Valencia College Stories

Brazilian student discovers the 'magic' of Valencia; now transferring to an Ivy League university

— by Linda Shrieves

In high school, Anna Correa heard all the negative talk about community colleges.

But when she arrived at Valencia College, she was surprised at what she found – small classes with professors who were interested in getting to know her and helping her, clubs where she made friends, and internships and research experiences that many of her friends at four-year universities weren’t getting.

Today, after graduating from Valencia College, she’s getting ready to start a bachelor’s degree program at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I got accepted everywhere I applied: Cornell, Georgetown, NYU, Penn, everywhere,” she says, marveling.

 

 

Fighting college stereotypes

Anna first came to Valencia out of Dr. Phillips High School, though she wasn’t sure what to expect.

“Being from Brazil, I didn’t know any people who had been to community college… I only heard about it from people in high school and, even though they had not stepped foot on Valencia’s campus, they all had opinions about it,” she said.

But for Anna, Valencia was a logical first step.

“After I finished high school, I started looking at my options and everything was too expensive or too far away,” she recalls. “I talked to some people who did go to community college and they broke some of the stigmas that I had about community college.”

She discovered that, at Valencia College, she would be eligible for scholarships from the Seneff Honors College and the Valencia College Foundation. “I wouldn’t have to pay and I wouldn’t have to get into student debt, so I said, ‘why not?’”

After she arrived on campus, she discovered that there was more “community” at a community college than she’d been led to believe.

“Professors reached out to make sure we were ok. If we needed extensions, they would allow it,” she said. “And the college is smaller (than a university), so people care about you a little bit more. They do have that time to talk to you and see what your needs are. I’ve heard that in many places, it’s hard to get a counselor to talk to you. Well, I could talk to honors counselors, international counselor, or my PTK advisor. There were a lot of people I could talk to when I had any doubts or questions.”

Determined to make the most of her time at Valencia, during her first semester at Valencia, Anna signed up for the college Career Center’s “career action distinction” certification – attending seminars and sessions to learn about networking, internships, and professionalism.

Next, she joined the Seneff Honors College and Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society for community college students. And the following year, she was invited to become an international student ambassador, to explain to potential international students what it was like to attend a community college — a foreign concept for students from other countries.

Along the way, Anna completed two internships at Valencia – using the data analysis skills she’d learned in class to help the college’s learning assessment office.

After completing her second year at Valencia, Anna began researching her next step. She needed to return home to Brazil to care for aging family members, but she didn’t want to lose the two years of U.S. college credits she’d earned at Valencia. So she began exploring online programs from a wide variety of American colleges.

During PTK’s online sessions with recruiters from around the country, she asked lots of questions. “Because I am taking classes online, my biggest worry is that I would not have that one-on-one feeling,” she says. What she wanted, she said, was assurance that she wouldn’t just be a number in a large online class. She also asked how individual professors feel about community college graduates – and if she would be able to access professors during their office hours.

 

 

After her research, she applied to a number of colleges, including Cornell, Georgetown, Tulane universities – and got accepted everywhere she applied.

“When I got the news that I had been accepted into an Ivy League and one of the top 15 universities in the world, I couldn’t believe it. But here I am, finally able to announce that after being accepted to universities like NYU and Georgetown, I’ve chosen the University of Pennsylvania College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) to study Data & Psychological Sciences Online, which permits me to go back to my country and take care of the ones I love the most.”

For that, she’s grateful to the many people who aided her in her Valencia journey – from computer science professors Jerry Reed, Ian O’Toole and Mahendra Gossai to her PTK advisor, Tullio Bushrui, to the International Student Services team and Nicole Fehrenbach and the team in the Learning Assessment Office.

“Once you have at least one person believing in you, it’s all you need to be successful,” she says. “I think I had many people at Valencia who believed in me. And that’s the magic.”