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College Scholarship Strategies with Hugh Durham
33 Plays2 years ago
On today’s episode: Director of graduate admissions at Florida A&M Hugh Durham
Durham is the director of graduate admissions and enrollments at the distinguished, historically Black University Florida A&M. On this episode, we discuss college admissions, HBCU’s, and his own personal story.
Topics:
- 02:00 Ways students can manage rising college costs
- 03:47 “Apply for two scholarships a week” and the benefits of casting a wide net
- 08:43 The importance of GPA’s.
- 11:05 How students are “uplifted” at HBCU’s
- 19:37 African American history is American history
Recommended
Transcript
Education Excellence at HBCUs
00:00:11
Speaker
I personally feel like the education at an HBCU can be more rigorous than some of our other institutions, mainly because of the fact that we understand that because you're black, no, we don't lower the bar for you.
00:00:29
Speaker
Because you're black, we challenge you because we know that, right, ultimately diamonds are made when you apply pressure.
00:00:42
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Welcome to How to Have Kids Love Learning, where we explore ideas and strategies for parents and educators that help students thrive.
00:00:50
Speaker
I'm your host, Ed
Introduction with Ed Madison
00:00:51
Speaker
Madison.
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm a professor and researcher at the University of Oregon and serve as executive director of the Journalistic Learning Initiative, a nonprofit organization that empowers middle and high school students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes,
00:01:05
Speaker
and become self-directed learners through project-based storytelling.
00:01:09
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Teaching students to become effective communicators is at the heart of JLI's work.
Insights from Hugh Durham
00:01:24
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I want to welcome Hugh Durham, the Director of Graduate Admissions and Enrollments at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee.
00:01:33
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It's a distinguished historically black university and he served in a similar role at Prairie View B&M University and has worked
00:01:42
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at Howard University, Georgetown University, and University of Phoenix, to name some.
00:01:48
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We met a few weeks ago at the Student Success Summit in Portland, Oregon, and I invited him to talk about college admissions, HBCUs, and his own personal story.
00:01:57
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Welcome.
00:01:59
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Thank you.
Preparing for College Costs
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:02
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Tell me, you know, college expenses continue to rise.
00:02:05
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And I'm just curious how you advise young people and their families these days in terms of how to prepare to meet the challenge.
00:02:14
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Absolutely.
00:02:15
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You know, as college costs continue to rise, as you stated, and money seemed to dwindle, especially our higher education budgets,
00:02:27
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I generally give students a tough and parents just try to be transparent, but I give them a real saying, which is ultimately that it's the university's job to give you a world-class education, but it's not the university's job to completely fund it.
00:02:43
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But of course, right?
00:02:44
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The university shouldn't make an investment in the student as the student is making an investment in the institution that they plan to study.
00:02:52
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Well, ultimately,
00:02:54
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I always say that the onus needs to be on the students and the family, and hopefully the university will meet them halfway, but it'll be on the student and the family to ensure that they are indeed doing things like completing the financial aid application, the FAFSA on time, in terms of when it opens up, so that way you have access to priority funding.
00:03:17
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Scholarships, every Fortune 500 company
00:03:20
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is just about offering some type of scholarship that students can apply for and obtain, because they get tax write-offs.
00:03:28
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So it helps them.
00:03:29
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There are organizations
Hugh Durham's Personal Journey
00:03:31
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that also offer scholarships.
00:03:33
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So I always say that if you are a student that is really trying to go to college, you definitely need to make sure you do your part in setting some time aside to apply for scholarships.
00:03:48
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Say a little bit about your own journey, because I found it quite inspiring in terms of, you know, just your pre high school, your high school experiences and how you found your way, you know, into your career.
00:04:03
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Right.
00:04:03
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So, you know, I come from a single parent household.
00:04:07
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I have a single mother who had me at a relatively young age and worked two full time jobs to support me.
00:04:16
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And the two full-time jobs weren't anything luxurious, right?
00:04:20
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It was working at a Pizza Hut in a beauty supply store.
00:04:25
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And I knew that, and my mom had to drop out of high school and couldn't finish high school, right?
00:04:30
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Because she had to support me and ultimately go to work.
00:04:34
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So what I found was my mom was real.
00:04:37
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She said, we had a real conversation about how expensive college was.
00:04:41
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And, you know, I was a first-generation student going to college.
00:04:45
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So I didn't have a plethora of family members that I could have gone to.
00:04:53
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I didn't have a trust that was already laid out to me from a grandparent that was going to pay for this.
00:05:00
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So we had a real conversation and it was gonna be maybe if I didn't get scholarships with the schools that I wanted to attend, it might have to be going to a community college where obviously the costs are cheap or less.
