Class of 2022 Senior Fall Workshop
The frame I think I know is probably the most
of you guys watching this video and for those of you that might be new I think
there are a few new seniors and families this year I’m looking forward to getting to spend this next
year with you all we have a lot to cover in this afternoon session and just a couple of housekeeping
items before we kind of jump into the content you’ll see my face on and off the screen as we go
though I’ll be transitioning to a PowerPoint that most of the time we’ll probably be spending our
time walking through however I did want to just kind of put a name to the face um so that if
you haven’t seen me in the last couple of years because everything’s been digital uh
that’s probably why and um just a couple of housekeeping notes number one is this will this
is being recorded so if you’re jumping in late if you’re unable to make it at the live event this
will be recorded and available both on youtube so our Nortel high school youtube channel or
on our north tahoe high school counseling Facebook page so they’re both being broadcast
there and that’s pretty common that we’ll do in this time frame we are uh going to be limiting
this to just the online version unfortunately later this year hopefully we’ll be able
to do a couple of in-person events but this provides the flexibility and just um lets us
place play a little safer where we’re able to since much of this content can be easily
delivered through a digital medium so I’m looking forward to getting to spend some afternoon
time with us like I said we got a lot to cover if you have questions I’ll kind of remind you guys
of this, as we go through uh but feel free to reach out over email there are a couple of things that are
coming up that are gonna be good opportunities for questions and answers and that kind of stuff I am
monitoring the youtube chat box as well here so if you have questions feel free to type anything in
and I’ll be happy to try to answer those as best I can while we’re going or at the very end so hang
tight we’re going to try to do this in an hour or less like I said there’s a lot of content and
we are going to cover a lot of different things which I’ll highlight here in just a second if
you wanted to follow along I will post after this is up I will post the pdf of the presentation
the material itself in both the Facebook post and the youtube link which will then get emailed out to
everybody has a follow-up so just hang tight if you don’t need to write down a bunch of notes if
you see it on the screen you’ll get a copy of it but uh yeah so that that’s about it um we’re
going to jump back in you might see me kind of flipping over here I’m kind of playing my own
director as well so we’ll kind of kind of bounce back in and we’ll talk a little bit about some
of the stuff that’s upcoming so as we look at our year and our path to a successful senior
year there’s a lot of things that we have to kind of keep in mind and so a couple
of things that I’m hoping and looking forward to doing with you are talking a little bit
about what are some general senior year tips and tricks that will help make your senior
year the most successful that it possibly can be we’ll touch a little bit on some of the social
emotional elements but the vast majority of our time today will be primarily academic and
after high school items and we’ll talk briefly about a couple of options but I will give you fair
warning right now that the vast majority of our conversation will be revolved around the world
primarily of four-year college and it’s not to say that um that nothing else matters and then
that we won’t get to those other items but this uh time frame of senior year generally has the
most kind of clout associated with that world in that application process so we have to jump
right in there so I’ll cover a little bit more about that later on dates and deadlines
some logistics of senior year some of the things to be aware of different resources
that you have available to you throughout this upcoming year and the different things
that you kind of need to keep in mind and then also kind of more specifics about what we talked about
and I would encourage you if you’re on youtube or Facebook to go back to the junior pre-summer
video uh that’s up and available for you on the youtube page because that also has some good
things if you’re still in that pre-thinking phase we’re not going to spend as much time
about like hey what are my what am I looking for in the world of college but more moving
on to the action steps which many of you guys I’ll tell you from you know just kind of
getting back into the role of things this year um of 2022.
