Daily Lumina News 021820

D’naysha Griggs is a senior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics high school. When she’s not babysitting her eight nieces and nephews, she’s working 20 hours a week as a sales associate at Modell’s Sporting Goods in Brooklyn. She’s also taking Advanced Placement classes and applying to 14 colleges.
Griggs’ work history and family commitments might seem like key selling points for colleges that say they value grit, time management skills, and maturity. But many college applications don’t give much space to that kind of experience. Admissions officers at top schools tend to value community service—the sort of activities that low-income students who are determined to help their families and find ways to save for college may not have time for.

Every spring, colleges try new approaches to get the students they have admitted to actually enroll. A few colleges enroll most of the students they admit, but most colleges struggle a bit and enroll only a minority of those students.
Loyola University New Orleans is this year trying a new approach: letting some students who have been admitted take a three-credit course, free. The approach represents a conviction that nothing is better to sell Loyola than the experience of studying with a professor there.

It's a popular cliche about the college experience: years of living on ramen noodles and cheap snacks. But for many of today's college students, it's a brutal reality. The dumpster has become a dining hall, and malnutrition eats away at a brain that should be learning.
Some 650 colleges across the country have now opened food pantries for hungry students. Student leaders also are addressing the nationwide crisis with food sharing programs such as Swipe Out Hunger and Share Meals.

As a single mother, 30-year-old Betzabeth Salinas is about to obtain her master’s degree in social work at Cal State Long Beach. She works 15 hours a week as a counselor at a nonprofit organization in East Los Angeles and spends another 20 hours in an internship.
Salinas also is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Already facing a questionable future, Salinas will face a new layer of uncertainty in the form of significantly higher renewal fees DACA recipients pay every two years. The higher DACA fees worry young recipients, who often are low-income and already live with anxiety every time their renewal date approaches.