00:05:13
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But I didn't want a two year degree, I wanted a four year degree, I wanted to go to some of the best institutions in this country.
00:05:20
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So my mom said, well, we have to get on a scholarship trail.
00:05:23
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Well, I had a great advisor.
00:05:25
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I'm a native of Miami, Florida, and I had a great college and career advisor who kind of knew my story, you know, because some of the kids would walk around with brand new clothes and nice shoes, and I didn't have those luxuries.
00:05:40
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So he said, listen, we're going to get you where you need to be, but you're going to have to put in a little bit of work.
00:05:43
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And I was no stranger to that.
00:05:46
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I was always the type of student that I felt like I had to have a balance.
00:05:49
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Yes, I was
00:05:51
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I enjoyed school activities.
00:05:53
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I was actively involved, but I also knew that I had to take my studies seriously because I did not want to work at a Pizza Hut.
00:06:00
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I did not want to work.
00:06:02
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If I was going to work at a Pizza Hut, I was going to own my own, be a franchise owner.
00:06:08
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I didn't want to work in a beauty supply store.
00:06:12
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So I saw that model.
00:06:13
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I saw how hard my mom struggled to support us and how hard she worked.
00:06:18
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So I said, yes.
00:06:19
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Tell me, how do I make this happen?
00:06:21
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And my college advisor, my high school counselor, Mr. Wilder, gave me the best piece of advice that I feel like I might have gotten in my entire life, which was what you need to do is every week, make sure you're applying for during senior year, you're applying for at least two scholarships a week.
00:06:43
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Now, in the beginning, it might be very laborious because you might have to write an essay, but ultimately, once you start getting to week six, week seven, you're going to take those same essays and you're going to recycle them because pretty much everybody's asking for the same type of thing.
00:06:58
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And
00:06:59
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I said, okay, because he said it's a law of averages.
00:07:01
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I said, why is two the number?
00:07:03
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He said, because most students in the senior year, they're applying for maybe two or three scholarships throughout the entire year.
00:07:08
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But it's a law of averages, right?
00:07:10
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A law of averages meaning that the more you apply, the greater the net you cast, the greater the chances are that you'll get more fish as opposed to having a smaller net.
00:07:24
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And so, yeah, I applied for two scholarships a week when it was all said and done.
00:07:28
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I had applied for over 40 something scholarships and I was able to get seven scholarships, three that were on the national level.
00:07:37
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I even kind of applied to scholarships about the medicine that I didn't necessarily qualify for.
00:07:43
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You know, one of the stories that I told at that Black Student Success Summit was,
00:07:46
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was I applied for a scholarship that was for students that were left-handed.
00:07:51
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I'm right-handed, but I wasn't trying to lie.
00:07:56
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I was not trying to lie, cheat, and deceive.
00:07:58
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I wrote an essay and explained about how I needed this money.
00:08:02
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And I said, listen, if I get this scholarship, I will learn how to write with my left hand.
00:08:08
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Just give me six months.
00:08:11
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And...
00:08:13
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And lo and behold, I was able to actually, I was actually able to obtain that scholarship.
00:08:19
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And I got a really nice call and a personal call.
00:08:23
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And they actually went ahead because there were 10, they were giving 10 scholarships and only seven students had applied for the scholarship, including myself.
00:08:31
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But the CEO or the president of the organization was touched by it and decided to go ahead and kind of double my award because he didn't want the money to go to waste.
00:08:42
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Wow, that's a great story.
00:08:44
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Say a little bit about how parents and students can present a profile that's appealing to an admissions office.
00:08:57
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I think that while tests are still, and SATs are still used in some institutions, you're paying more attention to the overall package, right?
00:09:10
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And what are the things that you think
00:09:12
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a student be thinking about even early in high school that will give them a more presentable package.
00:09:21
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Right.
00:09:22
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And of course, now, depending on which director of admissions you speak to, you may get a different response.
00:09:26
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But I can tell you that for me and probably even for some of my similarly situated colleagues,
00:09:34
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GPA is gonna be first and foremost important, right?
00:09:37
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Because when you think about a GPA, you can't show up to very many high schools in the country, just show up and make A's, right?
00:09:45
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A's and B's, you have to do the work.
00:09:48
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So I always say that GPA should be your most important element of your application that you should put out for to any school or college that you apply to because the GPA tells a story
00:10:04
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Right, because we don't have the opportunity and the luxury to meet 99% of the students that apply to our schools.
00:10:11
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But what I can tell you is that GPA tells a story.
00:10:16
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It tells a story about that student's work ethic.