You guys are on top of it I’ve
gotten a lot of requests already of stuff that I’m kind of like well hold on we’re just getting
started with the school year so don’t panic you guys that’s a big thing I know that we’re coming
off basically 18 months of panic in our society and so I want to kind of encourage you guys that
this is it’s a fast but slow process okay we’ll detail that a little bit more closely as we move
forward as well so as we kind of move forward here uh we’re going to jump and I’m going to kind
of just briefly lay out some timelines for us okay so that’s just that is something that
I want to kind of make sure that we are spending some time on and I’ve kind of put
together this rough outline of some big important items that a senior year will encompass all
right so at the top you kind of see a couple of key flags and so the first one that’s coming up
is coming up this coming Friday from the date of this recording which is September
13th which is a Monday so September night or September 17th is our add-drop deadline so that’s
an important date in that you want to have all of your classes set by that day all right so that’s
an important one that’s coming up just less than a week from now so if your classes aren’t set
and this week in pathways like I said we are a little bit delayed and kind of uh pushed back
in terms of our year with the smoke days and stuff and the fire warnings and whatnot so normally this
would have been the week that you would have re-reviewed your transcripts and then you would
have had I’m sorry last week would have been a week that you would have reviewed transcripts
and so it is something that um you know we want to make sure that uh you’re going to get an
opportunity in your pathways classes this week to go through and get a printout of
the cup of your high school transcript to date and you’re going to check it off against both
College requirements and high school graduation requirements okay we do this for a couple of reasons
number one is I want you to be involved in the process students I want you to have onus and skin
in the game but it also helps me triple-check my checks all right now and then people
catch things that I don’t catch for some reason staring at a trans you know lots of transcripts
sometimes you can get kind of that transcript blindness and so I need your eyes and
hands and experience in your school um your school program so far to double-check our
work all right so you’ll be doing that the next one that’s kind of a big one that’s coming up um
is the FAFSA well we won’t spend a ton of time on financial aid the FAFSA is all associated
with financial aid that’s called the free application for federal student aid that opens
up October 1st all right so that’s kind of a magic start date we will have an entire so right
around that time frame so in another month or so very close to October 1st we’ll be scheduling an
entire session kind of like this one just about financial aid, okay it is complex it is also very
individualized and so we will talk more about what are the processes what are the things we need to
look out for what is the stuff that you need to have up as part of your plans okay so that’s a
big deal so that’s one up to put on there we have on the far right we have ap exams so
just marking that date decision date would be kind of what it’s kind of become a little
bit more gray area they don’t stick to the May first date in some circumstances anymore we
can talk about that individually but generally that’s a good target date and many colleges do
have that and then graduation is on June 9th this year so that’s kind of a big picture look and
then if you see down below there are some key items I’m not going to read them all off to you I’ve
mentioned a few of them you know just making sure that you’re maintaining your academic performance
and it kind of windows out the two semesters you also have the CSU application submission window
down there in the red and that’s the California state institutions so on October 1st through
November 30th those are the window when you can apply to any of
the 23 census and then you have the uc application window which has a much longer window of work
meaning it’s already open first for kind of filling out the application but you can’t actually
apply by November first rolls around both of them are due November 30th we’ll
speak more on that later and just a rough outline of the kind of where we’re at in our process
so kind of August through you know generally October and um end of October is it can
be used for research many of you guys will do active steps as well but this is still a research
you know a prime time for research and planning it is not necessarily bad to continue researching
you don’t have to have all that done at this point of your senior year the next phase is kind
of the actor do this is the big window of time when you’re typically going to
be submitting maybe you’re doing some acting and doing before that happens but this window the
kind of November 1st through December 31st is kind when the vast majority of four-year colleges
have their submission windows happening we’ll break that down too and then follow through
this one is many times gets people in a little bit of a bind the follow-through element
can cause a lot of problems for students and so we’ll break down some tips on how to
avoid that you know when the early spring comes around because it’s very easy to you know lose
track of the process there’s lots to do even then most people focus only on the fall as their main
to-do items and then the junior college kind of window we’ll brief as I said briefly
touch on some of that item as well usually that process because it’s pretty different than the
four-year college application process the junior college enrollment window is usually a little bit
