Running head: COLLEGE ACCESS AUTOETHNOGRAPHY 1

College Access Autoethnography

Lauren E. Van Fossen

Seattle University
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Timeline of Key College Activities

I was always going to go to college. As a third-generation college student, I grew up

visiting my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents alma maters. I attended all of the Cal

football games, and even visited my fathers fraternity house. I knew I was going to attend

college because everyone in my family had gone to college. On top of this privilege, I had the

privilege of doing well academically, and my choice to attend college aligned with my values

and academic interests. The four-year college experience was what I was sold on, so I did not

consider community colleges. Although there were a few community colleges near my

suburban, upper-middle class town, I had an assumption and bias that attending a community

college after high school signified the inability to get admittance into a four-year institution

academically.

In creating my choice set of colleges, I visited several colleges and met with a private

college counselor. I also referred to Fiske Guide to Colleges (Fiske, 2009) to research four-year

large, public universities, both in California and out-of-state, because I was looking for the

college experience that included football, Greek life, large lecture halls, and a traditional

collegiate campus. I was looking for an aspect of prestige, and due to my misconceptions about

community colleges, community colleges were not a part of this search. Furthermore, during the

application process, I found out that I would already be accepted to a few of the UC schools

because of a program where the top percentage of students in each high school would be

admitted to those schools. Pairing this with my financial privilege that my parents could afford

four years of college, I did not consider community colleges. After final college visits over

Spring Break and having conversations with friends and family, I decided to attend UCLA
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because it felt like the best fit for me, meaning that I felt that UCLA provided what I wanted out

of college (academically and socially), and it was in a location that I was unfamiliar with.

Pivotal Moments in my College Pathway

Essentially, all of the college visits and campus tours influenced my college pathway.

Every road trip or family trip had a college visit tied in. We drove through Oregon to visit

cousins, so we stopped at Oregon State University's bookstore and Reed College's library. We

spent the week in Indiana seeing distant relatives, so we swung by Valparaiso University, my

grandmother's alma mater. However, my most pivotal college visits encompassed the

contrasting differences of my perceptions of Cornell University and University of Virginia.

These college visits occurred after I had applied to colleges, and helped me determine the

difference between what would be good fit, or what would be a mismatch between my

expectations of college and what I perceived I would experience. Although location and weather

played a role, I found Cornell University isolating and not impressive enough to pay private

institution tuition, whereas, I found University of Virginia's academic culture and community

very attractive. Interestingly, these were not the expectations I had before I visited the campuses.

If I had not visited any of the institutions I applied to, I probably would have attended Cornell

University, and had a much different college experience. Maybe I would have stayed, or

transferred, or come home to attend community college.

Reflecting on this pivotal moment in my college selection process, I understand that

having the financial means and support from my family to visit colleges was a privilege.

However, more general and invisible, having the opportunity to examine and choose a college

based on the perceived campus culture is a privilege in itself. Furthermore, knowing that fitting

with the campus culture and environment is something to look for was a privilege. My mother
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instilled this idea of fit to me, and essentially, I ended up seeing my college pathway as a process

to find an institution where I saw myself belonging.

College choice based on fit has many connections to Seattle University based on the

results of the campus climate survey where students did not feel like they belonged. Now I am

wondering about these students and if they had the financial privilege and opportunity, like me,

of choosing a college based on fit, or was that something they found that was important to them

after they entered Seattle University? Fitting with the college environment also connects to

college access, equity, and our role as student affairs professionals, which I interrogate further

later in this reflection.

Honestly, it was very difficult for me to think of another defining pivotal moment. I even

called my mother to discuss my college pathway, and I began to reflect on why my college

pathway felt very normal, linear, and smooth. The community I grew up in was a pivotal

structure to my pathway that intersects with many aspects that affected my pathway. My

community fueled the expectations to go to college, which infiltrated families, social

relationships within the community, the function of the community colleges, and high schools.

Families, parents, teachers, and friends ask where you going college. The schools offer many

AP courses, whereas vocational classes had been phased out. Our community colleges are

primarily collegiate in function with the intention of transferring. This college-going attitude

across my community was pivotal for me to have a seemingly positive, smooth college pathway

with few moments of dissonance or critical changes. Furthermore, my parents had grown up in

this community as well so I was never met with different perspectives.

