Unlocking the College Prep Scholars: Questbridge Insights and Resources with Dr. Christian Martell

Unlock the secrets of the College Prep Scholars (CPS) program with Dr. Christian Martell from Questbridge. We zoom in on CPS and its role as a stepping stone for high-achieving, low-income, high school juniors aiming for the Questbridge National College Match. Learn about the program's history, its application process, and the unparalleled strategic advantages it offers. 

Dr. Martell shares insights into the eligibility criteria, and we tackle the complexities of college applications in a post-pandemic world. This conversation is a must for educators, offering a roadmap to navigate the nuances of academic and extracurricular narratives. Dr. Martell and I also dissect the financial support these programs offer, making elite education more accessible. 

We wrap up with a discussion on the power of educator referrals and the critical role of teachers and counselors in the application process. This episode is an valuable resource for anyone invested in changing the narrative around college access for low-income and first-generation students. 

Links to reach out to Christian and the Questbridge programs.

• Christian's LinkedIn
• QuestBridge website
• questions@questbridge.org 
• QuestBridge CPS Application
• 2023 College Prep Scholar Profile

Please help others find this podcast by rating and reviewing wherever you listen!

You can find me at https://www.firstgenfm.com/ and on LinkedIn. My email is jen@firstgenfm.com.

Transcript

Jen: 0:08

Hello, I'm Jennifer Shown, your host for the First Gen FN podcast. Please call me Jen. Each week, I'll share my insights and ideas, solo or with a special guest, on creating opportunities to celebrate and support the First Gen College and College Bound students we work with. My goal with this podcast is to connect you with other high school and college educators, to share our successes and challenges and create a web of First Gen advocates. Thank you for joining me today. Now let's dive into this week's episode. Welcome to the First Gen FN podcast. Dr Christian Martell, I'm so happy that you're here to talk with me. Today we're going to have a great conversation about Questbridge and the college prep scholars and, for those of you who may not know Dr Martell, she started with Questbridge back in 2022. She is located in Houston and she's a native Texan, so she's happy to be back in Houston and, like I said, we're going to talk about the college prep scholars. Christian, welcome to the podcast.

Jen: 1:14

Yeah, thank you for having me how long has the college prep scholars program been going on?

Christian: 1:22

Yeah, the college prep scholars program is one of two high school programs that we have at Questbridge, the other being our program for high school seniors, the national college match, which is definitely our premier program. But the college prep scholars program for high school juniors is actually sort of the first step for students to come into the Questbridge programming, and it's been around for quite a few years, but not as long as our national college match, which states back to 2003.

Jen: 1:51

Yeah, nice, and your application is open right now, which is why it's the perfect time for us to talk about. Do you ever abbreviate college prep scholars, or do you always say the full word?

Christian: 2:03

Yeah, we tend to refer to it as CPS.

Jen: 2:06

Then we're going to go with CPS. I think that's much better. So tell me about CPS. If I'm working in a high school or I'm talking to students, how do I know who might be eligible and how can I get them to find out more about it?

Christian: 2:21

Yeah, absolutely so. Our eligibility for both the college prep scholars program and the national college match is the same, except for the grade change. But for juniors, we are also looking for high achieving, low income students, and so high achieving for us means that you have students who are earning primarily A's and the most rigorous courses available to them at their school. They are involved in either activities at their school or take active roles in their community or in their households. A lot of our students have a lot of sort of family responsibilities, and many of them hold part-time jobs and other things, and so you like to see students that are engaged outside of the classroom as well as inside of the classroom, and, of course, they show intellectual curiosity and great writing ability all the things that our college partners like to look for down the road. So that's really who we're looking for in terms of the high achieving part for students, and when we talk about students coming from low income backgrounds, we are really saying you know, many of our students are coming from your typical family of four with around 65,000 annual income and minimal assets. Now, of course, there are students that come from households that are smaller than four or larger than four that might make less or more than 65,000. So we don't have absolute cutoffs. We're really looking at the full context of the student, both academically and financially. So if the student believes that they have faced significant financial challenges, there's a lot of space in our application for them to be able to provide that situation, and so we see many students using those additional spaces in the application to let us know.

