Faodice Bishaze visited Wellesley College and fell in love.
Bishaze, originally from Burundi, toured the historic women’s college just outside Boston with a group of fellow students from Concord High. She applied for early admission and just found out she was accepted – with a full scholarship.
“It’s a great school,” she said, beaming. “The hard work was worth it.”
Gopal Timsina of Nepal and Speline Irakoze of Burundi rattled off lists of schools they are excited about – MIT, Tufts and Wesleyan.
“The campuses are so open and welcoming,” Timsina said.
The Concord High seniors are three of the school’s population of new American students applying to top colleges, inspired by peers like Esther Elonga, who graduated from the high school last year and is now attending Harvard.
Concord High has seen an influx of former refugee students in recent years, many of them seeking opportunities in higher education. Seven new American students attended the prestigious St. Paul’s Advanced Studies Program last summer – more than ever before.
“When I see what Esther was able to accomplish, I think, ‘If she can do that, I can do that,” Irakoze said. “It’s all about being inspired by each other, motivating each other and building each other up.”
Navigating the college process can be challenging for new American students – many of them are first-generation college students whose family members don’t speak a lot of English.
“With kids who grew up here, they have an advantage,” Irakoze said. “Their family members have already gone through the college process, and they know exactly what they should do, whereas coming from a different country as a refugee, you have to start from scratch.”
Concord High has stepped up to fill their unique needs by allocating resources to English Language Learners classes, networking with local colleges and making connections with students’ families.
“You can’t really go to your parents and say, ‘I am struggling with this class or I need help with SAT prep,’ ” Ennosen Yen, of South Sudan, said. “You need to look to your school, resources they can provide and other students who have already been through it.”
Concord has taken in 1,422 refugees in the past eight years, which is nearly equal to Manchester. The figures mean Concord has taken in more refugees per-capita than any other New Hampshire city, according to state records.
Those numbers are reflected in the diversity at the local high school. Concord High’s student population was 90 percent white 10 years ago. Now, 22 percent of its students are non-white.
Concord High School’s school social worker Anna-Marie DiPasquale said career planning has been part of the process for new American students from the time she started at Concord High a decade ago.
But the tedious process of college essay writing, applying for scholarships and financial aid overwhelmed students. They would be told by guidance counselors to work on paperwork at home. Inevitably, they’d hit walls and feel afraid to ask for help.
“They need more guidance than just, ‘Go do this,’ ” she said. “New American students need somebody to sit down with them and say, ‘Let’s do a group think and walk through this together.”
DiPasquale said she now has students work on the FAFSA in her office and reserves the school library on weekends for students to come in and work on essay supplements and scholarship applications.
“That way, I’m right here if they have questions – similar to what would happen in your own home,” she said.
The school has developed connections with local colleges, like the University of New Hampshire, New England College and NHTI. Students are able to visit those schools through diversity day programs.
But DiPasquale also takes things a step further. On one Saturday this fall she took a group of students in her own car to Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Her connections with students’ families have also been important in their success.
For example, DiPasquale visited the home of Junior Faida Demunga, who came from Mozambique, because Demunga’s mother was concerned about her joining the cheerleading and swimming teams.
“She didn’t know that taking sports in school can help you with college. She said, ‘you shouldn’t be taking sports because you come home late,’ ” Demunga said. “But since Ms. D came over to talk with her last year, it’s been different. She is more supportive.”
St. Paul’s Advanced Studies Program has long attracted bright public school students from across the state who are looking to attend competitive colleges.
The five-week summer program allows students to dip their toes into subjects like engineering, biomedical ethics and government not available at public schools.
But the program has never had a significant new American student population.
The program always gets the most applications from Concord High School – and accepts the most students from that school, Director Mike Ricard said, but new Americans didn’t know about it.
“New Americans don’t know about the program, so they don’t even apply. When they look at the price, it’s like, ‘We can’t afford having you go away for a whole summer,’ ” said Irakoze, who took molecular biology at ASP last summer.
Ricard said Esther Elonga changed that. When she attended the program a few years ago, he saw that the ASP could benefit by reaching out to these students.
After that, ASP Advancement Director Trent Smither made a few visits to Concord High talk speak with new American students about the program. He told them about its financial aid program – which is offered to half of ASP’s students.
Later, he invited students and their families to come visit the school in person.
“I was so fascinated. It was beautiful – not like anything I’d ever seen,” Hemanta Dhungel, of Nepal, said.
At the program, students said they were nervous that they wouldn’t fit in. Most of them were the only person not born in American living in their dorms.
Dhungel said both the students and the program exceeded her expectations. She had the chance to share her culture – her fellow students loved the Nepali coffee, noodles and spices her mom sent her.
“They used to ask me questions about my culture, about where I came from,” she said. “I felt so welcome, and I didn’t get that judgment feeling.”
Dhungel also had a chance to practice her creative writing skills in ASP’s writing workshop. She wrote a short piece about elephant attacks that happened in the village she grew up in near the jungle in Nepal that she’s using for her college essay.
Smither said having new American students in the classroom at ASP enriches the experience for all students there.
“These kids are coming from significantly challenged backgrounds – many are coming from countries that have been in civil war for decades, some are coming from refugee camps, some are coming from countries that have been facing ongoing genocide,” Smither said. “They have a really impressive story to tell college admission offices – and ASP helped them shape that story.”
Most college applications are due this month. Students who applied early are starting to hear back.
“Applying was tough, but waiting – waiting is almost harder,” Irakoze said, while walking around at an event that she and other new Americans from Africa put on at the city’s Parks & Recreation center.
Irakoze and her classmates put together a campaign called “Stive to Rise” to empower other African young people to work hard in school and apply to colleges. They invited a panel of current Concord High students and former students who are now in college to speak to a group of more than 100 peers.
Yen said the students wanted to put together the event to inspire other students like they had been by former new American achievers at Concord High.
“I think it’s all about inspiration and having a role model,” Yen said. “Because we don’t really have connections like some American-born students do, we kind of fall back and get intimidated. You think, ‘I can’t do this because I’ve never seen someone like me do it.’ Seeing other people do it gives you a push and the motivation that, you can do it too.”