Having attended high
school in his native
Iran and in Vancouver, Ali Safavi ’05
wasn’t familiar with
the SAT or the traditional routes into
American colleges.
He made the dean’s
list in technical
school, and he chose
Carolina from among
the four universities
that wanted him.
doesn’t do particularly well, serves five to 10
years in the Marine Corps and comes out a
mature adult, enrolls in a community college
and does beautifully — I don’t know why I
would pay attention to that SAT score.”
Starting at a community college and
then transferring to Carolina also can make
sense for someone with perfectly good high
school grades who wants to go straight on
to college. Ali Safavi ’05 graduated from East
Chapel Hill High School with a GPA that
would have made him a contender for
freshman admission. But he had started high
school in his native Iran and continued in
Vancouver, Canada. When he moved to the
U.S. in his senior year, first to Washington,
D.C., and then to Chapel Hill, he was unfamiliar with SATs.
“The whole pattern of going to university was totally new to me,” he said. “And I
thought community college would be
cheaper.” He went to Durham Tech on
grants and scholarships, determined from the
beginning to make it to Carolina. “I had
goals. I wasn’t just taking classes. I knew
what I wanted to do.” He made the dean’s
list at Durham Tech, served as a student
ambassador, got involved in campus clubs.
Ultimately, he applied to UNC, N.C. State,
Georgia Tech and the University of Kentucky — and he got into all of them. With a
degree in biomedical engineering, Safavi
now works with robots.
Transferring to Carolina had some
advantages, he says. “If I had gone straight to
university, with the classes so huge and so
many distractions and students, I wouldn’t
have maintained the high GPA. At Durham
Tech, I was more focused on my subjects. At
Durham Tech, the instructor will know so
much about you and will help you out. At
Carolina, you’re on your own. It’s like going
from a small town to a big city.”
That’s one of the challenges C-STEP
aims to address. Robert Russell, one of the
program’s pioneers, hopes that by next year
he’ll know the campus well enough to serve
as a peer mentor for those who follow him.
“I’d take people by the hand and show them
stuff like using the printers, where to eat on
campus, where the buildings are. I’d let them
know it’s normal to be overwhelmed.”
‘If I had
gone straight
to university,
with the classes
so huge and
so many
distractions
and students,
I wouldn’t have
maintained the
high GPA.
At Durham
Tech, I was
more focused
on my subjects.
At Durham
Tech, the
instructor will
know so much
about you and
will help
you out.
At Carolina,
you’re on your
own. It’s like
going from a
small town
to a big city.’
Ali Safavi ’05
The door stays open
Keep in touch, but love the one you’re
with, Farmer says. “There are plenty of near-miss candidates. If it didn’t work out as a
freshman, we encourage you to stay in conversation with us. It’s hard to keep talking to
someone who just gave you bad news, but
we ask them to work up their courage, give
us a call and ask, ‘Can you help me choose
my courses? Can you give me specific
advice?’We’re delighted when students take
