"We were losing a lot of quality students to schools like Baylor, SMU, Rice, Stanford and Harvard, which are phenomenal schools, but the students weren't even looking at TCU," Trevino said.