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MVCAP assists with college applications
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Joe Rottenborn, executive director of Mahoning Valley College Access Program, stands in his offi ce at Kent State University Trumbull Campus holding an iPad displaying a website he has created to help students with getting into and completing college.
By Denise Dick
CHAMPION
Navigating the college application process can be difficult for anyone — especially those who may be the first in their family to pursue higher education.
The Mahoning Valley College Access Program offers services to help with that process and close that gap.
“Our goal is to unstack the odds,” said Joseph Rottenborn, MVCAP executive director.
The organization wants to see more students not just go to college but to finish.
“We know particularly from our research there are a number of gaps which exist,” he said.
Those include gaps in achievement, opportunity, socioeconomic factors, gender, vocabulary, reading, math, graduation, parenting, fathering and school-readiness.
“The groups of kids having the biggest odds against matriculation to college and success [completion] there would include those with the lowest socioeconomic status, highest-poverty level, first-generation college applicants, from an underrepresented group and male,” Rottenborn said in an email. “Those groups of students with ‘multiple disadvantages’ and ‘overlapping disadvantages’ also face a ‘compounding effect.’”
Preparing students for college by them taking rigorous coursework, though, can help to close those gaps, he said.
Another obstacle that students and families face when preparing for college is the cost.
“In regard to cost, we try to give students and their parents the information they need to know — the net cost or the net price of the schools they’re interested in — and contrast that obviously with the sticker price,” Rottenborn said.
Figures given in information about colleges and universities don’t take into account the financial aid a particular student may be eligible to receive either based on need or merit, the executive director said.
“Don’t worry about the sticker price,” he said. “Look at what a particular school or schools will cost you based on how much financial aid is available.”
If a student wants to go to college and if they apply and qualify for the maximum amount of need-based aid, they can go to college at one of Ohio’s public institutions and be able to do that in an economical way, Rottenborn said.
MVCAP also helps students and parents understand the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
Brad A. Myers of Salem met Rottenborn while both were serving on the Salem school board. When Myers’ daughter was getting close to college age, Myers asked for Rottenborn’s advice.
He attended one of Rottenborn’s seminars at the high school.
“Basically, he brings an extra piece to parents,” Myers said. “We don’t know the system like he does.”
Rottenborn told parents that when it comes to private colleges, they can negotiate financial aid. He told them that many universities have quotas to fill for students from different geographic areas so they may be open to working with particular students.
Though Myers is a college graduate, some other parents aren’t, and Myers believes schools need to do a better job of preparing students for college, instructing them on what courses to take to prepare.
Another goal of MVCAP is to reduce the loan debt that students accumulate.
Typically, it’s more expensive to go away to school.
“We try to get across to kids, if you want to go away to college and don’t have the money, start locally and get as many semesters under your belt as you can,” he said.
If they still want to go away to school in their junior and senior years, they’ve saved that much more money.
Rottenborn has offices at Youngstown State University and both Kent State University’s Trumbull and Salem campuses. He also is on Facebook and Twitter, http://twitter.com/rottenbornj, and has a blog, http://mvcap.blogspot.com. He can be reached via email at jrottenb@kent.edu.