shifted later on in the season usually you won’t see many junior colleges enrolling for the next
upcoming fall until around December but the vast majority it’s going to be kind of in that spring
time frame and most students February through April is when most students will go through
the enrollment process with junior colleges so I’m going to kind of break down this chart
here and so in general what you’re seeing here is I kind of charted to try to explain a little
bit about on the kind of up and down y-axis this idea of effort and undertaking and on the
bottom is time throughout high school so we have the 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade and 12th grade
and so this idea of how high school morphs and changes is a pretty big one especially for
seniors so ninth grade most ninth graders take a pretty standard set of classes there’s no ap
classes things like that usually in 10th grade they kind of ramp it up a little bit maybe
they get more involved in their community or more involved in school they might take an ap
class or two okay so so kind of effort and energy associated with school increases the next
one kind of jumps into junior year and this is one that I talk with the juniors about quite a bit because many juniors will kind of ramp that effort undertaking up to 11 thinking that
this is the most important year of high school and it’s they’re all important junior year is
very important but it’s it’s just something that you know a lot of ap classes become available
and it’s just something we see happening senior year kind of looks like this
and so a lot of times seniors tend to not necessarily stay at that same peak okay maybe
they’re taking only five academic classes maybe even four and so generally speaking the
effort undertaking about school somewhat decreases they might you know you you
will have extra stuff that you’re doing outside of school applications work different things that
come around with being 17 18 years old and going through the process of senior year okay but here’s
the big thing that I’m trying to warn everybody about because this is huge and I guarantee you
that almost all of you guys will see this in some form or fashion at some point during senior year
and this is generally associated with spring all right and so we will see this precipitous fall for
a vast majority of students for a lot of different reasons okay we’re not going to break down each
of them but anything from just exhaustion to fear to depression to anxiety to excitement even so
you know the spring rolls around the high school is almost over they kind of got maybe a college
admissions maybe they have a place where they’re going or a thing that they’re going to do a
career to go into and they don’t see the point of wrapping up high school as strongly
as maybe they’ve maintained throughout the school year and they put a diagnosis on this and
it’s called senioritis all right and so it kind of covers a lot of the stuff that we see in that
kind of springtime usually here in Tahoe with the snow hopefully we have a good year this year but
hopefully, you know we see this happening pretty consistently across the board so I
want to give you guys an early heads up okay this is an early screening for
both you seniors and senior families that we want to avoid senioritis at all costs
just because someone gets in does not mean that someone is guaranteed a seat at a college
so I want to make sure that when you are approaching that kind of February March the snow
starts to mouth the sun starts to come out the beach is looking pretty good we want to avoid this
like the plague okay so we’ll have some tips on how to do that and I’ll be working with some
students and it’s a conversation if we start noticing this happening because there are some
pretty real ramifications of this coming into play so I do want to talk a little about social
emotional supports this year before we jump into kind of logistics college academics
that kind of stuff because those are all very important but social-emotional components
are crucial and this year is going to be a big one sometimes this senior year is
a doozy for students and families and so maybe your student has never really struggled
social emotionally maybe they’re pretty solid the family’s pretty solid but sometimes
senior year can bring up some deep like driven insecurities or questions or fear
or concerns and it is something that I want you to be hyper-vigilant about for both in yourself
if you’re a student watching this but also for you as families all right so just a couple of things
that is going to be happening at Northall High School this year include um so so all students are
going to be receiving a daily mindfulness lesson from Hillary in our wellness center if you don’t
know Hillary she’s a wonderful colleague of ours she’s part of our counseling team and really um
somebody who students really trust and we um are super lucky to have on campus and so her her
space is a welcoming place for students so um she’ll be leading some daily short like
one-minute mindfulness lessons for students every day to start their day also students
will all students across all grade levels will receive a monthly social-emotional learning
focus pathways lesson so that’s about a half-hour lesson that students will all get so we will be
focusing the senior year primarily on kind of like transitions and things like that but um it’s going
to be customized for seniors so seniors don’t need the same thing as freshmen my office and the
the wellness center is also available for the support we work with I work especially in the springtime
with a lot of students about I don’t know what’s right for me I don’t know how to
make a decision I don’t know I’m not sure how I’m going to function on my own and so that is not
necessarily something that’s to be afraid of and we’re available anytime to talk about that but we
