St. Paul's senior's college fears disappear

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent 

 When St. Paul Diocesan Junior-Senior High School opened in September as a merger of Holy Name and St. Peter-Marian high schools, the students weren’t sure what to expect. 

Attending school safely during a pandemic was obviously a major concern, but many seniors also worried if colleges would accept them from a new, unknown high school.  

“I was actually very nervous,” admitted senior Julia Barry, who came to St. Paul from St. Peter-Marian, “because I didn’t know how all of my transcripts would transfer over to the new school.” 

“When I first heard about the merger,” said senior Cadence Dimen, who attended Holy Name last year, “I actually was pretty concerned.” 

Those apprehensions eventually disappeared. 

“The seniors,” said Kelli Reyngoudt, St. Paul director of school and college counseling, “were really stressed as juniors about, ‘How this merger was going to impact us and is it going to hurt us? Is it hard for colleges to find out about a new school?’ Certainly, our juniors and their parents worried about those things. This is what I’ve done for a long time so I knew they would be OK, but we want to make sure we have offered them every possible avenue to present themselves (to colleges) so they know they’re OK.” 

It appears that the mission was accomplished. 

 MORE THAN 1,000 APPLICATIONS 

 As of Jan. 20, St. Paul’s 158 seniors had submitted 1,023 applications to 256 colleges and they had received more than 150 acceptances for early applications from such schools as WPI, George Washington, Northeastern, UMass-Amherst, Assumption, Stonehill, Fairfield, Ithaca, Rutgers, Seton Hall and the College of Wooster. Most colleges don’t announce their regular admission decisions until late March. 

Colleges in the region are familiar with Ms. Reyngoudt from having worked with her in the past. She joined St. Paul this year. After working in admissions for Dynamy for three years and at Boston University for five, she spent 22 years in college counseling at St. Peter-Marian. Her son, Jack Blood, is a seventh-grader at St. Paul.  

 The SPM families were apprehensive about traveling to the former Holy Name campus for school this year, but they trusted Ms. Reyngoudt to guide them in the college application process. However, the Holy Name families and a few who came from St. Mary’s, which also closed last year, didn’t know her and she didn’t know them. But, they’ve become well acquainted despite the pandemic. 

“The kids are in difficult circumstances this year,” Ms. Reyngoudt said. “It’s not how anybody signed up to learn. It’s not how any of us signed up to be counselors, it’s not how college admissions people signed up to do their jobs, but we’re just trying to make connections in any way we can to make sure the kids are feeling OK.” 

Ms. Reyngoudt said the St. Paul students have adjusted well. 

“I am struck that in this crazy year of a merger in the middle of a pandemic more than 82 percent of our senior class has already applied to college,” she said before Christmas. 

That number increased to 86 percent by this week and another 2 percent have committed to military service. 

Ms. Reyngoudt said that would be a high percentage at this point of any year and she credits the seniors and the St. Paul community. 

 Many schools canceled SATs because of the pandemic, but St. Paul held them during a school day this fall to give the seniors another chance to impress colleges. 

NO COLLEGE INFORMATION NIGHT

For COVID-19 reasons, St. Paul couldn’t host parents for the annual college information night. So, Ms. Reyngoudt held two sessions during school for seniors and recorded them to send home to the parents.  

Masked students can visit Ms. Reyngoudt in her office and attend her after-school academic success center programs, but she also guided seniors through the college application process via email and video email. 

St. Peter-Marian’s college night for juniors had to be canceled last March because it was scheduled for the week after the school closed due to the pandemic. So Ms. Reyngoudt held it on Zoom. 

“I had never even heard of Zoom until the previous Thursday, so it was a little stressful,” she said.  

After she was named St. Paul director of school and college counseling last spring, she held another Zoom session for Holy Name juniors. 

Usually, 75-90 college admission staffers meet with students during school at St. Peter-Marian each fall, but such visits to St. Paul were canceled this year because of the pandemic. Instead, Ms. Reyngoudt arranged for close to 70 virtual college admission staff visits with students after school hours. 

St. Paul’s school profile, a document that is included on the school’s website, saintpaulknights.org, explained the school’s merger to colleges. 

Mr. Dimen, 18, of West Boylston appreciated Ms. Reyngoudt’s efforts. 

 “When I got to know Ms. Reyngoudt personally,” Mr. Dimen said, “and she had a plan in place to put the CEEB (College Entrance Examination Board) code in and she had a pretty good plan in place, I wasn’t too worried.” 

 Mr. Dimen applied restrictive early action to Stanford University and was deferred. He also applied to 11 other colleges, but not early action so he won’t hear from them for a while. 

CAMPUS VISITS 

Mr. Dimen visited some campuses a few years ago when his sister applied to colleges and he took part in a few online campus tours this year, but he didn’t get to visit as many colleges as planned because of the pandemic. His family’s trip to California last July to visit Stanford, UCLA, USC and University of San Diego was canceled, but he applied to all of them nevertheless. 

For most of the school year, St. Paul students attended classes two days a week, met with teachers remotely one day and worked independently online two days. The school switched temporarily to teaching all classes remotely beginning the week before Christmas break. They are expected to return to in-school classes on Monday. 

 “It was really tough at the beginning,” Mr. Dimen said of learning remotely, “because I really wasn’t used to having to do so much learning on my own, watching videos and basically learning on my own, but then once I adjusted to the schedule, I started reaching out to my teachers a lot more through email and staying after classes. So, I really got used to it. I’d say it’s a really effective learning model, the best you can do during a pandemic.” 

Michael Clark, associate superintendent of secondary schools and head of school at St. Paul, praised Ms. Reyngoudt and her three staff members. 

 “Kelli has done yeoman’s work here,” Mr. Clark said. “It has been nothing short of a Herculean effort that Kelli and her staff here in school counseling have put together in serving these young people’s needs.” 

Mr. Clark credited the three dozen full-time teachers at St. Paul for working well with students during the pandemic. The staff has taught an average of 14 years and nine out of 10 have an advanced degree. 

“Those are the people who serve as both the institutional memory and the walking encyclopedias,” Mr. Clark said.