First class graduates from Lynn scholar program

LYNN – A dozen students were part of LaVida’s first graduating class on Friday night and their three years of studying and preparation has paid off to the tune of $2.5 million in college scholarships.Within the first three months of the class’ first year, the students had already raised $320,000 in scholarships and three of their scholars had received the Christian A. Herter Memorial Scholarship for $15,000 per year throughout four years of schooling. The scholarship is designed to cover half of their unmet need for the cost of attending any accredited degree-granting college or university.”The first year they are working to getting to find out which college they are interested to attend, which career they are thinking about and what kind of classes they need to take,” La Vida Executive Director Frances Martinez said. “The students have to be honor roll students and they have to keep their GPA at a 3.0 in all three years.”La Vida’s Scholars program is a college prep program geared toward helping honor roll Latino students from Lynn get into some of the most competitive colleges and universities available to them. Students and their parents make a three-year commitment at the beginning of the student’s sophomore year of high school. The program is highly selective and only accepts 15 students per year. They take part in community service, MCAS and SAT prep classes as well as meeting twice a week until they graduate from high school.”We have a deadline to bring in the application and then there is an interview process for the parent and student to let them know what the commitment is for the three years,” Martinez said. “Then we pass applications to the selection committee. We do not do recommendations, we just let the parents know the commitment and see if they still want to go through the process.”Parents are expected to participate as much as their children are. They are expected to attend a monthly meeting, which Martinez said has a 99.9 percent attendance rate, so they can learn about the processes of getting into college and getting the scholarships secured to pay tuition.”We also open a savings matching account,” Martinez said. “Parents save $2,000 and the La Vida matches it for them. That money is only used for college expenses. Not for any other thing except college.”Martinez said one of the top reasons for the high Latino college drop-out rate in Massachusetts is simply because parents believe their child’s schooling has been paid for once they have gotten the first scholarship. The first year is also easier for students due to the help they receive from high school guidance counselors.”After the second year students don’t really know what to do and what step they need to take and they just drop out because they can’t afford to pay for school,” she said. “With the support we provide the students, it will not happen with our scholars because they already have four years paid in full, scholarships for college.”Some of the students still have small balances to cover for their tuition costs, but La Vida has been working to raise funds to ensure everything is taken care of.”All students are attending four-year college. Its amazing,” Martinez said. “This is a very unique program. I have been searching to see if there is anything around the North Shore and we are the only program that is basically one of a kind.”