Brilliant boys - J'can students head for Ivy League colleges

All with top SAT scores

BY JANICE BUDD Associate Editor — Sunday buddj@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, May 01, 2011

IT'S a widely held perception that the Jamaican male is marginalised, especially when it comes to academics, but there are nine young Jamaican males who are set to buck this trend.

The nine, who are between 17 and 19 years old, have earned scholarships to America's most prestigious Ivy League universities, including Stanford, Princeton, Reed College, Bentley, Bryant, Amherst, Duke, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Drake and McGill.

They are the top male students at Versan Educational Services, a local institution that tutors Jamaican students for the arduous SATs and helps them — from start to finish — with the application process for the notoriously selective universities in the US.

These boys, in terms of SAT scores, got between 90 and 100 per cent, placing them in the upper one percentile of scholarship awardees across the US this year.

Their extraordinary success is attributed to myriad factors, not the least of which is sheer dedication of purpose.

"They all are dedicated to their tasks in their own way.They do their work, most of the times," says a beaming Danielle Pate, Versan's Kingston manager.

"They really stood out as the students who were putting out the effort. Everybody can apply to college, but not everybody gets in. It really takes students of a certain character and dedication, I think, especially studying for the SATs, which is not the easiest exam," said Pate.

She says all of these students came from a strong academic background, and are accustomed to being high achievers. They are among the country's top performers in both Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).

All but two of the boys are students of Campion College. One of the two, Meijun Cai — whose impressive artwork got him into top art schools in the US including MWP Pratt and Columbus — attends Wolmer's High. The other is Jordan Thompson — who scored 2080 on his SATs and got into Pomona College, Cornell, Duke, Bentley and Amherst Universities, among others — who attended Hillel Academy.

The other seven boys are Mikhail Grant (who scored 2280 in his SATs), Mark Levy (2080), Andrei Riley (2020), Gervais Marsh (2010), David Young (2080), Phillip Pryce (2040), and Graeme Welds (2200).

"They are all involved in their community; their school community, and they all have excellent grades," added Pate, pointing to the criteria many overseas universities look for in prospective students.

Versan, with its uniquely hands-on and individualistic approach to tutoring, worked with the boys to hone their entrance essays, which all applicants have to write. This 5000-word essay represents about 40 per cent of the total score universities tally to determine if they will award a space to a prospective student or not.

"The rest of the application is facts and data, but it is in the essays that the personalities show and it is the most important part," explained Pate to the Sunday Observer.

She says the school has a year-long process which is intended to prepare their students for the best possible outcomes. This includes individual consultations with candidates and their parents to determine which schools to apply to, what to focus on to get the desired grades, including ensuring they get ample writing practice. They also advise them how to write winning resumes, research financial aid and advised their scholars when is the best time, strategicically, to apply for scholarships. All of this is anchored in diligent study.

"We have all our students achieve a high standard, the pass score with the SATs is 1200, which is half, and that's just to pass it. What we do is aim for 2000 and that is what we want, and everybody is told that from the beginning of classes, that we want 2000. That's the gold circle. Because that is the score that really helps them achieve, not only a scholarship, but schools look for those scores," Pate said.

2011 is a landmark year for Versan. Of 500 scholarship applicants the school assisted this year, 450 were sucessful. Traditionally, the institution has more female high achievers than males. In fact, four of their girls are also in the upper one percentile of scholarship winners to US schools this year. One of these young women got a perfect SAT score and has been accepted to Yale University.

However, this year, there was a deliberate push to raise the performance of the insitution's boys. A move, Pate said obviously paid off with these nine success stories.

The boys, articulate and oozing confidence, credit their Versan tutors and their parents for their remarkable achievements, especially when it came to helping them resist the twin temptations of girls and parties that so often trip up their peers.

"The parties will always be there," said Thompson, explaining that his parents had a practical, yet methodical approach to his education and his social life.

"For me, it's about balance. I've always wanted to be an Ivy League student so I knew I had to work to get there, and stayed focussed."

Welds expressed similar sentiments: "We haven't abandoned our social lives totally in order to pursue excellence.

"It comes down to family. We go to parties, but my mom would say I'm allowed one party a month."

The boys also had to learn how to prioritise their academic tasks; balancing regular schoolwork, which they were not allowed to fail at, while working consistently towards taking and passing the SATs.

"Regular school work was sometimes put on the back burner," admitted Welds, who nonetheless managed to get a straight 'A' average at CAPE last year.

Andrei Riley amazed his family because he never seemed to study, yet managed to attain high grades.

"There are things I hate doing," he admitted to the Sunday Observer.

"But, I am not going to allow myself to fall behind," Riley said defiantly. His records show that despite his abhorrence of the "boring" Communications Studies, he nonetheless managed to get an 'A' in it at CAPE.

As the boys prepare to take up their coveted places at their top-notch American colleges, the sticky question of why they opted not to study in their own country is bound to be raised.

Most were quick to praise the Jamaican educational system, with some of the boys saying they felt they could achieve more with a stint in the US education system before returning to give their home country the benefit of their vast experience.

Marsh, who heads to Pomona in the fall, summed it up for his peers. He said he wants to travel, to discover himself and to gain the level of experience which will help him find ways to fix the local education system when he returns home.

Some of the boys' proud parents told the Sunday Observer that they do not doubt that the future leaders of Jamaica could very well be among these nine brilliant boys.

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