Clarke Central High School college adviser Alyssa Yuhouse sits in her office on April 30 with CCHS junior Andrew Caldwell. Yuhouse’s position was created by the Georgia College Advising Corps, but advisers are switched out every two years. “I am really sad Ms. Yuhouse will be leaving for my senior year. She has done so much to help me and instill confidence in me when applying to college,” Caldwell said. Photo by Hannah Gale
The Georgia College Advising Corps has provided a college adviser at Clarke Central High School for almost 10 years.
In 2008, the University of Georgia founded the Georgia College Advising Corps (GCAC) in partnership with the Watson-Brown Foundation and College Advising Corps, which allows high schools across the state the opportunity to have a full-time college adviser in their school. Currently, 15 schools in Georgia have a college adviser due to the GCAC, including Clarke Central High School and Cedar Shoals High School.
“The National College Advising Corps is a non-profit organization that has a mission of helping first generation, low income and underrepresented students get to college. The way that we do that is by partnering first with universities that become chapters of the College Advising Corps,” GCAC Program Director Yarbrah Peeples said. “We hire recent college graduates and then train them to be college advisers and place them in high schools within their state.”
CCHS was one of the first high schools that the GCAC partnered with when founded.
“We started at Clarke Central in 2009, so it’s one of our oldest school partners and we have been extremely excited to continue that partnership,” Peeples said. “We will be entering our 10th year this year. So, in 10 years we really have been able to make a contribution to increasing college enrollment from students within Clarke Central and also increasing staff participation and we look forward to many years to come.”
CCHS College Adviser Alyssa Yuhouse has been at CCHS for two years. During her time at CCHS, she has helped hundreds of students with their college application process.
“Yuhouse has helped me out a lot. Georgia State (University) put me as out-of-state tuition, and she’s helped me throughout the process of trying to get reclassified and we’re in the final process of sending my stuff to Georgia State which should also help with my Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA),” senior Joseph Cervantes said. “Ms. Yuhouse has been a great tool for me to apply to these colleges and get everything sorted out and if it wasn’t for her I don’t know where I’d be college-wise.”
According to Peeples, to become a college adviser through the College Advising Corps, one has to be a recent graduate from a four-year institution and have a particular skill set.
“It’s really that advising Corps is a near-peer organization, meaning we want our advisers to be close in age to the students. They have to have the enthusiasm, will and drive to want to work with young people all day,” Peeples said. “It’s a full-time position in the high school and they become a part of the counseling staff and they focus solely on college admissions and college matriculation work.”
“Being first-generation myself, I didn’t have any help in the college admissions process and I know had I had a (college adviser), I wouldn’t be in as much debt and I maybe wouldn’t have gone where I did and I could’ve gotten more scholarships,” Yuhouse said. “I didn’t have any guidance, I was just sort of blindly applying and doing things.”
Yuhouse has been a resource for students past and present.
“Ms. Yuhouse helped me to find information about my school. She helped me to research requirements,” 2017 CCHS graduate and rising University of West Georgia sophomore Kennae Hunter said. “She provided me help with my SAT fee waivers and stuff like that, so I could actually get into college and so when I narrowed down my options, she helped me to get more information about those specific schools and what I needed to do, making sure I’ve done the right things to make sure I’m on track to be where I want to be.”
For Yuhouse, her own experiences will the college admissions process inspired her to apply for the College Advising Corps after graduation.
“Being first-generation myself, I didn’t have any help in the college admissions process and I know had I had a (college adviser), I wouldn’t be in as much debt and I maybe wouldn’t have gone where I did and I could’ve gotten more scholarships,” Yuhouse said. “I didn’t have any guidance, I was just sort of blindly applying and doing things.”
CCHS college adviser Alyssa Yuhouse poses in her office in May. Yuhouse has spent the last two years working with CCHS juniors and seniors. “Even though she works with all of our students,” CCHS counselor Toawondia Underwood said. “Her goal really is to work with first-generation students. She has planned and she’s so efficient that she has worked with all of our students.”
Yuhouse says that college advisers have to go through training before they are able to take on their full-time positions in the high school.
“We go a month-long intensive training in July where we do eight hours a day training on everything from sensitivity training to tracking to minimums for tests and schools and then we go on a month-long college tour throughout the state to get a better idea of what each school has to offer,” Yuhouse said.
According to CCHS counselor Toawondia Underwood, Yuhouse’s position is an asset to the CCHS counseling department.
“Having Ms. Yuhouse here provides that additional support that our students really need. She’s able to give them that extra attention and walk them through the step-by-step process and she’s able to follow up with them because she’s working with a smaller group,” Underwood said. “Even though she works with all of our students, her goal really is to work with first-generation students. She has planned and she’s so efficient that she has worked with all of our students.”
When recent graduates begin working with the College Advising Corps they also become members of AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs, so there’s a cap on the length of service they can have in that particular program — for college advisers that means two years.
“I’m kind of upset ‘cause I got to spend time with her helping me, so I feel like we have to start all over with the other college adviser,” junior Yahaira Cuevas said. “I kinda am worried, but I feel like it will be OK because whoever the next one is will know as much as Ms. Yuhouse. It’s the same thing, just a different relationship.”
According to Peeples, college advisers prepare a transition plan every year that are passed down from the outgoing adviser to the successor.
“Those transition plans will give them a lot of information about the school, tell them about popular colleges with students, it will provide information about staff members and classes that advisers can use to access students, it gives them information about programs that already exist in the school and events that the adviser helps produce every year or support every year,” Peeples said.
As Yuhouse’s tenure at CCHS comes to an end, she is appreciative of the opportunity she had to work with students.
“This job has helped me in every way possible. I definitely have grown professionally and personally in this position,” Yuhouse said.
Yuhouse’s next step is a Public Administration masters program through UGA.
“In grad school, I’m just going in with a lot more knowledge of schools in general on a state level, county level, and individual school basis, especially because I want to go into K-12 education policy, and so I just know that had I gone straight to grad school I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it as I will now,” Yuhouse said.
For nearly 10 years, CCHS has offered students the services of Georgia College Advising Corps College Advisers. The advisers rotate out after two-year stints. “We started at Clarke Central in 2009, so it’s one of our oldest school partners and we have been extremely excited to continue that partnership,” GCAC Program Director Yarbrah Peeples said. Graphic by Hannah Gale
