By HEATHER BREMNER, Staff Writer

Saturday, December 13, 2003 10:19 PM PST

CALEXICO — While his dad sits in prison serving time for smuggling drugs and his younger brother sits in juvenile hall for robbery, Albert Jauregui sits in a classroom scrolling through a list of scholarships.

The Southwest High School student was one of 37 Imperial Valley high school migrant students hand-picked by their counselors to attend a workshop Friday at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus specifically designed to help migrant students find and apply for scholarships.

Jaime Silva, director of the Imperial County Office of Education migrant education program, organized the pilot program after meeting June McBride, a Florida high school teacher who wrote a book called "The Path to Scholarships."

After handing each student the workbook, McBride gave the students tips on where to find scholarships, how to apply and how to write an essay that can be used for all applications.

The students — all enrolled in the ICOE migrant program — spent the day attending panel discussions with local professionals who were themselves migrant students, composing essays and searching for scholarships on a variety of Web sites.

"The core of this workshop is to give our migrant students the skills to apply for scholarships and the know-how to search for those scholarships independently," said Silva.

From 8:30 a.m. until around 4 p.m. the students attended a variety of seminars.

Miguel Rahiotis, SDSU-IV financial aid counselor, told the students he managed to graduate from college despite all the obstacles in his path. He credits his mother as the one who really pushed him in the right direction.

"She was the one who kicked me in the rear and said, ‘You are going to go to college,' " said Rahiotis.

Although his mother was a guiding light, Rahiotis told the roomful of students success lies entirely in their court.

"If you don't believe you can make it, you're done, you're toast," he said. "Don't let people say you can't do it because you're a migrant student."

While there are about 8,000 students enrolled in the migrant education program countywide, counselors chose juniors and seniors with grade-point averages of 2.5 or better to attend the workshop.

Albert, 17, who is waiting to hear if he was accepted to the University of California in Berkeley, San Diego or Los Angeles, said he was glad he attended the workshop and was amazed at the vast number of scholarships available.

"I was surprised when I saw them all and was like, ‘Oh there's too much,' " he said.

The 4.0 student said he plans on studying medicine and eventually attending medical school and becoming an anesthesiologist.