see a lot of that come up for seniors generally in that fall or they start in that spring time frame
in the fall a lot of it has to do with stress just a lot of stuff to manage okay and then
building healthy habits so so starting the habits now that you want to kind of see yourself
continue when you graduate all right so if that’s healthy sleep habits if that’s a healthy evening
habits or exercising okay it’s easier to start now and continue those things than to try to do that
when you’re in the midst of transition and change and then know when some of the key stress windows
are for the senior class and so mid-November is a big one okay right around when many of the college
applications might be due that’s a pretty stressful time frame mid-January is usually stressful
for both kinds of the holiday sense and you know sometimes that’s a stressful time frame as well as
finals um and then we have mid-April to mid-June so basically that entire spring time frame because
of both senioritis and also uh just things that high school are coming to the to an end this
the big piece that’s been a part of the only type of schooling that people have known is
coming to an end and they’re going to go off into the big world and do hopefully great and
amazing things but it’s a very scary transition all right and that transition tends to look um
like a couple of this kind of big uh big items and so ultimately you know we have a myriad of
different options that students can do throughout um and consider for their high school for after
their after high school careers all right and so just a couple of them are up here and I want to
again emphasize that we are not a school that just emphasizes and expects students to go to college
I think that sometimes it is maybe misinterpreted as a focus of ours we do highly encourage it we
do think it’s a valuable option we do see many of our students go on to that path however that
is by and far not the only path and many paths require lots of loops and turns to get where you
want to go mine owning my own included and so I understand that there’s not a single strategy
a single path to everyone’s idea of success okay so I want to encourage that um so we do have the
four-year college options and we’ll break down each of those we have the community college route
and that is an increasingly popular route for many of our students whether or not that’s
kind of initially on their plan I would encourage all students whether or not a student has a 5.0
GPA and perfect sat scores I would encourage all students to have a community college or two in
mind that they would see themselves should something go that way or if they feel like that is
the right path for them after high school there are a lot of reasons to look at different different
routes from cost to availability to access and convenience we have the trade and vocational
schools so that would be things like universal technical institute for auto mechanics or culinary
institute of America if you want to be a pastry chef things like that the military branches going
straight into a career path and also gap years so so we’re going to not necessarily we will have
a specific community college event a little bit later this fall and then I’m available just
because it’s generally not as widely utilized I would love to connect with you guys if you
guys are interested in trader vocational schools military career paths things like that and we will
have some upcoming opportunities that are related to that in the future so so a couple of tricks and
tips that you might want to think about as we go about your senior year all right um and so that
is something that when you guys are looking at right now for example your senior schedule take
advantage of your opportunities one thing I always like to remind people this is your last year of free
education all right after this year if you want to go get educated on something apart from say like
youtube or things like that but a formal education it’s going to cost you a lot of money all right
and so take advantage of this you know if you were thinking about how much each class costs would
you take only four classes instead of five okay so just think about that it’s a great way
to to and you know grow your mind and grow your opportunities challenge yourself to explore new
things even this year all right so you’re about to step out into a world and so trying to put
yourself in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation from time to time try something new get
involved in a club that maybe you wouldn’t have normally okay I still challenge you to do that
and then also again stay on top of your work those are big things it’s very easy to get
behind especially if you’re taking a large number of academic courses so the other one is really
learning how to give appropriate thanks is one that is I think missing quite a bit from
our society in general but it’s something that the art of thanks has changed and this is
something that as a senior expect to practice this quite a bit this year the senior year requires a
a lot of support the senior year requires a lot of help from people other than yourself students all
right so this is something that goes a long way this week during pathways I’ll be pushing in
and talking about letters of recommendation we’re not going to spend a lot of time here but
students will be getting information this week on letters of recommendation which is a huge thanks
opportunity okay because those are a very big deal however it takes a lot of time and
energy and I’m not even speaking a part of myself I can shut my door and take care of these
things but I’m talking about your teachers okay your teachers are not paid extra to write
your letters your teachers are not allocated time to write you letters so it is an important