Christian: 4:04

Often there might be other things that aren't clearly visible from. You know income statements and things like that that we're asking for, including high medical bills or job losses and things like that. So the minimal asset part is another piece. You know what is a minimal asset? Students can own homes and their families can own businesses. That doesn't mean that you have no assets to your name but, of course, if you really need for students that do not have multimillion dollar homes and yachts and things like that, no, yeah that's what we mean by by those minimal assets, and yeah, and I always like I'm so glad you clarified that because I know too, when I write things about this.

Jen: 4:49

You know the scholarship that I run, the torch scholarship it's. You say things like high achieving, but then everyone is well, what does? What exactly do you mean? And you, you can say, well, there's an average GPA, or you know, the middle 50% fall into this GPA, but there are always students on either end who have various reasons or maybe something exceptional in their background, either academically or outside the classroom, that propel them forward to you, even if they don't match the averages, would you say. That's pretty much true for you too. It sounds like it.

Christian: 5:27

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the unique things about our QuestBridge applications for both of our programs is that we do have a lot of space for students to tell us some of those things and in some cases we anticipate some of those things right. So, for instance, when I mentioned, you know we like to see students that are involved outside of the classroom. I think traditionally, many students and educators even have thought about that as your extracurriculars and your athletics, and you know things inside the school day or traditional campus. But for us, we know that many of our students might be traveling more than an hour to and from their school, that some of those opportunities simply aren't available to them either because of things like time constraints and travel time or, you know, just the cost of participating in certain programs, and so we do look for those other ways that students are again engaging in their community or engaging in their household responsibilities. We have so many students who are, you know, translating for their entire family or taking care of siblings or elderly grandparents, and you know that takes that takes a big sort of maturity right that they're done in taking on some of those tasks. So that's just one example of sort of the types of things that we like to see in students.

Jen: 6:52

Yeah, and and I mean I always encourage students, if they're traveling a lot, to go to school, like I have to go, you know, take three buses to get to school or I need, you know, I walk this way and then I need to do these three things and it takes me an hour to share that with whoever they're applying, whether it's for your scholarship, cps, or for my scholarship or just admissions in general, because it indicates that there's a big chunk of your time that's going towards transportation and going back and forth and you know, maybe they can use it to study or do something, but they can't participate in a lot of extracurriculars at their school.

Jen: 7:29

I also appreciate that you're defining leadership very broadly, that it's not just you know I'm president of, you know, the club or editor of the paper, it's I'm taking care of, you know, my siblings. I make them dinner, you know, because my parents aren't home just yet. And the job, the job part, like so many of the students that we would work with have jobs. They're working to help support themselves, to help support their family, and if you're working 20 hours a week or sometimes I see upwards of like 30 hours a week or more, it's really hard to engage in some of those others because they feel that responsibility to their family and they need to put that in any application that they submit.

Christian: 8:11

Absolutely yes, yes, and I think being able, as educators, to tell students that that that is valuable use of their time, to encourage them to share that because it is a big part of their story, is really great. We don't want someone to think, oh wait, I'm not involved, but actually they're doing all of these other things. Yes, yes.

Jen: 8:32

Yeah, yeah, I mean the thing is, when I read an application and the student doesn't put anything in their student activities list, I'm like you are doing something, but for whatever reason, they just don't think it's important. So if you're working with those students, encouraging them to put those things in, I think is just so important to them. So now let me ask you a little bit on the academic side of things. This class that's going to enter in fall 2024, this is the class that was almost fully remote in most places for the 2020-2021 school year. Talk about, you know, if a school is just giving passing grades for those times when they were remote, or maybe they just had a really tough time when they were remote and their grades are terrible, but they show that I have the potential and I am now high achieving and that grade trend is going up. Should we encourage those students to apply or is that like? Well, you know it's not consistent. No-transcript.

Christian: 9:38

Yeah, I think we're starting to see less and less of that sort of kind of COVID disruption and either the way courses were reported or some of the classes that were available to students during that time. So it's nice to see that it's less of an issue now than, I think, what we saw a few years ago. But regardless, we're sort of treating it the same way, right. We like to see, we encourage students to work with their counselors to provide us with school profiles, that they are available, and often those school profiles is where counselors are already letting us know what types of changes may have happened to the curriculum, so what courses were available to students during those COVID years, or if there were changes in how grades may have been calculated or reported.

