Eating clubs sponsor college prep program

"Guys, please be quiet!" Max Jan '07 yelled above the noise of dozens of teenagers in Frist 302 Sunday afternoon, slices of pizza in one hand and large SAT prep books in the other.

"Welcome to Let's Get Ready," he said.

As Jan walked into the crowd of high school students, they quieted and he began their introduction into the program. Two laptops would be given away in a raffle this semester, he said, and there would be two hours allotted for practicing each section of the SAT exam. As Jan finished speaking, Tessa Kaneene '07, standing in the front of the room, began reading off the list of students and their "coaches."

Let's Get Ready (LGR) began at Harvard as a community service program and was brought to Princeton last year by Megan Jaye '06, who originally directed the program and now serves as a coach. She was notified of the national program, which has 13 branches, through previous Interclub Council (ICC) president J.W. Victor '05, who knew of it through contacts at Harvard.

Each Sunday, the program will bus in around 125 students from schools in the Trenton, Hamilton and Ewing areas, including Princeton High School, to spend four hours preparing for the SAT examinations. LGR's primary goal is to give underprivileged children a better chance at entering college.

The students are divided into small classes of around four students, each taught by a coach. Sunday was the first day that students met their coaches, who will tutor them for 12 weeks in the verbal and quantitative sections of the SAT.

Undergraduates who teach the high school students are called coaches, Jan said, because "they are not just teachers, but mentors and friends."

"It goes beyond the tutoring aspect," Jaye said. One of her LGR students, Catharine Marchetto of Princeton High School, was accepted early decision to Wellesley College. "Hearing that makes it worthwhile," Jaye said.

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"A lot of guidance offices at these [public] schools are very overwhelmed," Jan said. "[Guidance is] difficult when you're talking hundreds or thousands per grade level."

Some students, like Emmanuel Augustine, a sophomore at Nottingham High School, were recommended to the program by their guidance counselors, who appreciated the extra help. Looking at the SAT prep book, Augustine said that he was not very excited but thought that the work would pay off.

Later in the course, LGR will begin a program called College Choice, which prepares students for college applications, essays and selection.

LGR also leads tours of colleges, including Rutgers, and hold panels of Princeton students answering questions about college life. Jaye said this is helpful since "a lot are the first ones in their family to go to college and it is a little scary for them."

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Another goal of LGR's Princeton branch is to change the community's perception of the eating clubs. Jamal Motlagh '06, president of ICC and former president of Quadrangle Club, said there has been "a lot of unfair, negative publicity" about the eating clubs.

In addition to serving food to upperclassmen and hosting parties, the eating clubs also engage in community service projects. These projects, such as the Hurricane Katrina T-shirt fundraiser, raise thousands of dollars for important causes but are often "unseen by the community as a whole," Motlagh said.

Unlike other projects, LGR is a joint effort of all the eating clubs, overseen by the ICC, and is more expansive than previous community service projects. Last year, the program was open only to eating club members but still attracted enough volunteers to grow to a much larger size than other branches of the LGR, which typically take on 30 to 40 high school students.

This year, volunteering is open to all Princeton undergrads. On Sunday, volunteers were dedicated enough to miss Super Bowl pre-parties and Bicker to teach their first Sunday afternoon.

Jaye said that LGR would help people see that the eating clubs are "not just a place where people go to party on the weekends," adding that she hopes more students will join the program as volunteers.

"Hopefully," Motlagh said, "it will last for years."