the thing to start practicing that idea of thanks and it can be as simple as just a heartfelt word of
thanks a quick note I can tell you some teachers like coffee, okay so I mean it’s all kinds
of things that just go it just shows that you care okay because they pour their heart and energy
into it taking time to apply for financial aid and scholarships this is an error that I see a lot
of students do it’s amazing how many we have trouble sometimes giving away scholarships
locally because no one qualified applied if you can believe that we give away a lot of
money locally but some of it is earmarked for certain pasts or certain programs or certain types
of students and so many times students won’t apply I can almost guarantee you that if you apply for
scholarships at least locally you’re probably going to get one okay so if you like money make
sure you apply for scholarships and we’ll talk more about how to do some of that scholarship
process again closer to October when the FAFSA opens up and we’ll lay out some of the kind
of ins and outs of how to make sure that your after-high school plans are as financially
approachable as possible and don’t wait to get on it right away we want to kind of get this going
as soon as possible you want to spread it out so you don’t need to stress the second but you don’t
want to just dilly dally and try to do it all the last minute this is not a last-minute activity
this year all right so we want to keep that up seniors this is going to be the piece that
I’m going to be talking about with you guys in pathways this is called the senior profile it’s
kind of like an extended brag sheet, we will be asking if you guys need letters or recommendations
for us from myself teachers administrators anybody on campus we will be asking you for your
senior profile this is not intended to be extra work but it is something that I do want you to
start working on because it can uh it’s information that’s very useful for our writing
however, it can feel a little bit like extra work be smart about it I’m not looking for paragraphs
if you can answer in a couple of bullet points do it okay we’re not trying to add extra things on
but it is very important and the information on there is super valuable so please
don’t just kind of fluff it off another thing is the explore so we do put a lot of resources up
on our counseling website and I would encourage you guys, uh to hop on there if
we have some time at the end I’ll show you a few key areas that you might
want to explore with this stuff in mind just if we don’t get there if you’re not
kind of with me by the time we get there just so you know underneath the menu towards
the top right under counseling support there’s a college and career area and you
can explore all the other ones as well but under college and career you’ll find some details
and there are menus underneath but if you just click on college and career counseling there’s a link
in a bunch of different resources that you might want to avail yourself of as we go through this year
including that senior profile sheet that you can download on google drive so like I mentioned
we do think that post-secondary education and training and I think that’s an important
designation training is not just college training can be an apprenticeship training that can
be shadowing training can be getting on youtube even and doing some massively online course
open courseware I mean there are all kinds of stuff it’s really about bettering yourself okay but we
do know at least the data shows that many times and you know and this is always thrown out there
and I always say there’s a lot you know data can be skewed in a lot of ways so I don’t want to feel
like I’m kind of pulling the wool over your eyes but in general the higher your education the lower
your unemployment employment so you’re more likely to get a job and usually the higher you earn
okay it costs money to earn money sometimes and so sometimes that you know we can make
a case that education matters but we also know it’s not the whole picture okay so we
have the skilled trades and technical work we haven’t seen many times when those fields
are in quite as high a demand as they are now I mean you go look around just Tahoe and people are
trying to pay you know 20 25 an hour for something that doesn’t even require a high school degree
sometimes and not to say that that’s not important but I’m just saying you know there are times when
um particular fields are in very high demand and a limited quantity of workers are available in these
trades and technical skills that require some additional training but maybe not a formal college
the degree is super in demand so I want to honor that and recognize that okay our model
here is that college should be available so we push students to meet a3g and we push students to
be ready for college but it is not a path that we recognize is for everyone and everyone will have
their past so I want to recognize that too it’s all about knowing what you
want out of this upcoming experience okay so we wanna we know that you know your
goals are important and the path to success is all about your learning and innovation and
development of your mindset it’s not about a particular program or major typically all right
and that can even go for students who are pursuing college degrees okay it’s the degree that helps you
get in the get your foot in the door okay but your innovation you’re learning your approach
to a problem is what helps you seal the deal okay that’s what helps you keep your job
helps keep you makes you successful in your job all right and helps you land that job
after you kind of have gotten through the door, okay this four-year college process is
super long and complex and so we’re going to highlight a couple of roles and norms that