Christian: 10:28

And so if a school profile isn't available, then often we're telling students you know, let us know in the application, or make sure your counselor is being very direct in their recommendation as part of the senior program at least, that they're letting us know what happened. Because if we don't have that context right, every school was functioning a little different, every district was a little different, and so we rather know more information and be able to contextualize the rest of the application in that way than to kind of be left with a blank right, be left with a question well, what happened here? But we, in terms of the student and their grades, obviously of course, as we're not available to them, that is a no fault their own and we do like to see that upward trajectory in grades, despite what may have happened in some of those years.

Jen: 11:23

Yeah, so it sounds like the application for the college prep scholars is an excellent warm-up for applying to college later. It's almost exactly the same things they're going to need to do Essays, sharing their activities, making sure they include is there anything else you want to know about us? And just submitting all of that to you, and with recommendations as well, so they have to reach out and find people to recommend. So, yeah, it sounds like a really excellent warm-up. Then, what does the process look like for you on your end? Because, again, if I'm a counselor or a from work and I'm working with high school students, I'm like you should do this. It always helps me to see what is that going to go through when I'm thinking about either what to write about them or how to advise the student.

Christian: 12:09

Yeah, it's absolutely true that we internally, we like to say it's the mini version of the National College Match application, because it really is. I think for students that go through the College Prep Scholars Program, even if they are not selected as college prep scholars, it's a wonderful learning opportunity. The process of going through submitting the application is a low stakes way of seeing what applying to college and applying to selective colleges might look like for you in the fall. So we have the different application components, as you mentioned. We're asking them about their household and who they are. We do have the added component of the finances because of our criteria, and then it's the writing section. There is a section for their extracurricular activities and other things they do outside the classroom.

Christian: 13:04

There's one teacher recommendation for the College Prep Scholars Program and often for those students that do the junior program and then go on to do the National College Match senior year, they're asking that same teacher. That teacher already has done a recommendation, so they have the leg up there that they're able to submit and simply add on whatever may have changed in that time. And so all of that process, oh, and asking for a transcript, that's the other big thing. I think for students this might be the first time they've ever had to ask for a transcript, and when you have to do that for college and maybe multiple colleges that you're applying to in the fall, it's already a stressful time. So learning how to ask for a transcript your junior spring again is going to just make it a lot easier and a lot less stressful, hopefully when the college application comes around senior year. So I think all of those things the process of applying and putting together the application, the best application that they can is a really great learning opportunity for the student.

Jen: 14:07

Is there like a mini FAFSA that they do for you, or is it just like some document that they fill out and just send in?

Christian: 14:14

Yeah, so all of the financial information that we ask for is self-reported.

Christian: 14:18

So we're not asking for copies of W2s or anything like that, but we do ask students to work along with their parent or guardian or whoever it is that is responsible for them in their life, and to sit down and have those types of documents available to them so that they are able to fill it out to the best of their ability.

Christian: 14:39

The more accurate it is and the most amount of information they could provide that we're asking for, it's better for us in terms of determining eligibility. I think the other thing that I will say, which is a benefit as well for the College Prep Scholars Program, is that for those students who do start that application, once they have that all in and they want to do the National College Match senior year, that information actually carries over in summertime. So if they've already sat down to do all that financial information with their family, all of it will be there right, and it wouldn't have changed because we were using tax information from a previous year. So they're really doing a lot of that work, a lot of the work that is sort of simulated with the FAFSA or with the CSS profile. We kind of do that upfront in the application. That's great.

Jen: 15:35

Yeah, so it's a practice run, but it also it's almost like completing two at the same time. If they choose to go into College Match with some extra things, they'll have to add for the College Match. That is such a good idea. I love that. I love anything that makes it easier for the students to go through the application process for something like this, because the harder you make it, the less likely they are to apply and the students who are coming from the low income backgrounds may have fewer resources to use within their schools to help them go through this process. So I thank you to Questbridge for that, for making it simpler for the students. We had talked about this a little bit beforehand, but I am curious if the SCOTUS ruling had any impact on you and how you're considering race or not considering race as part of the scholarship and kind of as an addendum to that as an undocumented student. If I weren't undocumented student, could I apply for the scholarship?

