Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 3, 1993 TAG: 9305040464
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Go to Hawaii for college? Who would have thought?
Who, indeed.
Rarely do students at Carroll County High School think about leaving the state for college, said Brad Dalton, a junior.
They might think about it more if they stared every day at the range of academic options displayed on the walls of Northern Virginian schools, he said.
"There are a lot more college-bound people here, I think," he said.
Not so.
But there are, perhaps, more students leaving Virginia to experience higher education in another part of the country.
Fairfax County sent 66 percent of its 1992 graduates to two- or four-year colleges, with 33 percent of those studying out of state.
Figures were not immediately available for the number of college-bound students in Carroll County, but Guidance Director Judy Neal said very few leave the region to attend college.
Grayson County routinely sends about 60 percent of its graduates to college, Guidance Director James Blythe said. Last year, it sent 69 percent on for post-secondary education.
Because the school sits near the Tennessee and North Carolina borders, he said, students often leave Virginia for colleges there. But few go any farther. The school does not keep statistics on those who do.
Many can't afford to pay out-of-state tuition. But others simply don't think to try, the students said.
Like Carroll County, Grayson County schools don't cover their walls with the colorful college materials.
Not because they don't have the posters, Blythe said. They do, along with a lot of other information about schools across the country.
"We've just been asked not to put the posters up," he said.
Blythe said the directive came from School Superintendent Sydney Harvey. But Harvey said he never issued such an order and that counselors must have misunderstood.
"Certainly, in the guidance office, they should be able to put up any kind of poster for any kind of college," Harvey said.
Jane Carter, a Grayson County guidance counselor, would like to do more.
Guidance counselors already type college applications for their students and send for catalogs that students request, she said. But she'd liken to broaden the services her office provides.
In Fairfax County last week, she watched in fascination as J.E.B. Stuart High School's career resource specialist, Denise Emery, ran through a computer program that pulled information on colleges from across the country.
Vegetarian meals? Athletic scholarships? The computer had it all.
Carter said she used a similar program in Grayson County that culled information about Virginia's schools, but offered nothing on colleges out of state.
She plans to ask the Grayson County School Board for the new software.
"But I have a feeling it's very expensive," she said.
by CNB