The exacting quest for a good school
Ambitious students of color seek aid at A Better Chance
Kathleen Burge

BROOKLINE — When her daughter Mikal was young, Celeste Hayden despaired over the local public schools in the neighborhoods near their Hyde Park home. So she fought for a spot for her daughter at one of the city’s charter schools, Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School.

When her daughter was 9, her mother, a bus driver for the MBTA, sat her down to talk about what would come next. They devised a plan to apply to private schools, Boston exam schools, and charter schools.

Now that her daughter is 13, expecting to enter high school in the next year, mother and daughter drove to Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill yesterday for an interview with A Better Chance, , the program that helps students of color apply to middle and high schools. Mikal Hayden-Gates, who dreams of one day studying at MIT, is hoping to get accepted by a boarding school.

“I’m interested in science, mostly,’’ said Hayden-Gates, who recently built a solar oven for a science project. “I just want to get into a good school.’’

Sixty-one students, fifth-graders through high school sophomores, showed up yesterday for interviews that will help A Better Chance officials decide whether to accept them into the program and refer them to private and public schools. The program, which began in 1963, has more than 12,000 alumni, including Governor Deval Patrick, who attended Milton Academy through A Better Chance.

Isabella Trauttmansdorff, senior program manager for A Better Chance’s northeast region, talked to parents in the school cafeteria while their children interviewed yesterday. She gave them tips for completing the private school application process and applying for financial aid. She assured them that at boarding schools, their children would be watched closely by dorm parents and other adults.

The students had already submitted applications and test scores to the program, but the interviews help identify students who might not come across as well in their written applications, Trauttmansdorff said later in an interview.

“Some kids, you just have to meet them,’’ she said.

The staff at A Better Chance will sort through the applications and let students know whether they will move forward in the application process or whether they were not accepted into the program. For those who move ahead, the program will recommend about a half-dozen schools that would be a good match. The students will then apply to the schools with a recommendation from A Better Chance.

As the students entered the front doors of the private school yesterday, they were greeted by two A Better Chance scholars, Hannah Holmes and Akilah Ransom, both 14. The young women are freshmen at Wellesley High School and left their families in New York to attend school here. They live in a house in Wellesley staffed by A Better Chance and local volunteers. The young women were sympathetic to the students streaming past them to interviews.

“We all know how it feels to be in this position,’’ said Ransom, who is from Brooklyn.

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