00:10:18
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It tells a story about their persistence.
00:10:21
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Those are all measurables, right, that we know arguably the most challenging and most difficult time in a student's life.
00:10:30
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is probably that first year of college, right?
00:10:32
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That transition from how they've been educated in high school, which is now completely different from how you're being educated right in college.
00:10:41
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So that GPA is extremely important.
00:10:44
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And when you look at the profile, yes, we want students that are well-rounded.
00:10:48
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But most admissions directors are not going to be OK saying that, well, you were so involved in your community.
00:10:54
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You were president of this.
00:10:56
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But now, you know what, we're going to let that overshadow the fact that you have a 2.1 or 2.5 GPA.
Legacy and Education at HBCUs
00:11:06
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Let's talk about HBCUs for a moment and just the legacy, but also the decision that students sometimes weigh between going to, if they're African American, going to an HBCU or going to a predominantly white or at least a more, you know, just a different school.
00:11:31
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Right, you know, HBCUs have been, when you think about when you go back to the beginning of history, you know, in the history of HBCUs, right, and how we were born out of it, out of the, you know, the area of period of history called Reconstruction, you know, HBCUs were established to give, believe it or not, right, everybody an opportunity to be able to study in the sense that, well,
00:11:59
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Caucasian women were not allowed to go study at a lot of the schools that we so-called our finest institutions in this country.
00:12:06
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So even in some of our HBCU history, you saw some Caucasian women.
00:12:10
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So first thing is that we gave everybody an opportunity to be able to study.
00:12:16
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So you're going to see diversity on its greatest level.
00:12:18
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But because when you looked at history, there were so many things that were stacked up against us, it allowed us to bond.
00:12:26
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That's the one common theme that I think translates now into that you'll continue to see in our HBCU culture, which is that our professors are bonded to our students.
00:12:38
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Our students are bonded to our alumni.
00:12:41
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You see great pride, a great sense of tradition on our campuses.
00:12:46
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And when you talk about the education,
00:12:50
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I personally feel like the education at an HBCU can be more rigorous than some of our other institutions, mainly because of the fact that we understand that because you're Black, no, we don't lower the bar for you.
00:13:08
Speaker
Because you're Black, we challenge you.
00:13:10
Speaker
Because we know that, right, ultimately, diamonds are made when you apply pressure.
00:13:15
Speaker
So I really, really, um,
00:13:19
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value the education that HBCUs put out.
00:13:22
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And then when you think about it, right, you have some of the most amazing individuals in America that are entrenched in American history that came out of HBCUs, you know, 75% of African-American engineers, you know, over 50% of African-American doctors, dentists, lawyers, judges were all educated at
00:13:46
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HBCUs.
00:13:47
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Actually, it's HBCUs that are responsible for developing the African-American middle class.
00:13:57
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What do you see as the future here for HBCUs?
00:14:04
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I know that your institution, you made a point, is very rigorous.
00:14:11
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So it's not easy to
00:14:17
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to get in, right?
00:14:18
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And I imagine, I'm sure that's by choice.
00:14:23
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You want to have a certain standard that you've set.
00:14:27
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And I think that, I'm just curious, I mean, what you see is the future for some of our schools.
Future Challenges for HBCUs
00:14:35
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Some are, have had challenges in terms of infrastructure and, you know, keeping facilities, you know, up to date and things like that.
00:14:45
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But,
00:14:46
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Overall, you see.
00:14:50
Speaker
Right, well, you know, Florida is a unique place.
00:14:54
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It's a unique space.
00:14:56
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So when we look at FAMU has always been an institution with great tradition.
00:15:03
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It has a great brand.
00:15:04
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You can go all across the world and trust me, somebody has heard of Florida A&M, FAMU.
00:15:12
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So for us,
00:15:15
Speaker
Yes, I mean, we're at this crossroads in a sense because when you think about HBCUs, they were founded on access, affordability.
00:15:24
Speaker
And when you have a 30% acceptance rate, that doesn't quite scream access.
00:15:30
Speaker
But Florida is unique because we are
00:15:33
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a part of our state university system of Florida, which is the number one state university system in the country.
00:15:39
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It's the second largest.
00:15:40
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Florida is a very attractive place for people to wanna come live, right?
00:15:44
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To come study.
00:15:46
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So when I look at Florida A&M, the system has certain requirements that they hold us responsible for.
00:15:54
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Graduation rate, graduating students in four years, areas of strategic emphasis,
00:16:02
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I mean, all these, we call them the metrics.
00:16:04
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So for us, we have to be, and we can afford to be selective because we get over 25,000 applications at least this past admission cycle.
