Time's Up on Multiple-Choice Test for College

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Preparing D.C. Students for College

LD Ross, Vice President of Programs at the DC College Access Program, talks about how many students go to college each year from D.C. and the kinds of issues they might face once there.

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Watkins said he has long wanted to live in Atlanta and soak up its burgeoning, vibrant music scene. Officials at the nonprofit D.C. College Access Program, or DC-CAP, the city's largest nonprofit college counseling program, called the university four times to let officials know of his interest in the hopes of receiving a favorable offer.

"We want them to know that they are his top choice," said Kevin Mungin, a program manager for D.C. Achievers. But "no one ever got back to me."

Because of smaller endowments, historically black colleges and universities often are not able to offer students scholarships as large as those from majority-white schools, said LD Ross Jr. at DC-CAP.

Clark Atlanta, with about 3,500 undergraduates, has an endowment of about $40.5 million. Bates, with 1,700 undergraduates and an endowment of about $275 million, has pledged $49,000 a year to Watkins, covering almost all of the school's annual $51,000 for tuition, room and board.

Bates offered to fly Watkins to Lewiston, Maine, for the college's special program for admitted students. When that visit conflicted with one day of his senior class trip, the school offered to fly him from the college campus to Florida to join his classmates.

His teachers and counselor pressured him to go. Watkins decided to go Florida. He is in the running to be class valedictorian of the charter high school in Southeast. And, he said, he needed a breather.

Then Bates offered to fly him up the following week. He didn't go.

"They want him," said Schelly Mitchell, who advises almost 50 high seniors enrolled in the Achievers and DC-CAP programs.

Many District high school seniors feel an emotional pull to historically black institutions, and at least 60 percent of the city's college-going seniors enroll in them. "They see students who look like them, act like them, and sometimes they know someone from the neighborhood who's also going or already there," Ross said.

The acceptances started to pour in about February: Emerson. Delaware State University. Columbia College Chicago. Clark Atlanta. Morehouse. Bates. University of Vermont. University of the District of Columbia. The notices were proof to his mother that she had made the right choices as she searched for the best academic environment for her only child.

Watkins wasn't sure what to make of the attention. He said he never gave much thought to Bates until he was accepted, and he applied only because it was part of the Common Application, an online form that makes it easier to apply to more than one college at a time.

"If I take the full ride and go to Bates, will I be happy there? That's what I'm struggling with," Watkins said recently, sitting in his living room with his mom and grandmother nearby. "And I'm frustrated, because no one has asked me what I want."