The Maecenas Fund > Current Newsletter

To all our friends:

My fellow Director, Chuck Bush, and I spent a full week in Phoenix in early March. Our objectives were two-fold: interview this year’s class of scholarship applicants and visit with our Scholars.

This letter is about our interviews and commentary on what we are seeing at Carl Hayden High School. The next one will be about our Scholars and how they are doing.

We had a record number of applicants this year. There were 18 in total, and 14 fully completed applications for us to evaluate and interview. We continued our past practice of each of us interviewing each applicant individually. We believe this takes some of the stress off the applicant, and it gives us a better cross-check on each one than we would get if we did joint interviews.

There were two major observations we made from this year’s applicant pool.

First, and most obviously, the number of applicants was significantly more than at any time in our past. Fortunately, we had developed analytical approaches in our prior years that enabled us to scale up to address these applications with the close personal attention each applicant deserved.

Secondly, and only obvious once we did the screening and interviews, this year’s pool of applicants was collectively much stronger academically, better prepared regarding taking responsibility for their own futures and more aware of the broader financial aid landscape open to them than any we had seen in the past.

We believe these factors reflect the profound changes we have seen occurring at Carl Hayden High School over the four years we have been involved there. The whole school has moved from an “I/they can’t” mentality about higher education to “I/we/they can and will.” We see this reflected in the administration, the teachers, the guidance counselors and, as a result, the students.

More and more students are being better prepared to pursue higher education at Carl Hayden. This preparation covers a multiplicity of dimensions. Obviously, it starts with classroom work. But it also includes:

Above and beyond anything else, it is the staff of the school, administration, guidance counseling and teachers, telling the students that they believe in them, that they can succeed, and cheering them on. Absent this kind of support, it is very difficult for any but the most motivated students to succeed.
Significantly improved coaching from the guidance counselors regarding colleges and scholarship opportunities. A major part of the challenge for most of the students at Carl Hayden is a financial one: they generally come from families of modest means. So, exposure to and help in filling out financial aid forms, both public and private, make big a difference in the opportunities open to the students.
Others outside the school, like ourselves, are getting involved and helping students see that they have many more choices than may readily be apparent to them. For example, the Aguila Youth Leadership Institute (www.aguilayouth.org) helps coach students on college choices, and takes interested seniors on college tours of schools in both Arizona and New Mexico. As we interviewed our own applicants, we found the horizons of several had be significantly broadened by their involvement with Aguila activities.

With more students successfully pursuing higher education from Carl Hayden, we are also seeing the parents become more supportive of their children’s aspirations than we saw four years ago when we started working there.

Stay tuned.

Best regards,
Peter Gaskins
President