September is weeks away and school will begin again. For thousands of high school seniors they will begin the mind boggling adventure of applying to college. For thousands more, they won’t, not because they don’t want to but because they feel defeated before they begin. Low income children often give up as they give in to what they think is preordained defeat.

“Antoine Tate, 16, was sitting in a courtyard at Howard University in the heat of a July morning. He was holding a pen, and staring at the blank page on the step beneath him.”

“Antoine, who is African-American, will begin his senior year in September at his large, predominantly black and low-income high school just outside Washington. He had come to Howard for an intense four-day workshop in the complex process he will have to master if he is to fulfill his aspirations of upward mobility: applying to college.”
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