A ‘Mecca’ of opportunity: What I learned during my son’s college admissions process 

In February 2023, my oldest son rocked a heather grey Morehouse hoodie from final yr’s Ralph Lauren drop to let his classmates know he’d simply been accepted to his dad’s acclaimed alma mater. I found his admittance first, checking his faculty admissions portal in the course of the evening. My spouse referred to as him very first thing within the morning to say “félicitations” earlier than he’d even heard the information. Extra bleary-eyed than teary-eyed, he shot a selfie exhibiting off his digital letter on an iPad that morning earlier than heading off to highschool. Months of demanding referral letters, SAT scores, utility waivers and extra had lastly paid off. Six months later, we settled him into his dorm room … at “the Mecca” of Howard College. 

WTF?

To again up a bit, the entire faculty admissions course of circa 2023 felt surprisingly completely different and mysterious to me in comparison with my very own expertise within the late Eighties. My son wouldn’t be a first-generation faculty pupil; I’d marched throughout Morehouse’s stage with my sociology diploma in hand through the early ’90s, whereas his mom graduated from a prestigious culinary faculty in Paris. However as he entered his senior yr, I nonetheless discovered myself studying “Sport On: Why School Admission Is Rigged and How one can Beat the System” cowl to cowl, confronting that the final time I’d handled leaping by way of all these hoops was in an entire completely different millennium. What was Frequent App? Did schools severely not care in regards to the SAT anymore — Was that for actual?

The one factor my mother has ever apologized to me for was letting me cope with my faculty purposes solo, apart from paying for all of them. The near-simultaneous launches of NBC’s college-based “A Totally different World” and Spike Lee’s “College Daze” have been way more influential in my selection to use to HBCUs than any steerage counselor. The fictional Hillman and Mission Schools have been my first introduction to traditionally Black schools and universities, what with my head buried in comedian books, sci-fi novels, Prince information and hip-hop again then. 

Kenya Barris’ multiculti “Grown-ish” is nice, however my undergrad expertise led me to consider an HBCU would most likely be the most effective atmosphere for my son to self-actualize and determine his personal younger maturity. I imagined a wholesome injection of Black social consciousness at considered one of these storied faculties to be the proper antidote to the sway of Trumpism, various information and microwavable social media pundits that inundated most of his highschool years. To not point out, the onset of the pandemic had brought on his classmates to spend practically two faculty years distant studying on Zoom, elevating questions on inflated grades and unearned honor roll statuses. The last word educational fallout will show to be generational—his technology. No matter impact a scarcity of in-person social interplay could have had, I needed him to choose up that slack at a traditionally Black faculty. Fortunately, he agreed.

We ultimately selected 10 faculties in whole. (We may have picked 5; we may have picked 20.) And no, they weren’t all HBCUs. Usually, advisers encourage college students to shoot for schools in three completely different classes: “security” faculties they’re more likely to be admitted to with no drawback, “goal” faculties that match their {qualifications} spot-on, and “attain” faculties of the vaunted Ivy League tier. I questioned how the Black Lives Matter motion would trigger white schools to issue race into their admissions course of. (Because it turned out, the Supreme Court docket would find yourself killing all affirmative motion for school admissions in June 2023, making my son’s graduating class the final beneficiaries.) We additionally questioned if he ought to attend faculty in the US in any respect, or benefit from his twin nationality, as his mother is French.

Finally, his HBCU acceptances produced a clear sweep: Clark Atlanta College, his uncle’s Hampton College, his dad’s Morehouse School, and, after a nail-biting ready listing state of affairs, Howard College. With the largest endowment amongst all HBCUs within the nation, Howard put forth the biggest scholarship supply of all of them — which we have been all super-thankful for since, because it turned out, he’d already made up his thoughts.

There’s an image or two of my son outfitted in a Morehouse onesie relationship again 17 years in the past, and within the intervening years, I’ve introduced him again a T-shirt or two after journeys to Atlanta. However when he selected Howard as a substitute, his message was clear: He can be carving out his personal legacy on the Mecca — a legendary faculty beforehand unattended by anybody in our household — which meant extra to him than beginning an arbitrary household custom. His selection represented a fruits of all the pieces I’ve tried to show him about being himself, a person, an impartial thinker. I accredited proudly — however I by no means actually needed to. His life, his resolution; Howard, it’s.

No sooner had we pulled as much as his dorm for New Pupil Bison Transfer-In day than I bumped right into a frat brother I hadn’t seen in a long time, dropping off his freshman son on the identical flooring. I discovered shortly that one other frat brother’s son was there, and one other faculty pal’s daughter, and a former work intern’s little sister … Group. We took activates the drive down from Harlem streaming music for our D.C. highway journey: Travis Scott, Beyoncé, Nas, Manu Chao. My wheels have been already turning about how my youthful son’s admissions course of would possibly go smoother in one other two years. However regardless of all of the lazy “senioritis,” the bumping of heads, the rising pains and eventual lumps in throats, I trusted my eldest had made the correct selection and we’d all executed the correct factor. Now: Money App time.

Miles Marshall Lewis (@MMLunlimited) is an writer and Harlem-based cultural critic whose work has appeared in The New York Occasions Journal, GQ, Rolling Stone and lots of different retailers. Lewis is at present ending a cultural biography of comic Dave Chappelle, his follow-up to Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Energy and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar.

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