00:16:15
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And I see it only increasing, but we keep our class sizes small.
00:16:20
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So we're only looking for a freshman class of about 1500.
00:16:25
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So it means that yes, we get to be a little bit more selective, but we wanna make sure that we're bringing in students that are gonna add
00:16:32
Speaker
Michael Williams- Not saying that they can't, but we're looking for students that are going to be successful continue on the amazing legacy and tradition at FAMU and more importantly they're going to graduate and graduate within four years, so the SAT and the ACT don't tell us whether or not.
00:16:50
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a student's going to graduate in four years and be successful, but we don't look at the composites per se.
00:16:56
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We look at how they've done on the subsections.
00:16:58
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So like on the ACT, we look at how you did in math, how you did in English, how you did in reading.
00:17:05
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So we do that breakdown.
00:17:07
Speaker
Now, there are some HBCUs that obviously are going to be a little bit less selective because they're private schools.
00:17:14
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And they're driven by enrollment.
00:17:16
Speaker
We are driven by enrollment as well, but we're also looking at those metrics.
00:17:22
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So I think a student can't go wrong with either path that they take.
00:17:26
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I'm just really excited about the notoriety now, like the limelight that HBCUs have now ultimately been getting across the country.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, I know for many students, there's a feeling that maybe, you know, particularly if their parents made a decision to move them to the suburbs or where they had the experience of being an minority, maybe, you know, in their high school experience, they're hungering for, you know, just a more culturally-
00:18:01
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you know, experience that is akin to, you know, finding and being around people that look like you, being around instructors and, you know, professors that look like you and just having a, you know, a rich cultural experience.
00:18:15
Speaker
And that's part of the appeal, I think.
00:18:20
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:18:20
Speaker
Tell me where you can go and no matter whether you came from the suburbs, right, because we know as African Americans and minorities, period, right, we're diverse depending on whether you're from the West Coast, right, Oregon, California is going to be different from Washington State, you know, Florida is going to be different from New York, right, we're all different based on our socioeconomic statuses and how we were raised, but tell me where you can go
00:18:46
Speaker
and come to a space where you might have been the best and the brightest in your high school class, but now you arrive on a campus where people are just as smart as you, or if not, maybe even smarter.
00:18:59
Speaker
But the difference is that you're embraced as opposed to where it's like,
00:19:06
Speaker
dog eat dog, you know, crabs in a bucket type of a situation.
00:19:11
Speaker
No, everybody here lifts each other up.
00:19:14
Speaker
Everybody here pushes and gets the best out of everybody.
00:19:18
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Cause we understand that, you know what, the brain is only going to be as good as the person that is struggling barely to make it.
00:19:25
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So we're going to uplift each other.
00:19:27
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And I think that to me, the spirit, a lot combined with the community, what really makes HBCUs a special place.
Race Discussions in America
00:19:37
Speaker
I want to ask you in general terms just about where we are right now in terms of discussions about race in our country.
00:19:48
Speaker
We're seeing, without getting specific about states, places where questions about just authentic history are being erased legislatively.
00:20:03
Speaker
And it's an interesting time.
00:20:06
Speaker
I mean, I think that, you know, there was a thought that, you know, the presidency of Barack Obama, you know, was supposed to have marked a post-racial America, but we're seeing that it's anything but that.
00:20:19
Speaker
And, you know, I don't want to move you into a conversation that's, you know, but just overall, you know, what are your thoughts about where we are as a nation on this issue?
00:20:31
Speaker
I think I can say this.
00:20:33
Speaker
I think so progress has been made, but at the same time, I feel like not enough progress has been made.
00:20:38
Speaker
I'll just say this will probably be my shortest response.
00:20:42
Speaker
I just want to know, I just want to make sure that everybody knows that
00:20:46
Speaker
African-American history is American history.
00:20:50
Speaker
You can't tell American history without telling the entire history.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so the African-American experience, the Chinese experience here in this country, you know, anybody that's coming from anybody that's coming from not native to this particular country, I think, has something to add.
00:21:13
Speaker
So
00:21:15
Speaker
I'll leave it at that African American history is American history.
00:21:20
Speaker
Great.
00:21:21
Speaker
Well, thank you, Hugh Durham.
00:21:22
Speaker
This has been a pleasure.
00:21:24
Speaker
We'll give you information about, you know, when this post and it's been a pleasure meeting you and talking with you and thank you so much.
00:21:33
Speaker
Dr. Madison, thank you so much for the opportunity.
00:21:44
Speaker
How to Have Kids Love Learning is produced by the Journalistic Learning Initiative.
00:21:47
Speaker
For more information about our work, please visit journalisticlearning.com.