College Application Narratives: A College Application Resource through Student Narratives
May 13, 2026
This semester at Brown, I created a college application resource for underprivileged local high school students. This was the final project for EDUC 1185: Developmental and Educational Journeys of Students in Immigrant Families. You can check out the project here. You can also check out the Engaged Families of Providence, a resource collection site built upon works of Professor Yamamoto and her students, in which this resource will also be displayed!.
College application is such a widely discussed topic in the U.S., and there’s many, many free online resources students can access, so why this project? For me, it really stems from a simple question: how can I provide the interpersonal touch to these resources? Before diving any deeper, I want to start by asking a quick question: what are factors that deter underprivileged students from applying to prestigeous universities? There’s obviously many answers, but think about a few, and click to see if the factor below is one of them.
Hover for answer: Feeling they don’t belong/will never get in.1
Surprising? Maybe not so much, but was this one of your first reactions to the question? This is a common experience for underprivileged students, even when from an outside perspective, they’re more than qualified and prepared to apply. I believe that this experience is also partly promoted by popular tools like “college calculators”, which tell you your chance of admission using GPA and SAT scores.
In this light, my resource hopes to bring some truly personal narratives into the picture. I hope that by showing real college students’ diverse experiences and background, this resource could encourage current high school students to apply. Furthermore, I also hope these experiences shared could serve as a starting point for current high school students.
It’s important to also address the important limitations of this project: (1) number of respondants, which at time of writing, is only 9; and (2) lack of diverse and in-depth response for financial aid questions. Both limitations relate in part to the time limitation of the project and access to samples. Although I’m not sure about the future of this project, but I really hope I could expand the sample size and diversify responses for all questions.
Finally, if you’d like to share you experience, please reach out to me through email or any other means! The only requirement I have is that you completed high school in the U.S.
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Source: Brown University faculty overseeing collaboration with local high schools ↩