From middle schoolers to seniors, Cleveland kids get a sense of college life through summer tours 

As the yellow school bus rumbled down the highway toward Akron most of the students and parents attending the day’s college tour began to doze off, but Bre’Niyah Penn couldn’t sit still. 

The rising seventh grader bounced up and down in her seat as her words tumbled out in an excited stream of consciousness. She described skipping a grade at the public charter school she attends and her dream of being the first in her family to go to college, declaring it would be an even “bigger deal” because she’s the first female grandchild in her family. 

Switching topics, she told the story of being intrigued by the pictures of her grandmother’s hand surgery and mused that the excitement she felt looking at the muscles and tissues in the photo meant “one of two things: either I’m going to be a surgeon or I’m a psychopath.” 

“I think it’s a surgeon though,” she said. 

Her biggest questions for the upcoming college tour weren’t  about academic programs or financial aid but about student life. 

“Is it really like how they make it seem like in the movies?” she asked. “Because I feel like they over exaggerate it.” 

Bre’Niyah, along with two dozen other middle and high school students and their parents, was headed to tour the University of Akron as part of a series of college tours organized by College Now Greater Cleveland and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD). 

“Our goal today was exposure,” Kristen Gramajo, who manages College Now’s programs, told Signal Cleveland. “Exposing not only our students but also our families.” 

The district in partnership with College Now have hosted college tours for over a decade and have included middle schoolers in their outreach efforts with the hope that helping students and families get excited about college early will prompt more to apply. 

This year, College Now also received a grant that helped to make its tours and workshops open not only to CMSD students but to students living in the Mt. Pleasant, Buckeye-Shaker and Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhoods. That includes Bre’Niyah who attends Ohio College Prep, a local charter school. 

Helping younger students see themselves at college  

Bre’Niyah wasn’t the only student in middle school on the trip whose college decisions are still years in the future. Her brother, another seventh grader, was also in attendance along with a number of other middle school students including Malachi Coleman, an incoming eighth grader at Campus International. 

Despite begging his mom for bookstore swag, Malachi wasn’t as enthusiastic as Bre’Niyah about the University of Akron. That’s partly because he’s got his heart set on playing football at Ohio State. 

But his mother, Priscilla Coleman-Williams, has been encouraging him to think about what his future could look like without football. He has an interest in engineering and so Coleman-Williams thought touring the school, which has a strong engineering program, might be a good idea, even if the college process is still years away. 

Bre’Niyah, for her part, spent the tour absorbing as much as she could about college life, through the snippets Nicholas Kohut, a senior at the university, shared. At one point, she even announced her intention to join the cookie-tasting club Kohut is a member of. 

That’s a big reason why the tours are open to sixth graders through seniors, Gramajo said. Even if students are still years out from the application process, touring a campus helps them envision themselves in college and engage their families in planning ahead. 

On the tour’s last stop, at Bierce Library, Kohut took the students and their families to the school’s new sensory room—a nook on the first floor of the library filled with cozy seating, fidget toys and low lighting. 

As students were ushered to lunch at the campus dining hall, Bre’Niyah, reflected on the day. She hadn’t been able to confirm if college parties look like the movies but she did get to see the sensory room, and, now, she declared “I know where I’m going to spend all my time!”  

Highschoolers use the tours to narrow their lists 

Unlike the middle schoolers for whom college still feels like an  abstract goal, the two high school seniors on the trip spent the tour evaluating whether or not they’d submit an application in the next few months. 

By the end of the day the two students reached different conclusions: one senior added the University of Akron to her list the other decided she wasn’t a fan. 

Even though the university offers Amiya Heard’s chosen major, psychology, she just wasn’t convinced by the feel of the school. The dorms and the dining hall at UA felt small and crowded and she preferred the vibe and extracurricular offerings at Kent State, which she also toured this summer. 

Amiya, who will be a senior at John Hay High School, is also considering plans for after high school graduation that don’t include attending college. Some of her family members have served in the military and if she decides not to go to college she thinks she’d join the military as well in part because some of her teachers have told her she has good leadership skills. 

Gramajo said that it can be just as valuable for a student to learn what they don’t like about a school as it can be for them to fall in love with one. Tours to schools farther away tend to draw older students, she added. 

On the flip side, Darnesha Greene, an incoming senior at Rhodes High School, used the visit to confirm she wanted to add the university to her list. The school offers her intended major, sports management, and Darnesha is excited about the possibility of attending NCAA Division I sports games. 

Her mom, Shelena Perry, pointed out, the school seemed to offer good support for students, including help finding internships. Still, despite her interest in the school she’s trying to encourage Darnesha to make her own decisions independently. 

“That’s why I keep asking her, ‘Well, how do you feel about this?’” Perry said. “What were the good points? What were the bad points?”