By Jeffrey Coltin

It is April, which means millions of high school seniors across the country have set up camp next to their mailboxes, eagerly awaiting college letters.

Most Fordham students are lucky to be a year or more beyond the tireless process of Sunday afternoons full of applications, weekday nights of test prep and Saturday mornings lost to standardized testing.

But, the Rose Hill student volunteers of Let’s Get Ready are doing it all over again, coaching Bronx high school students through the college application process.

“Let’s Get Ready is a non- profit organization which provides free SAT prep and college admission counseling for low-income and under-served students,” says Rae Hawkinson, FCRH ‘15.

It is a pitch she has been making a lot lately as one of Let’s Get Ready’s site directors.  Hawkinson, along with Barbara Rusnack, FCRH ’15, visited high schools across the Bronx last semester to recruit students for the program.  Sixty juniors answered the call and now attend classes twice a week from 4:30-7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays to better prepare themselves for college.

They meet at Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology, one of the six schools housed in the Theodore Roosevelt Educational campus at the columned building across Fordham Road from Rose Hill.

Eighteen Fordham students cross the road at least once a week to coach and mentor these students.  Tuesdays are math days, where students devote two hours to Math SAT Prep.  Thursdays are verbal days, for the SAT’s other section.

The last hour of every meeting is devoted to “college choice,” where students can fill out applications, work on personal statements and more.  Fordham’s coaches are the most valuable during college choice.

“We’re great resources for the kids because we just went through the experience ourselves,” said Rusnack.  “Not much has changed; they can ask us about what we wrote about for our college statement, our personal statement or anything like that.”

Despite all the coursework, the coaches do not need to push the students too hard. “[The students] are very motivated,” said Hawkinson. “They apply themselves… and they want to be there, which makes it easy — both for them, and for our coaches.”

Still, it takes a lot of work to make up for the lack of resources that many of Let’s Get Ready’s students face.

According to Hawkinson, the coaches learn at training that the average college guidance counselor at an urban school has about 500 students assigned to him or her.

That is what makes Let’s Get Ready so important: it gives students free, personalized attention in a college admissions environment where such service is at a premium.

This personalized attention leads to rewarding relationships.

Rusnack shared a story: “When we were doing recruitment, one of my students from last semester when I was a coach came up to me and was like ‘Oh my God, Barbara you’re here, you’ll never believe it, I went up so much on my SAT, I got over an 1800, I’m really happy, I’m finding out about my colleges soon!’”

Hawkinson said it is great to see their students’ accomplishments.  “We feel so proud… we know that they’re capable of it, and we love that we were able to help in some way.”