Christian: 16:35

Yeah, so for for eligibility in terms of citizenship, it is any student that is attending and living in the US, regardless of citizenship status.

Christian: 16:46

So you know any type of citizenship status if they're international students and they're in the US attending a high school here they can also apply.

Christian: 16:57

And just the follow up to that is obviously their finances might look a little different. So we do ask for them to convert to US dollars, but but you know they are eligible if they're attending and living in the US at the time. So so that's one thing in the in terms of the question around the SCOTUS decision, you know, for us we've always been an organization that's really centered on high achieving students from low income backgrounds. You know our students do not have to come from a first generation. You know college student perspective. They're not coming from specific races or ethnicities. Of course they do because of the nature of high achieving, low income students. But for us the income part is really been sort of the most present and so you know we were lucky, I think, in terms of being in the space of college access and not feeling the SCOTUS decision as much as perhaps some of our you know kind of peer organizations did. That may have been particularly focused on certain groups of students.

Jen: 18:00

Yeah, yeah, okay, great, thank you. Why, kristen, do you think it's important for rising seniors to take their summer to go to a college campus and experience a program there?

Christian: 18:14

Yeah, you know, I think it's. Actually it makes me think about the origins of Questbridge. We actually started back in 1994, we started as a summer program, the summer before the senior year of high school, having students come to the Stanford campus and living in the dorms and, you know, reflecting on what they had been doing in high school, what they wanted to see after high school graduation. And these were all again high achieving students and well positioned to go to places like Stanford and living. For many of them living close to Stanford but not really thinking it was an option for them and so wanting to introduce them to that kind of environment, the types of resources that are located on campuses like the Stanford, and having them understand that you know they were on the path, if they so wanted, to go to a school like that, to be able to apply and to go.

Christian: 19:11

So I think for us, you know, a college prep scholars program in a lot of ways is that we're tracing that line straight back to our history and we believe strongly that for students to have the view of those opportunities is really important. And many of these students would do really well I mean they, they would be great without Pussbridge. I think what Pussbridge provides for many of our students is the confidence and the knowledge that these schools are not just, you know, willing to admit them, but actively looking for them, wanting them to be on their campuses and wanting to support them while they're there, and that often for many students that go through our programs, you know, this is actually the most financially feasible option for college, perhaps even more affordable than their community college or their state flagship. And so I think for us having that time right before your senior year where you're really thinking traditionally, thinking more specifically, about applying to college, it's really important because it helps set up students to have perhaps a broader college choice process than they would have would have had otherwise.

Jen: 20:22

Yeah, do you send students to the schools that? Do the students get to select what schools they would like to do the summer programs? Do you try to get them to stay closer to home or can they go anywhere they choose, they get selected.

Christian: 20:41

Yeah, yeah. So. So to be really clear, with the College Prep Scholars program, many of our programming and resources that we share for the students that are selected as College Prep Scholars is asynchronous, it's virtual. Everyone gets those things and everyone gets an invitation to a National College Admissions Conference, which we have both a virtual and an in person option for students, and so there is potentially that in person opportunity for College Prep Scholars if they get invited to one of those in person conferences, and for those, of course, that are perhaps too far away from those campuses, they can always do the virtual.

Christian: 21:22

Otherwise, we do have specialized awards that students can apply for within the College Prep Scholars program application, and one of them is a college summer program, and those vary in length, so they are housed at. I think this year we have nine of our college partners with various opportunities available there and in all sorts of things. I love to see the list that they put together. It's like you know, if you're interested in STEM, there's something for you, and coding over here, and humanities and law. They're really great programs that students get really excited for. But that is one of the most elective awards that we offer as part of the College Prep Scholars program. As you can imagine, it's valued over $20,000 because it covers everything housing, food, travel to and from all of the tuition, all of that. So the students get to choose which of those programs they want to be considered for at either of those nine college partners that offer the college summer programs, and then from there again, everything is covered if they are awarded that particular college summer program.

