A taste of college

About 450 youngsters from 36 schools in Monterey County and surrounding areas descended into CSUMB Tuesday to help them hone their writing skills in a college environment.

These are not your regular high and middle school students. They all take AVID classes – Advancement Via Individual Determination, a program that sets middle and high school students on a path to college. To be able to attend, they had to participate in a “Write of’, a timed writing exercise designed to get them exited about writing. Top writers were selected to attend the writer’s conference at CSUMB.

They cam from as far north as Palo Alto to as far south as Greenfield. They attended seminars such as “Boredom Boredom Busters: Strategies for Attacking Academic Texts,” by CSUMB professor Jennifer Fletcher (in the picture kindly provided by CSUMB).

AVID has helped thousands of students to get into college. With the help of their peers students stay motivated and encouraged, making their path to college easier. In California in 2009-10, 91 percent of AVID seniors had completed four-year college entrance requirements, compared to 36 percent of their peers who did not participate in the program.

For more information about AVID, click here.