High School Juniors: Let’s Talk About College!
HIGH SCHOOL JUNIORS: Let’s Talk About College!
By Antoinette Battiste
Junior year is the time to get serious about your plans beyond high school. This is the time to assess your educational path, academic interests, extra-curricular activities, and your current thoughts about college. You should review your academic plan with your counselor and continue working hard and smart to get good grades. You should continue getting to know your teachers and counselors, because you will be asking them to support your college and scholarship applications with letters of recommendation; you should begin to identify who you will ask to write those letters. Hopefully you took the PSAT in October and reviewed your test results so that you can develop an appropriate strategy to prep for and take the ACT and/or SAT. Remaining test dates for this academic year can be found at http://actstudent.org (ACT) and http://sat.collegeboard.org (SAT).
Are you involved in extracurricular activities? If so, you should seek out leadership roles in those that are of greatest interest to you. If you are an athlete and would like to continue athletics in college, be sure to register with the NCAA Eligibility Center (http://ncaaeligibilitycenter.org).
Junior year is also the time to begin developing a preliminary college list. Initially you should target around 20-25 schools for which you will conduct further research. This initial list should include schools at varying levels of selectivity (often referred to as reach, target and safety schools) and have 2-3 other characteristics that you find attractive about a college. While 20 schools seems to be a lot, your preliminary list will be refined over time, resulting in a final list of perhaps 8-10 schools to which you actually apply. So what’s the best way to research schools? Successful methods include using websites like College Board’s Big Future (http://bigfuture.collegeboard.org), College Navigator (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/), or similar programs that allow you to do college matches based on criteria you specify. While conducting your research, remember to explore the financial aid resources offered by each institution.
The best way to understand if you would fit at a particular institution is to visit the campus. Scheduling campus visits during your Spring Break is often a great time to see campuses without interrupting your normal school attendance. If there are family plans for vacationing during the break or summer, investigate what colleges are in the area where you are planning to travel. Colleges and universities that are within driving distance can easily be visited throughout the Spring. Campus visits can be time consuming and expensive, but it is an important part of the college research and application process – you need to “feel” yourself there!
Good luck!
For more information about available services and additional college planning resources, go to www.antoinettebattiste.com or contact adviser@antoinettebattiste.com.