Jen: 22:35

Nice, that's wonderful. So can you give me not necessarily some numbers, but some idea of how competitive it is to get into the CPS program and then what it looks like for some of the other grants, like the grant to go to the summer program? Or I notice you have the Quest for Excellence awards too, so talk more about that if you would like to share everything.

Christian: 22:59

Yeah, yeah, of course I did pull some numbers so I'd have them in front of me so I can share a little bit about what happened last year, for instance. So for our College Prep Scholars from last year, we had a little over 15,000 applications for the program and we selected 3,518 college prep scholars. All of those again were invited to our National College Admissions conferences. They received a specialized curriculum in the summertime that was asynchronous and virtual, and all of them again have the designation of being a college prep scholar, which we have found that if they continue with us through the National College match their senior year, they're more than they're about six times more likely to be selected as match scholarship recipients, which is a big, a big deal. So they all get that benefit. They all get the benefit of having that CPS application roll into the fall with them as well. Some of those students would have received a college summer program.

Christian: 24:00

Like I said, that's probably the most selective of the awards that we offer and the other pretty selective award but there's definitely more students that receive it is the quest for excellence awards, and those are awards that are $1,000 educational awards. So the student is able to use the $1,000 for any educational expenses to get them prepared to apply to selective colleges. So you know, many of our students tell us that they spend that money on a laptop because they need to be able to finish their application in the fall of the senior year. Some of them will spend it on things like SAT or ACT prep. Others will use it to go visit colleges that they're interested in, and so you know they have that flexibility to use it however they think will best prepare them in the fall to apply to college.

Christian: 24:51

And quest for excellence awards are again embedded within the college of scholars program application. That's where a student would tell us they want to be considered. They can be considered for as many of our words as they'd like, as long as they're meeting the criteria. So, request for excellence awards we have some for students who are interested in the humanities, some for if they're interested in STEM or in Jewish culture and studies. If they are from New York City, we have a NYC award and we also have one that's called the QFE USA award, which is basically we're selecting kind of the top student from every state. So if they believe they might be the top student in their state, you know they can go ahead and check off that box as well.

Jen: 25:37

I love that. So I love again one application multiple opportunities for programs, awards, funding, and it rolls over into the college match. When students ask me about applying like should I apply for the torch scholarship? I'm not sure if I'm eligible here or there I'm like, why don't just apply and we'll make the decision? But if you don't apply, you will not. I can guarantee you you won't be selected. So that's the only guarantee.

Jen: 26:05

I can ever make a student. If you don't apply, you won't get selected. And we really should. If we're talking to students who are high achieving, who you know we might feel confident are in that low income range, we should just we should do everything we can to have them apply if this is something that might be interesting to them.

Christian: 26:26

Yeah, and I think one thing, just one question that we kind of get from students and sometimes educators as well, as you know well, what if the student applies and they're not selected? Would that hurt their chances for the national college match? You know, perhaps they heard about the program a little late. Their application isn't, you know, the best they could have produced and so it doesn't hurt their chances, right In terms of again them applying. If they're not meeting our criteria for college prep scholars, right, perhaps they are a little bit higher income than they thought, then you know, their results might be the same in the national college match.

Christian: 27:04

But if it's for another reason, right, maybe their short answers weren't the best, or whatever it is that may have had us not select MSCP scholars. That's absolutely not the end of the road, it's not affecting their decision in the national college match. And in fact I like to share the story that even on the high school outreach team right now, one of my teammates, she, applied for the college prep scholars and was not selected, and then she used that as motivation to do even better in the match and she matched. She matched to Pomona and so was able to attend Pomona College out in California on a full rights scholarship.

Jen: 27:43

Perfect, and it's not necessarily one and done Like, just keep applying. If it's something again that you think you could improve on, go ahead and try it again. I think that's always good advice. Yeah, I like to close with some actionable items. So, as we wrap up, what's something that you think a high school counselor or teacher or someone in a gear up or an avid program can do to help their students apply?

Christian: 28:12

Yeah, I think the number one thing that educators can do is refer their student.

