School may be out but many students are already planning their future as they make the big decision about which college to attend.
Now, more of them are turning to historically black colleges in metro Atlanta.
Warren Hawkins III is a proud student at Clark Atlanta University.
The rising senior and St. Louis native may not have found himself in Atlanta had it not been for his mother's research and an incident that grabbed headlines across the nation.
"Mike Brown was killed right down the street from my house,” Hawkins said. “How did that play a role in my decision to attend an HBCU? I knew I had to go somewhere where something that's understood doesn't have to be explained."
He's not alone on that quest to find where he belonged. In 2017, Clark Atlanta said it saw nearly 18,000 applications with only 8,075 admitted and 914 enrolled.
Spelman, an all-women’s college, saw more than 9,100 students apply for the upcoming school year. That's a 9 percent increase from the previous year. At Morehouse College, an all-male school, applications increased by 40 percent.
Based on conversations with current and prospective students, along with essays written for admission, part of the desire to attend traces back to politics and societal issues involving race. This includes things like officer-involved shootings, racial profiling, and racial issues on campuses with a majority of white students.
"I think that with the political climate today, students are interested in being in an environment where they understand that they're nurtured, appreciated, and that they're in an environment where they won't be marginalized,” Darryl Isom the Morehouse Director of Admissions and Recruitment said.
All things found by Hawkins when he first set foot on campus thanks in part to that extra push from his mom.
"If I’m surrounded by those who look like me, who are succeeding, who are doing great things, where I’m drowned in black excellence then she knew that the best would come out of me,” Hawkins said.
