“I wanted to do something useful.  I wanted to find a place that needed academic help, since I felt somewhat qualified in that realm. I chose to volunteer with an organization that offered college prep programs to students for free. I am Asian and although I feel there is a sizeable immigrant Asian community that could use assistance, there were already a number of programs out there for them. But the Indo-Caribbean Community didn’t have as many developed programs yet, and I thought it would be great to do that and learn a new culture and community at the same time. At this organization, I teach the Math portion of their SAT program. Most of the students enrolled in the program are Indo-Caribbean, Latin American and African American. I also created a larger program for college prep, that goes deeper into the college application process because I realized the SAT is just one small part of the application process. This program focuses on how to build a good extracurricular background, how to write a good essay, letters of recommendation planning, financial aid, and even college selection. Few of these things are taught in school, and many less privileged students just aren’t in an environment where enough time is spent building these aspects of a student’s profile. I think these programs have been successful, in helping improve students’ scores, which ultimately help them get into college, get into better colleges, or get them financial support. My belief is that the students who were going to go to college come here to do better, and those who do not, don’t attend this program. That’s just unfortunately how it works – I think you would need to catch a student much younger, probably as a freshman or sophomore to turn that around. To better improve these programs, there could definitely be more tutors and teachers who are qualified to teach and who have some insight, from their own experiences or professionally, as to how the college application process works, and how influential America works. Having additional educators would also allow them to have more than one session a week, and more regularly throughout the year as well. In the end however, I think economic funds are always welcomed, which could improve on the size and the resources of these programs.”