here was plenty to do beside wait and worry once the last test was taken, the last essay written, the last application mailed.
Gerta Xhelo readied herself for her only college interview, still flip-flopping about staying home or going away.
Jed Resnick continued his high-wire act of performing and studying, and awaited word from Yale.
And Reuben Quansah tended his relationship with schools scouting minority students and hoped for a financial-aid windfall.
The lives of these three New York City high school students had converged for most of the hectic college admissions process. But there was one critical difference.
For Jed, an upper-middle-class boy at the Collegiate School in Manhattan, the hardest part would be choosing from the colleges that accepted him. For Reuben, an African-American teenager at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, and Gerta, an Albanian immigrant at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, a fat envelope from their No. 1 college meant nothing unless it came with enough financial aid. Jed could follow his heart. The others had to follow the money.
By mid-February, Gerta was receiving acceptance letters: from Baruch, a City University campus; St. John's; and Pace. These live-at-home options might have satisfied her six months earlier. But now Gerta was vacillating, wanting to stay home one day and go away the next.
"I'm 17," Gerta said. "That's what 17-year-olds are supposed to do: change their minds."
She still longed for N.Y.U., a long shot. Some days she was tempted by Syracuse, which she had never visited. But the first choice of her counselor, Roz Sternlieb, was the Rose Hill campus of Fordham.
Many of the counselor's students had thrived in the state's Higher Education Opportunity Program there. The program offers sizable scholarships and remedial services for promising low-income students. Fordham's program is particularly generous and has a staff as caring as the little college office at Grover Cleveland. The girl could live on campus and still be close enough to look after her family.
Ms. Sternlieb began pestering the HEOP office about Gerta early in February. She dialed from memory Stephie Mukherjee at Fordham and praised "one student in particular who would really benefit" from the program's one-on-one attention. "Her last name is Xhelo," Ms. Sternlieb said, "but not like the regular Jello."
Within days, Gerta had a March 12 interview. It would be Gerta's first, months behind both Jed and Reuben, who had taken grand tours by comparison. She didn't even know where the Bronx was.
But Gerta had an unexpected glimpse of what college might be like as a residential student. She had taken a school trip to Sugarbush, in Vermont, over Presidents' Day weekend. It was an eye-opener.
She came home with an album of snapshots of new friends crowded into hotel rooms, horsing around in their pajamas, eating vending machine junk food, having the time of their lives.
The morning of her interview, Gerta took so long choosing what to wear that she missed the first two school periods. Her mother, Shpresa, weighed in, so the result was conservative: dressy black slacks and a red turtleneck sweater. Mrs. Xhelo persuaded Gerta to wear a crucifix, as Fordham was a Jesuit school.
The walls in the HEOP office are covered with plaques of gratitude from prior classes. Melba Diaz, the receptionist, is known to the students as Mom. A typical visitor was a current undergraduate who stopped in to say that her mother was in the hospital and that she had broken her engagement to a boy Ms. Diaz did not like.
Gerta, meanwhile, spent nearly two hours closeted with Ms. Mukherjee, who was impressed with her grit, effervescence and classic immigrant's story.
Gerta told Ms. Mukherjee of her worry that being in HEOP would pigeonhole her as a second-class student. "These are not HEOP degrees," Ms. Mukherjee assured her. "They are Fordham degrees, just like everyone else's." The girl emerged radiant.
"Unbelievable as it might sound, my mother accepts the idea that I might have to dorm there," Gerta e-mailed the next day. "I was shocked but very very glad."
Gerta's acceptance letter from Fordham arrived on March 26. She said she was "jumping and screaming" when she entered the Xhelos' apartment. She could barely hold still to translate for her parents.
Gerta's father, Zegir Xhelo, who quietly dotes on his daughter, said he was proud. "That's the first time he's ever said that out loud," Gerta said.
She was extraordinarily fortunate. Recent studies, including one titled "Losing Ground," released last week, have documented how poor and middle-class families are paying an ever-rising share of their income to attend public universities, normally the more affordable part of higher education. The HEOP program in New York has fallen behind inflation; it supported only 5,774 students in the 1999-2000 school year as opposed to 7,528 in 1993-94.
But Gerta, telling no one, clung to her concern that being in HEOP was a mark of inferiority. And at the last minute she came up with a new plan.
Her financial aid package from Syracuse had arrived, inferior to Fordham's and with none of the remedial services. Still, out of the blue, and with just 24 hours before the formal reply date, Gerta burst into Room 118A announcing she had changed her mind.
Ms. Sternlieb sputtered. Gerta had never seen Syracuse. Without the HEOP services, at a huge university so far from home, she might lose her way. Should the counselor call Gerta's parents, whom she had never met? Should she urge the safer decision?
With the office door closed, the counselor probed Gerta's thinking. The girl swore she could act responsibly. She insisted her parents could fill the $5,500 gap between her aid package and the real cost. She was unfazed at graduating with twice the loans to repay that she would have after Fordham.
Gerta had taken a virtual campus tour. She had checked the ratings and found Syracuse ranked higher. She had been on the phone with friends of her cousin who went there. She wanted to go someplace that "accepted me like I was anybody else."