are going to be super crucial for all of us to kind of work together on all right so so
parents and families if you’re watching this one of the biggest things is letting go and this
one of the biggest mistakes I see parents make or family members make is that you kind of
are living vicariously through your child okay and there’s you know there’s a lot of
ways to do it from actually filling out the applications and such for them I get it your child
might be busy they have a lot of activities and it’s busy in school do not steal the epiphany
let me say that again do not steal the epiphany if you need to look it up go ahead and pause it do
that now okay the epiphany is the aha moment all right and so do not steal that from your
senior they need to struggle through this your child cannot do everything there’s not
enough time for them to do everything don’t enable them to do that that is not helpful okay
so I want you to let go of our job I’m including myself in this process and everyone here at school
are we cheerleaders we are encouragers but we do not enable students okay so next time you
have a question or next time your student needs something I want you to kind of put it through
this filter because a lot of times I see this many times I’ll communicate more
with the parent then I will the student and I don’t think that’s right so if you notice
you email me and I include your student in the reply that’s why your student is involved and
they need to be a part of that conversation you also need to separate the nuts and bolts so
the logistics of the process from the emotional part of the process it’s very emotional and that’s
also goes for the student okay so so pick a time when you want to talk about here’s the ins and
outs here’s the time frame here are the things that we are going to be doing to help make this
process smoothly okay and then pick a time also to talk about the emotions that are related to
the process I’m mad I’m frustrated with this I’m super pissed because the school denied me whatever it
might be okay but try not to do them at the same time it muddies the water okay and again support
but not do and then I even suggest like call it a date call it a hangout whatever go get ice
cream set meetings to talk about this don’t just let it happen naturally sometimes that’s the
case but like set purposeful meetings about it because that will help go a long way in not
feeling like an ambush not feeling pressure not feeling like nagging parents the students
often feel like they’re being nagged about things okay but set some regular checkpoints you know
if you’re in business you know you know projects don’t just happen right they have checkpoints
they have check-ins they go through this process of development students always look at the
the process in light of what your goals are what is your potential vocational career
path in the future what’s your purpose don’t just look at the u.s news and world report
which by the way is a complete farce don’t use that for anything it’s based on money and
advertising not any rankings okay there are some other ones that I would encourage maybe looking
through but realistically rankings mean nothing okay nobody pays attention to rankings
even college admissions officers themselves would agree with that statement okay so simply just try
to avoid it puts this idea in people’s heads of what’s good or not and realistically almost
all colleges are going to be great and it’s more about what’s great for your child okay students I
want you to stay organized number one thing you don’t have is a calendar okay a Google calendar
works paper calendar works a calendar that you will use is the most important part okay because
in the world, there are things called deadlines I know at north toll high school it sometimes
doesn’t feel like that okay but there are real things out there called deadlines that have a
deadline meaning if you go past that you are not applying if you go past the state
you get no money for college if you do this other thing bad things may happen okay so deadlines
are super crucial and there are going to be a lot of them this year so get a calendar
and then also apply broadly but limit your applications to a reasonable number okay I’m
going to break that down here on this next slide so a lot of times when we’re talking about the
the idea of college this kind of like model will come up and I kind of go back and forth between whether
I like it or not it’s this or that but ultimately what I want you to think about is this
allows you to apply broadly and that you’re not betting statistics against you okay but it
also applies broadly in that you are diverse excuse me for diversifying your application list all
right and you can call these things whatever you want you’ll see different people call them what
they reach targets and meet different things like that okay but the goal is if you have some schools
that is kind of in this reach category okay schools that have five 10 20 admissions rates or
maybe you don’t meet the kind of ideal candidate kind of 50 targets okay those schools are gonna
be harder than easier for you to get into those are gonna be your reach schools okay they may
be reached for everybody okay if they have a 10 admissions rate they’re a reach school for anybody
I don’t care if you like cured cancer okay it is something that you just have to account for if
your entire list is made up of reach schools you’re playing statistics against you on the
other side of the spectrum you have the expected likelihood in the olden days we used to call them
safe schools no school is safe I will just warn you there all right so no school is safe
we will just basically call them as we will probably get into these schools these are good
to have too because it provides you a level of comfort a level of stability maybe they’re
