STATEMENT XLV

Being the first in my family to go to school in the US, I understood little of the college process and what advanced classes such as Honors, AP’s and College courses worked. No one explained to me how it worked. Everyone just assumed you knew. If my counselor hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known that I got waivers for college applications and the AP tests.

I remember emailing my counselor constantly because I didn’t understand something that most kids seemed to already know. However, the biggest struggle was not knowing whether I could even attend college or not. As a DACA student, there was so many questions I had and no one ever knew how to give me an answer. I would always have to wait till everyone left the room during those college meetings before I could ask the teacher/counselor about my situation. And their answer was ALWAYS “I don’t know.” I asked my counselor if I could apply to certain scholarships that asked for legal residency or citizenship. Explaining how I’m not illegal but neither legal. And all he said was, “I don’t know, just apply and see what happens.” And thus I applied to 25 scholarships.

I spent hours each night on top of all my school work and work during weekends applying to all these scholarships. And in the end I got rejected from 24. Half because I wasn’t legal. The only place I could go for help was google. And that’s how I found scholarships for DACA and immigrant students. Had I just listened to my counselor and not gone out of my way to extensively research scholarships I would never have gotten the scholarship I have now.

Of all the resources the school has, its lack of support or even acknowledgement of its immigrant students is despicable. Of everything the school has to offer, us immigrants still feel like we live in the shadows at school.

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Student, NRHS Class of 2018