One big obstacle: a university entrance exam few mainland admission offices accept.
Students in San Juan, Puerto Rico, attend a college fair in March at the Puerto Rico Convention Center. Few students leave the island for college. By Jon Marcus April 26 at 3:00 PM SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Desirée Morales Díaz didn’t choke up when recounting how her high school counselor hadn’t heard of the form widely used by college admission offices on the mainland. Or how the counselor didn’t know that low-income students like her were eligible for a waiver of the application fee.
“I sat down with them, and my dad said, ‘I’ll just take two jobs,’” she said, trying to hold back tears. “And that’s when I said no. I wouldn’t put my parents through this just to go to school" on the mainland. Morales ended up enrolling at the University of Puerto Rico, finishing in December with a degree in political science. As a graduate of a high school in Puerto Rico, she was beating the odds even to accomplish that.
Of those who enroll at universities on the island, fewer than half earn degrees, even after six years, the advocacy group Excelencia in Education reports, compared with more than 58 percent of college students nationwide. “It makes us really angry to see people getting all the opportunities in the world just because they’re rich,” said Valeria Flores Morales, a sophomore at the University of Puerto Rico who said she was admitted to a top-ranked mainland university her family could not afford.
The College Board said it does not keep track of the number of U.S. colleges that accept the PAA for admission, but it’s a small number. These exams are used by mainland universities not only to consider applicants’ qualifications, but to find and recruit students who score highly. “We have to believe that there are students in those [public] schools who are good and would be competitive, but how do you find them?” said Roberto Jiménez Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico who is an assistant director of admissions at Tufts University.
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