Anne Toliao thought she was ready for college. The 18-year-old graduated last year from Richmond High School with a 3.8 grade point average - just a few points below a straight-A, 4.0.

She was accepted into California State University, Hayward, to pursue a bachelor's degree in biology.

Then she hit a snag. Her scores on CSU placement tests in math and English were too low, and she needed to take remedial courses in those subjects - courses for which she would receive no unit credit toward her degree.

"I felt bad because I didn't want to be behind," she said. "I'm going to be a freshman again next year." Toliao's situation isn't unusual, and it places her in the middle of a problem facing colleges and students around the nation.

Inequalities in public schools leave hundreds of young Californians at a disadvantage when it comes time to apply for college, educators say.

Students in less affluent high schools are less likely to have access to college-preparatory and rigorous advanced placement courses - the types of courses it takes to gain admission to a highly selective private university or to a University of California campus.

Such students are also less likely to have access to college counselors and fully credentialed teachers with a base of knowledge about what it takes to get into and succeed in college.

Educators say the lack of knowledge, in effect, strips students of something very important when it comes time to pursue an advanced degree: a true choice of where they can choose to apply because they just don't have the tools to pursue enrollment at more selective universities.

"What we're concerned about is where students end up," said Mitchell Chang, an assistant professor of education at UCLA who has studied the availability of AP courses in schools. He has found that high schools with a higher percentage of black and Latino students often offer fewer AP and honors courses.

"Does the system reproduce the kinds of inequities that we see in the (elementary and high) schools because students from the poorest-resourced schools don't even get a shot at getting into the most competitive universities?" he asked. "... Regardless of the student's potential, they just can't get those opportunities to take certain courses that will make them competitive."

The vast majority of California students - especially students of color and those who are first in their families to attend college - enroll in community colleges after high school rather than UC or CSU campuses, where the admissions standards are higher. In 2000, two-thirds of all first-time freshman enrolled in a community college, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

Often, students choose community colleges because they are less expensive than four-year institutions. Students can finish their lower level general education requirements at a community college, then transfer to a four-year institution to earn a bachelor's degree.

But a body of research also suggests that many students turn to community colleges because they haven't received adequate preparation to go to universities. And even when they get to college, such students are more likely to require remedial education, and they are more likely to drop out.

Research shows that student groups that have been historically underrepresented on the campuses of selective colleges - blacks, Latinos and Native Americans - are especially at a disadvantage.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, a greater percentage of black, Hispanic and American Indian students are unqualified or only marginally qualified for admission at four-year institutions compared to white or Asian students.

Broken dreams?

Michael Kirst, associate director of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, says this issue has a larger bearing on diversity in public colleges than the debate over affirmative action programs.

"The community colleges in California are enrolling over 50 percent of the first-time freshmen," Kirst said. "Parity for minorities will be won or lost in the community college system. Affirmative action, no matter what the outcome, will affect 1 to 3 percent of the students."

Encouragingly, college aspirations among students of all ethnicities are higher than ever.

A Stanford report, "Betraying the College Dream," says that 88 percent of the nation's eighth graders want to go to college, and 70 percent of high school graduates in fact do proceed to higher education within two years of high school. In Alameda County, 64 percent of the students who graduated from a public high school in 2001 went to one of the state's public colleges the following year, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. More than half of those students - 25 percent - went to a UC or CSU campus.

Information on the number of students from public and private high schools who attend private or out-of-state universities, or who attend vocational schools or other non-traditional postsecondary institutions, is not readily available. But the most recent statistics available from the California Postsecondary Education Commission show that 330 students who graduated from private and public high schools in Alameda County in 2000 went to a private college or university the following year.

Sobering statistics reveal what happens to students once they get to college.

According to the Stanford report: - Nationwide, about half of the first-year students at community colleges do not continue for a second year and about a quarter of the first-year students at four-year colleges do not stay for a second year. CSU reports that 23 percent of its first-time freshmen don't return for their sophomore year. At UC, only about 8 percent of its first-time freshmen don't come back for a second year.

UC officials say the high "persistence rate," as they call it, can be traced to the high level of preparation of its incoming student body. UC does not offer remedial courses, said Susan Wilbur, director of undergraduate admissions at UC, because "everybody that we admit to the university is very capable and everyone should be able to be successful."

- Forty percent of the students in four-year institutions across the nation need some remedial courses. In two-year colleges, where the admissions standards aren't as high, 63 percent of the students need remediation.

In California, 37 percent of the freshmen who entered a CSU campus in 2002 needed remedial courses in math, while 49 percent needed remediation in English.

Scores on California community college placement tests show that 88 percent of the students tested need remediation in math and 75 percent need remediation in English.

- Students who take remedial courses are less likely to earn a degree, the report said. Nationally, only 34 percent of the students who take even one remedial course earn a degree. Of students who don't take remedial courses, 56 percent earn degrees.

- Nationwide, more than 70 percent of the students who enroll in two-year colleges say they expect to obtain a bachelor's degree, but only 23 percent receive one.

