BURBANK -- Ancelmo Perez made a big jump going from his working-class South Bay neighborhood to private Woodbury University, tucked away in suburban Burbank.

Now the 22-year-old architecture graduate is headed even further, set to begin graduate studies next month at Columbia University in New York.

Perez credits Woodbury -- where 45 percent of architecture students are Latino -- for launching him into the wider world.

"Woodbury offers a great opportunity for people that wouldn't really have an opportunity to pursue a higher education," Perez said.

With just 1,400 students, Woodbury University has become a major draw for Latino students seeking careers in architecture. School officials trace that trend to positive word-of-mouth publicity from students and graduates, recruiting in heavily Latino areas, competitive financial aid packages and retention programs that focus on mentoring.

Each year, for example, Woodbury recruiters visit more than 300 high schools, including many in East Los Angeles.

"It's an area where we are well-known because of the Latino representation at the institution. It's just become a natural marketplace for us," said Don St. Clair, vice president for enrollment management at Woodbury.

Perez, who was raised in Lawndale and had never been to Burbank, had planned to enlist in the Air Force after high school. His older brother, however, encouraged him to check out the Woodbury campus and his mother, a seamstress, advised him to aim for college.

Perez, like about 85 percent of Woodbury students, received financial aid, with an average grant ranging from $4,000 to $12,000 a year toward the school's $20,000 a year tuition, St. Clair said.

By comparison, tuition and fees to attend University of Southern California are about $28,700 a year. About 13 percent of freshman at the school are Latino.

Architecture students at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, pay about $2,505 a year in tuition and fees, and about 30 percent of the architecture students there are Latino.

Like Perez, new Woodbury graduate Valente Gonzalez, 24, also used grants to help pay for his architecture studies.

As a teenager in Chino, Gonzalez went to construction jobs with his father. But he later decided to pursue his studies so he could design structures instead of build them.

"I feel like a different person and just ready to go to work and make a living for myself, and hopefully not struggle as much as my parents and friends," Gonzalez said.

For his final school project, Gonzalez returned to the Mexican village of Jalpa where he lived as a child and surveyed the land at the nearby archaeological site of Guachimonton. He plans to build an archaeological center there.

Because Woodbury serves a large number of Latinos, the school was awarded a $5 million grant from the federal government, said Mauro Diaz, associate director of admission. Diaz said. The money has helped pay for academic mentoring available to all students -- a step that helps in student retention.

The school also has eased a design requirement for entry into its architecture program because less affluent high schools tend not to offer the design classes.

One of the reasons Latino students find it easier to get into Woodbury's architecture program than those of other schools is because Woodbury does not require them to have completed courses in design.

"We think of that as being unfair, because it's unfair that their school cannot fund design," Diaz said. "So the equal playing field is academics, especially math and science."