PATERSON PRESS

Tour takes Paterson teens to MIT, Harvard and Yale

Visiting some of the nation's top schools is meant to show city kids to set their sights high.

Joe Malinconico
Paterson Press

PATERSON – Yale University fascinated Nahian Ahmed ever since she was in sixth grade in Bangladesh and saw a picture of its campus.

Paterson students from three different high schools (Garret Morgan, Kennedy's Stem and International) at Harvard University during a recent tour of Harvard, Yale and MIT.

After immigrating to Paterson, Nahian started to think the Ivy League school with such a competitive admissions process was out of reach. But her outlook changed this week when she and 39 other Paterson teenagers went on a two-day tour of the campuses of three of America’s most elite colleges: Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Now, I really want to go to school there,” said the 16-year-old sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School’s Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Academy. “I’m going to work very hard to reach that goal.”

In a city where census data says less than 10 percent of the adults have a bachelor’s degree, it might seem a bit ambitious for teenagers to set their sights on Harvard, Yale and MIT. But don’t tell them that.

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“Just because this is a poor city and not a lot of people go to college, that shouldn’t be an excuse for you not to want to go to the best college,” said Emdadul Haque, 16, a freshmen at the STEM academy. “Go for it.”

“I want to go to the best college so I can get the best education,” said Jesus Cangalya, a junior at Kennedy’s business academy.

The Paterson-based New Jersey Community Development Corp. (NJCDC), a non-profit organization, sponsored the trip, picking up the tab for the bus, hotel rooms and room.

“This was probably the best $8,000 we ever spent,” said the organization’s executive director, Bob Guarasci. “We gave 40 Paterson kids a chance to see some of the best schools in the country and a chance to envision themselves going to these schools.”

“It helped demystify the Ivy League for them,” said Matt Schleifer, the non-profit group’s youth coordinator who went on the trip as one of six chaperones.

The tour started at MIT on Tuesday, followed by some Boston-area sightseeing. On Wednesday morning, the students checked out Harvard and then hit Yale on the way back to Paterson.

Paterson students on the campus of Harvard during their recent tour of three of the nation's top colleges.

Eleven of them gathered at the NJCDC’s Spruce Street offices on Friday to talk about the experience of the tour. Most of the students in the room were born in other countries, such as Peru, the Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. Only a few of them said they had family members who attended college.

Yolain Mordar, a junior at Eastside High, said some of her friends teased her about going on a tour of such “big-boy colleges.”

“I was thinking, ‘Can I even get into one of these schools? Should I even try?’ ” she said. “But this tour gave me hope to keep trying.”

Many of the students who went on the tour participate in the College Readiness program at Kennedy High, a group that has sent three students to Ivy League colleges in the past five years – two to Columbia and one to Dartmouth. The success of their predecessors has given current students hope. The teenagers said the tour gave them additional inspiration.

Different students preferred different aspects of the three colleges. Randy Roques liked Yale because it reminded him of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter stories. Alessandro Zamora liked the MIT tour guide’s focus on its academic programs. Rayvn John said the Yale campus gave her a sense of freedom. “I felt like I could be myself there,” she said.

The tour took place during Paterson schools’ spring break. Jarod Allen, a freshman, said his friends were going to the mall while he was visiting Harvard and Yale. T’ziah Weaver, a sophomore, said one of his friends sent him a text message looking to hang out. “I told him I was just at MIT; he was impressed by that,” he said.

Ishman Chowdhury said her friends teased her. “They called me a nerd. You’re off for spring break and you’re going to a college? I told them I’m planning for my future, for the next 10 years of my life.”

Jannatul Mummi, a junior, said that after returning from the tour late Wednesday she had to go to work the next morning at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Montclair. She shrugged it off, saying she enjoyed the tour and hopes to go to a top-notch college “so I can see my parents smiling.”

Guarasci said this was the first time his organization had run such a tour. “Next year maybe we can do five or six Ivy League schools in three or four days,” he said.