By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008

Months of honing college essays, meeting application deadlines, filling out financial aid forms, all on top of a full class load that included Advanced Placement English literature, have led James Watkins to this moment.

He has been accepted at eight colleges, and they needed something only he can give them. An answer. Today.

His adviser at Thurgood Marshall Academy in the District was telling him to go to Bates College in rural Maine; it offered a big scholarship. But Watkins, who is African American, had his heart set on the historically black Clark Atlanta University, a little more than a mile from the city's bustling downtown. He liked Delaware State, too, but his friend told him he was "too good" for the school.

"What does that mean?" Watkins asked.

Like thousands of high school seniors across the country, Watkins, 18, had to decide where he would spend his college years. Many universities require students to commit no later than May 1. For students such as Watkins who are accepted into several schools, choosing among them is sometimes agonizing.

Should he take the money and go to Bates? Or should he listen to his heart and head to Clark Atlanta, which has yet to offer him any aid?

Watkins was proud he had so many options but confused about what to do. The deciding factors ranged from the serious -- questions of academic rigor and whether schools have his preferred major, communications -- to the more superficial, such as the quality of off-campus retail. He developed an affinity for Delaware State, he said, during a tour when he saw a Best Buy store across the street.

He also wanted a school where he would fit in, no worries. He wasn't overly concerned that Bates is 80 percent white, but he said that when he went to a local event for admitted students, he was one of two black students there, and he didn't feel totally comfortable.

He wears his long hair plaited into cornrows and favors hip-hop music, wanting to pursue a career in the music industry. He smiles warmly, although by his own admission, it can take some time for him to open up to strangers.

And there is the issue of money. Watkins was raised by his single mother, and based on his academic promise and financial need, he was selected for the first group of D.C. Achievers, a new college prep and scholarship program run by the D.C. College Success Foundation.

The program gives students as much as $9,700 a year in college scholarships for as long as five years to address a gap in the number of students going to and finishing college. Studies show that about one in 20 students living in the city's poorest neighborhoods will receive a college degree. Nationally, 23 percent of college-going high school students will graduate within five years, according to the report "Double the Numbers for College Success: A Call to Action for the District of Columbia."

Given that, financial aid was at the heart of the conflict between Watkins's top two choices, Clark Atlanta and Bates.

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."

For as long as she can remember, Gloria Watkins, 50, has told her son that education was his way out and up from the distressing circumstances that can envelop some young black men in Washington.

She had gone to the city's former teachers college for two years after graduating from Ballou Senior High School. But the costs piled up, and she left to go to work.

"School got pushed back," she said.

Gloria Watkins often took her son along to the nursing home where she worked to show him the consequences of bad choices: young men eager for low-wage jobs in food service but often turned away because of criminal records or poor communication skills. Don't get out on the street and do nothing, she told her son.

He was a standout student from the beginning, his mother said, and when it was time for high school, she enrolled him in Thurgood Marshall. There he won admission to a prestigious math and science summer program for minority students at Phillips Exeter Academy, spending three summers away from the District. He and his mother cried the first time he left.

It's an experience he will call on again as he gets ready to leave for college.

But first, he had to decide.

Watkins came back Sunday from a five-day senior trip in Florida, where he said he didn't think about college for one minute. Then the reality of classes, homework and the decision deadline reappeared.

It's Bates, Watkins said yesterday.

"They're giving me the best offer right about now. I'm not sure how it will be," he said. "But one thing I'm sure of is that it will give me a good education, and that's the most important thing."