California's community colleges do not track how many of their transfer students eventually earn baccalaureate degrees, but Patrick Perry, vice chancellor of technology research and information systems with California Community Colleges, said about 40 percent of community college students exhibit "transfer-like behavior" - take courses that qualify for transfer to CSU or UC. About one-third of those, he said, eventually transfer to a four-year university.

Working toward college

One of the researchers on the Stanford report, Andrea Conklin Bueschel, is working on a doctoral thesis exploring why some students succeed in college and others don't.

She is comparing the college aspirations of students in two San Francisco schools - one considered high performing and the other low performing.

Students in the higher performing school - most of whom have college-educated parents - are well on their way toward meeting the course work required for admission to a four-year university. And, she said, they are savvier about working the system to ensure their admission - taking the right honors courses, for instance, and participating in extracurricular activities.

Students in the other school, however, aren't working from the same knowledge base.

"The biggest difference is the specifics," Bueschel said. "One of the biggest things - and I've found this in other research - is they assume the high school graduation requirements match whatever requirements there are to get into college. They think two years of social science is enough, when in fact, a lot of institutions require more than that."

Two years of social science meets the minimum admission requirements at CSU and UC, but Stanford University requires three years in the subject.

Parental knowledge of higher education is also crucial, Bueschel said. College-educated parents are more likely to push their children into preparatory courses, she said, whereas other parents may not have the same understanding of what their children need to do to succeed.

Contrary to popular belief, very few public high schools employ counselors whose sole job is advising students on college, said Andrea Venezia, director of K-16 projects at Stanford and co-author of "Betraying the College Dream."

In many schools, one counselor could be assigned to hundreds or even thousands of students, she said. In low-performing schools, many counselors are focusing their efforts on stemming the flow of dropouts, which can reach 30 percent.

"It's a problem everywhere," Venezia said, "but the problems get worse the fewer resources a school has."

Overburdened counselors

In Oakland high schools, one counselor is assigned to about 500 students, said David Turner, an 18-year counselor in the Oakland Unified School District.

He said counselors do provide students with information on how to get into college, but they are also overburdened with dozens of other responsibilities, including working with students on everything from troubles at home to making sure they are on track to graduate.

He said counselors work one-on-one to provide college preparatory information to students and also make classroom visits to inform students as a group what they need to do to get into college.

Sometimes that is not enough to reach every student.

Turner, who has worked for the past 12 years at Skyline High School in Oakland, said counselors spend most of their time with the "most hurting" students and, conversely, with the highest achieving students, who are saavier about seeking out information on college and scholarships.

As a result, he said, students who are in "the great middle" aren't getting a reinforced message about the importance of college preparatory work. The information is available, Turner said, "but maybe they don't come and avail themselves of it up here as much as the kids who are hurting or who are doing it exceptionally well."

Turner also refuted notions that AP classes aren't available to every student. Administrators will always make advanced courses available to students who request them, he said, even if it means finding creative solutions, such as pairing up students from different high schools in one class, or arranging for students to take courses at community colleges.

"In my experience, not that many students have been denied access to those classes if they wanted to take them," he said.

Stanford research also indicates that high school students aren't receiving the type of instruction that prepares them for college-level work.

Standardized tests in high school often stress different knowledge and skills than college entrance requirements and placement exams. Students learn one set of skills in high school, but when they get to college, they find they need to develop an entirely new set of skills.

The study said this disconnect between what students learn in high school and what they need to know in college is what lands most students in remediation. It is also why many students drop out before they earn a degree.

Sally Murphy, director of general education at Cal State Hayward, says students who come from all types of high schools and academic backgrounds often don't know how to write analytical essays and their math skills aren't strong.

CSU statistics show that, systemwide, minorities are more likely to need remediation than whites: 65 percent of the black students admitted to CSU in fall 2002 needed remediation in math and 69 percent needed remediation in English; 54 percent of Mexican American students needed remediation in math and 67 percent in English; 29 percent of Asian American students needed remediation in math and 65 percent in English; and 27 percent of white students needed remediation in math and 31 percent in English.

Murphy said some of the need for remediation courses are due to limited English language skills among some minorities, but other students just aren't ready for college work.

Anne Toliao, for instance, said she hardly ever took exams in her high school math class and rarely wrote essays in her English class, and so she didn't have those skills when she got to college.

Murphy said many students who've received As and Bs in high school are upset when they find they need to take remedial education.

"Many of those students end up dropping out in their second or third year, because in their second year they're still freshmen and they're not seeing they're making any significant progress toward graduation," Murphy said. "That's really discouraging."

Bridging the gap

Colleges and high schools are making strides to correct the problem.

UC and CSU both run targeted outreach programs in high schools that traditionally send few students to college. Colleges have a number of programs that help struggling students succeed.

CSU, as part of an initiative to reduce the numbers of incoming freshmen who need remediation, is piloting a standards test in math and English that will be given to 11th graders at 60 high schools across the state this spring. The test is designed to give students an idea of the skills they will need to succeed in college.

A statewide task force has also been convened to create a "senior year experience" course for CSU-bound high school students, said Alison Warriner, coordinator of composition at Cal State Hayward.

The year-long course will help students improve their skills, thus reducing their need for remediation in college. Warriner said the program could be in some schools as early as September 2004.