Christian: 28:18

What we see is that students, when they understand that they have been referred to apply to one of our programs from a trusted educator, they're twice as likely to start that application. Again, some students might already know about us, they might have already heard about the program, but until they see that Mr So-and-So from my English class referred me and he really thinks I'm able to do this, that's when it really brings them to be able to start the application. Once they start that application, especially if it's an educator who is a recommender in the application, you will hear from us and we always encourage educators to keep asking the student about the app, making sure that they're progressing. Sometimes they might start and they're very jazzed and as the semester goes by, other things get in the way. So just keep supporting them in all the ways that educators already support their students, but knowing that there's someone that's looking out for them is the best thing that we can give to students when they're thinking about applying and or continuing their application process.

Jen: 29:28

Yeah, it's really interesting. Some of my students who are long graduated did something that resonates with me. That I love is when they say things like you saw the potential in me before I saw it and I think as an educator, by referring students to say I think you should apply for this, you're saying I see you and I see your potential and I think this is a good fit for you. And, regardless of the outcome, just having someone in their corner to say that who is so positive about what they can do, when just so many negative things are really just pulling at our students all the time, I think that's such a powerful thing to do, best and most wonderful advice, and I'm lucky enough that my students have told me that they appreciated that, which we don't always get to hear in education but it's nice when you do.

Jen: 30:22

And then for people like me, I'm working at Northeastern, which is not a Questbridge school, so we wouldn't get to meet these amazing students. What do you suggest or how, if we're interested in being more involved in Questbridge or becoming a partner school, what can we do in the first gen space that would help us do that?

Christian: 30:43

Yeah, so I think for our.

Christian: 30:46

We have, at this point, over 50 college partners across the country, and there's some of the top colleges and universities in the country their research universities, liberal arts colleges, women's colleges, religiously affiliated right and the thing that binds them all together is that they are all committed to meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need from students, and so these are institutions that are actively looking for and hoping to support students from low income backgrounds, and so if there are institutions or folks listening at institutions who are interested in becoming a partner, all they have to do is reach out.

Christian: 31:25

So, questions at questbridgeorg, you can send us an email. We have a team that would continue that conversation. And, again, we're really looking for institutions that are willing to make that financial commitment to students in terms of making sure that they're able to afford to attend the institution if they were to get in. But we're also looking at the history that you might have with the types of students that we serve, right, is this going to be the first time that you have a significant amount of students that you might be bringing in from this background, or are there programs and staff already available for them when they arrive on campus to make sure that they're not just being admitted with great financial aid packages, but we ultimately want all of our students to graduate as well.

Jen: 32:12

Yes, right, right, just getting in isn't the end of the line, right? Yes, that is not the goal, right? It's about graduating and then it's about career and preparing for that. So, yeah, okay, all right, so it was questions at questbridgeorg. Yes, okay, I'll put that in the show notes, as well as links to the College Prep Scholars application, which, if you didn't hear me say this at the beginning, it is open right now as of February. Today is February 9th when we're recording and it will close on March 20th, so there's lots of time to get students interested and involved and signed up for this. Christian, thank you so much for joining me today and talking all things QuestBridge and the College Prep Scholars. I think I learned a lot about what's involved in it, how many different opportunities there are for students through applying, who it applies to, and then how I if I'm talking to high school students can get them active in doing it, and I hope you, as a listener, did as well. Christian, if they want to reach out to you, where could they find you?

Christian: 33:20

Yeah, so actually the question is at questbridgeorg. My entire team handles that particular email and you can always just add my name and it will get to me, so that is a great place to reach out. We try to reply within one to two business days, so you'll hear from us pretty speedily there. But of course, if anyone wants to learn more, questbridgeorg is our website and all of our programs are listed there, as well as eligibility criteria and that referral form as well for educators who might want to refer students Fantastic.

Jen: 33:53

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today and for sharing all your knowledge about QuestBridge, and thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to reach out to me to be a guest or to recommend a guest, you can email me at gen. That's J-E-N at firstgenfmcom. My website is firstgenfmcom if you're interested in learning more about my speaking topics. If you like this episode, please rate and review wherever you listen. It helps others to find the show and it's a nice boost for me to know you're listening. Until next week, keep doing the important work you do, thank you.