Reflecting on this college-going attitude engrained in my community, I realized that

although many students from my high school attended a four-year institution, at least one fourth
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of my graduating class of over 500 students published in the school newspaper that they were

attending the local community college after high school. So why do I have such negative

misconceptions, assumptions, and biases about attending community college after high school,

when so many students in the community do it? I recognize that identifying as White and

affluent in a predominantly White, affluent community and society, the higher education system

was built for me, resulting in a seamless college pathway. Anything other than the traditional

college pathway to a four-year institution, for example, attending a community college, becomes

a socially constructed inferior option.

Privilege and Opportunity Reflection

I had at least three different areas of privilege and opportunity during my college

pathways coming from my family, my hometown and high school, and societal and systemic

sources of privilege. I had socioeconomic and financial privilege, third generation college

attender privilege, and community and high school privilege. These privileges stem from a more

invisible and historical White racial privilege that positively affected my college pathway.

Financially, I had the privilege of having a college fund started by my parents before I

was born and could financially attend any college that I wanted to, either in-state or out-of-state.

We could also pay for college visits and a private college counselor to help with my college

search and decisions. Financial privilege connects to my privilege of not having to navigate

financial aid, scholarships, or loans. This reminds me of community cultural wealth and

navigational capital (Yosso, 2005) in that students without this privilege must have used

extensive navigational capital to navigate confusing financial aid programs.

A second area of privilege stems from being a third generation college attender in my

family. From this privilege, I had an extensive knowledge of higher education, had college as a
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goal from birth, had visited many colleges, and had an understanding of the college experience

and expectations academically and socially. For example, I knew that it was beneficial to apply

to reach, target, and safety schools, to apply to live on campus the first year, and had an

understanding of requirements and courses to be prepared for college courses.

My community and high school are other areas of privilege that overlap with other

aspects of my privilege. My affluent community influences the opportunities and resources for

my high school. For example, my high school offered competitive AP courses and required

courses that made students eligible to apply to the UC system. Furthermore, due to the

expectation that my community had for students to enter college after high school, this left few

options for students who aspire for vocational or technical careers.

Overall, these areas of privilege positively guided a successful college pathway. These

areas of privilege, however, stem from my overall historical and social White racial privilege.

Because of my White privilege and the White privilege of my hometown community and family,

I was able to succeed academically and pursue college from a very early age. Recognizing,

naming, and examining these privileges is important to realize when discussing college with

students and colleagues. I must understand that others may have not received the same privilege,

and I must challenge the misconceived assumptions I grew up with about students who did not

begin college after high school or decided to attend a community college.

A problem I have been grappling with in considering what role student affairs

professionals play in college preparation and access is that we see students once they have

successfully entered college. However, that is with my four-year institution lens, and I have to

unpack an assumption I did not know I had about the student affairs profession and my own

career. I saw working in college access as only working in a non-profit organization; however,
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community colleges are a key arena for student affairs professionals to build more inclusive

college-going trajectories. Community colleges are built on relationships with local high schools

and four-year institutions (Cohen, Brawer, & Kisker, 2013); therefore, community colleges are

pivotal higher education structures to influence college access and preparation. Additionally,

community colleges are geographically designed to be local, allowing student affairs

professionals to be essential college access resources for local high schools students.

One of the ways student affairs professionals can develop more inclusive recruitment and

retention is creating ways to be able to understand and visualize the campus culture for students

who may not have the privilege to visit colleges or see campus culture as an attribute for the

college. Through technology, videos, and online virtual tours, students and families can get a

sense of where they are applying. Furthermore, even communicating that browsing college

websites as a tool for searching and examining colleges. Another way student development

professionals can build more inclusive college-going trajectories is to have more visibility and

communication with resources in high school and community colleges. For example, requiring

all high school students intending to go to college fill out the FAFSA, then communicating

through the financial aid and scholarship terminology, process, expectations, and implications.

All student affairs professionals should be financially literate so that students have access to

information from many sources.

In my own current work as an academic advisor, I must be aware of my privilege and be

intentional about challenging the negative assumptions I may still carry with me about

community colleges, especially when working with transfer students. Taking this course, and

engaging with the campus and community college professionals will help me visualize and

understand the student experience at community colleges, which will further my ability to
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connect with my advisees. Furthermore, I am looking forward to using my group project

members as resources for understanding student affairs in community colleges.

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References

Cohen, A. M., Brawer, F.B., & Kisker, C. (2013). The American community college (6th

edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Jossey-Bass.