Why We Do It

Spencer Strelsov
Written By Guest User

I joined Matriculate in the fall of my sophomore year, compelled by its mission of assisting low-income, high-achieving high school students applying to college. Over a year later, as I’m wrapping up my advising of two amazing high schoolers, I wanted to take some time to reflect on why I decided to join Matriculate in the first place – and hopefully encourage future Yalies to consider advising as well.

As a first-generation college student from Louisville, Kentucky, I experienced firsthand what it felt like to not have direction throughout the college application process. But I was lucky. One of the first places I turned was my high school’s counseling office, and though I went to a large and very much underfunded public school, my high school counselor eventually became my mentor. She knew everything about crafting a strong application, and she was there for me through all aspects of the process, from building a college list to making a final decision. I would never have even applied to Yale had it not been for her mentorship and support, and it’s because of her that I decided to become an Advising Fellow with Matriculate. 

There’s lots of work that needs to be done in educational equity. Looking at Yale, for example: 2.1% of students come from families in the bottom 20% of national income, while 19% come from the top 1%. There are more students at Yale in the top 0.1% – almost 4% of the student body – than there are in the bottom 20%. It goes without saying that there needs to be a much stronger push for socioeconomic diversity, and specifically at Yale.

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As any college student knows, the college application process is one of the most difficult and stressful parts of high school. Having a mentor or advisor can completely change how a student approaches the process as well as the ultimate outcome. Mentorship helps directly address a major inequity in college admissions: first-generation, low-income students are simply not applying to selective colleges. It’s not that these students can’t get into highly selective schools, nor that they do less well than their wealthier classmates. In fact, first-gen, low-income students that do apply to and attend a selective college often eventually make a similar level of income as classmates whose families make in the top 0.1% of income in the nation. One of the core issues is simply that these students don’t apply.

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That’s where Matriculate comes in. Matriculate built a program that allows current college students to mentor and advise high school juniors and seniors through the entire college application process. Covering every part of the application, Advising Fellows hold virtual one-on-one meetings with High School Fellows, tailoring advising directly to the student – for some High School Fellows, it might be working on finding their voice in a supplemental essay. For others, it might be building a resume and navigating financial aid. The ultimate goal is to help high-achieving, low-income students put their best foot forward in applying to schools that are an academic, social, and financial fit for them.

We want to increase access to college not only through advising on specific content areas, but by providing peer-to-peer support. Though everyone’s experience is different, Advising Fellows have often recently gone through the application process themselves, providing an invaluable empathetic lens that’s unique to the program. Though Matriculate isn’t perfect, its Advising Fellows are doing real work to close the college application gap between low and high-income students. By joining as an Advising Fellow, you’re helping to make higher education more accessible and equitable, one student at a time.

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