By José Reyes, Reporter
ROME, Ga. — For most, applying for college is a daunting experience. For Latinos, the barriers are even higher.
Latino high school students in Rome-Floyd County often turn to guides, such as counselors, for help completing the necessary paperwork, especially the requisite Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
This support and guidance are essential because it is FAFSA that helps determine an applicant’s eligibility for financial aid. FAFSA requires a social security number or alien registration number, federal income tax return information, bank statements and other financial documents. These requirements, both in number and complexity, can overwhelm Latinos attempting to do this on their own.
And Latino high school students interested in going to college do end up facing the process alone, because often parents and family members are not facile enough with English to be able to help, said Vanessa Juarez, a first-generation college student at Kennesaw State University and a Latina alumna of Rome High School.
“Our parents don’t know what [FAFSA] is,” she said. “They’re new to all of this, too. My parents thought I applied and I would just get thousands of dollars.”
Difficulty Getting Help
Juarez said she found FAFSA and the entire college application process byzantine. Feeling as though she lacked substantial support from her high school, Juarez said she had to rely on other forms of support from her community to complete the FAFSA.
“I never went to anyone at the high school,” Juarez said. “It was always me trying to find other people I could relate to and connect to and people who had already gone through the process.”
Juarez said connections through her Dad proved instrumental.
“One of our (Hispanic) family friends was actually our insurance lady,” she explained. “She knew how hard it can be as a first-generation student to apply and figure out where exactly to start.”
Joandra Mendoza, also a Latina alumna from Rome High, and now a 4th-grade ELA teacher at West Central Elementary, said she relied instead on Google to help her apply for college and complete FAFSA.
“I do remember feeling very isolated, very intimidated by the whole process,” she said. “I remember being petrified working with these huge vocabulary words that I had no idea what they meant. But I just kept trudging forward.”
Mendoza said that while she hoped she had completed the application correctly, she feared that she might have missed a detail or check box and, therefore, ruined her chances at being admitted to college. Mendoza is now an alumna from Kennesaw State and graduated with a bachelor’s in science elementary education.
And while Mendoza’s parents provided emotional support, she said Spanish-language resources that might have helped them help her were scarce.
“The whole [FAFSA] process to them was completely unfamiliar,” she said. “But, I do remember my Mom sitting with me and being like, ‘Let’s do this.’ In reality, I was doing it because she had no idea how to.”
For Mendoza, her Mom’s desire to help and provide at least emotional support speaks to the desire of many and perhaps most Latino parents to be involved.
“I think sometimes there is a misconception that Hispanic and Latino parents don’t care,” she said. “They definitely care. They just don’t know how to support their children.”
Slipping Through the Cracks
Another issue some Latino students face is lacking the proper documentation due to their family’s immigration status.
These students parents’ “don’t know how to get financial aid because not everyone works with a social security number as their form of ID,” explained Father Rafael Caraballo, until earlier this year the priest at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Rome. “Some work with a tax ID number, and some work with neither, so they cannot apply for FAFSA.”
Immigration status can also make Latino families fearful of revealing too much on government-required forms such as FAFSA, said Carballo, who now is priest at Transfiguration Catholic Church in Marietta.
He said the many barriers add up to one sad fact: Many Latino students decide not to pursue higher education at all.