not your first choice school maybe they are okay and then you have a couple that are meet
kind of fit schools where you kind of are in that range where you know you may or may not get in but
they’re strong you’re a strong candidate for okay at the bottom you see that all of them though must
be the first choice that’s probably a little confusing the first choice here means out of all this list
if we had you know 11 schools on this list when all came down to it you might have a hierarchy
in terms of like hey if I got into all these schools and the money was there here’s my first
choice second choice third choice etc however I got into one of these schools only would still
be happy going to that school that is what I mean by first-choice schools okay it’s not that you
can’t have rankings and like which one’s higher up on the list for me it’s just that I’m not adding
a school to my list because Mom or Dad wants me to I’m not adding a school to my list because
it looks good on my applications I’m not adding it because I know I can get in but I don’t really
want to go that’s just dumb okay just don’t do it add schools that you want to go to and parents
this is challenging do not make your child apply to schools they don’t want to go to
it’s really that simple okay and I’ll tell you that too if I see a list and I talk to your
child and like I don’t want to go there I’m going to tell your parents so I’m going to
be honest with you and I’m going to encourage your student to be honest with you too but you
no, I’m here to also advocate for them so I want you guys to know that as well um I’m going
to bump around uh here to a different slide I’m gonna skip a section um because I think it’s it’s
a little bit too in-depth for a conversation today but what I’m gonna do is talk to you guys
because a lot of stuff has changed in this idea of testing all right and so testing in the
world today has been something that you know we’ve had to adapt to over the last 18 months of testing
kind of got turned on its head since coveting hit and test centers got canceled and different
things were happening throughout the world, okay and I would probably if I was
speaking on behalf of my colleagues and most of the admissions officers in the world I would say
almost everybody is very happy about that change okay the s.a.t and act and that kind of stuff is
generally not loved in our profession it’s very it’s very debatable in terms of its
validity in terms of its impact and so when this change happened we kind of felt it
kind of forced the hand of a lot of colleges which I think ended up well but let me discuss
a little bit of what that means so in the world today we’re going to have three primary
Are things okay we’re going to have tests required schools that require an exam for admissions
in the olden days like in 2019 and before that would CSUS would be ucs and things
like that that has changed realistically speaking, there are very few schools and I’m talking like
less than a point zero one percent of colleges out there that formally require an exam all right
and that will be an important thing for you to check because you still have time to take tests if
you need to okay but most schools will not require military academies I think Florida institutions so
some of the Florida state institutions and some of the Texas institutions from last I’ve heard still are
requiring it is a very fluid environment though so check that regularly as you’re going through
the process the vast majority have transitioned to two other models which are most prevalent now
okay probably the most prevalent is test optional what that means is that you can take an exam and
you can choose whether or not you submit a score all right if you submit a score they’re going
to evaluate your results with that included and considered if you don’t they’re going to look more
closely at the other areas of your application alright they have metrics and ways to evaluate
people fairly across the board whether you submit a test or not right many schools were like
this already but it’s really kind of pushed the hand and we like to see that because
it was huge I mean there are a lot of reasons we’re not going to go into it
a lot of reasons why testing was impacting college admissions negatively the third
an option that I think is the best is something called test blind okay and this
is going to be most important because the vast majority of where our students apply and go are
both test blind our CSU system and our uc system are test-blind meaning even if you took an
sat exam or even if you took an act exam they will not utilize the scores they will not look at it
they will not accept them they will not consider them in any fashion okay the only thing that they
would ever use that for is after any type of admissions process potentially for some sort of
placement but realistically speaking most students will place just fine if you get in through
your academic experience in high school is okay so there are some opportunities to take a look
here so let me get back over to this there are some pretty cool slides that you can take a look
in terms of websites you can take a look at fairtest.org is a national organization that
keeps track of who takes tests and who doesn’t so as you can see from the screenshot and
it’s probably even more now there are over 1400 four-year colleges and universities with test
optional policies okay so it keeps getting updated the screenshot is from April okay I’m sure
there’s more on there now um so you want to keep in mind that uh that’s an important thing for us
to just keep abreast of um let me talk briefly about applications actually before I get there
let me just mention one more thing about testing because testing causes a lot of anxiety both
the actual test itself but like the impacts and implications let me I always try to kind of
like give some context in terms of testing and so generally speaking because everyone always wants
to know if should i take a test and if should i submit it that takes a little bit of research on your
part all right if you look at a list of colleges and you know if you’re if you say took a
past if you took a practice sat online or something like that and even or even if you
took an SAT exam name do I want to send this in you know you’re going to probably want to
score pretty highly in terms of their other applicants to have it positively impact you
if that doesn’t make sense so if you want that test score to reflect positively on you I mean
you’re talking 80 85 percentile of submitted test scores or higher all right so that typically
means you need to be a very strong test taker if you’re kind of feeling like tests aren’t really
your thing, if you have heavy test anxiety tests, and aren’t been successful in the past I would
probably just encourage you don’t add this extra needed stress and focus on the other areas of your
application and just don’t worry about it okay in almost all circumstances you’ll never need
it’s okay so it’s just one less thing for you to worry about in this whole process especially
as you’re rolling into senior year you can take most schools if you are going to be taking tests
most schools will take through around November or December depending on the school and application
the type that we’re going to talk about now so there are different applications out
there that students will use to apply as well as different application time frames first let’s
talk about the types of applications and there are a few common ones so the first one on this list you
see on the screen is called the common application all right and I’m going to denote that that has
a big c big a formal organization the common app okay and so that is a website that’s an
an organization that partners with tons of mostly private out-of-state institutions you’re
not going to see any CSUS you see on there you’ll see mostly private and out-of-state public
institutions available to apply but it’s a very uh useful tool if you are going to be applying to
multiple schools if you’re going to apply to like one or two private schools and most of the rest
are not on this application sometimes it’s easier to not use the common
app because it adds some extra steps we have the school-specific application or in-house
application sometimes you’ll hear it called and what that is is say Montana state
develops their application they want students to submit they might give you options they might
say hey submit your common app or you can fill out our in-house app the benefit of that they’re going
to only ask you the questions that matter to them so for example if they don’t think uh if they
don’t necessarily want recommendations they might not ask you for them where the Comet app
may make you think about that kind of thing or change a little bit of
the process to be simpler the next three on there are pretty underutilized
in our school so universal application um is not usually a thing a common black
application and we’re pretty underrepresented with the African-American population here at the
campus so not usually usual not utilized priority applications um sometimes you might
get those in the email or notices about that if you’re going to get invited don’t it’s not
a for sure thing sometimes it goes to your head but basically, it’s going to say hey we got your
name from some database and we think you might be a good applicant we’ll just typically waive your
fee all right which is a good thing so if you’re if you can get a free app out of it go ahead but
you know don’t necessarily apply just because they say we think you’ll be a good applicant
here’s a free application with fast applications kind of the same idea the last one is probably the
most common so it’s the first second and last ones that are going to be probably the
most frequent ones you’ll see so the uc app so you see um see the uc application itself and
the c I need to update that it’s called CSU apply not CSU mentor anymore they changed it okay and I
said the first one is the common app big c big A the last two are also common applications little c
little they are a common app, not the common app and what I mean by that is the uc application when
you fill out a uc you can apply to any of the ucs through that application, okay so it’s common
to the UC system same thing as the CSU apply application, it is common to the CSU system all
right so you only fill out one kind of true application for each of those two university
systems okay I’m going to touch on a couple of these things real quick you know a lot of
stuff you can find online so I’m just going to highlight a couple of things we mentioned
the application window for the University of California is November 1st through the 30th
the application has been open since August 1st meaning students can log on and complete the
application things like that but they can’t hit submit and pay until November
1st rolls around so those of you that might be rushing through the application process you
can hit the slow-down button and you know you have time to spread that out okay I think
your application will probably benefit if you do um it’s only online and then there are um a
fee per campus so it’s going to be a per-campus application fee and you do you can qualify through
the system itself for up to four fee waivers and the system will determine if you qualify for
that based on the family income that you use okay the last part test scores if you are well
that’s that can just be deleted now um so I don’t think I updated this last year so
except we did a different format so ignore the last check mark you can’t send test scores to the
ucs so don’t worry about it that’s a pretty simple answer to that here’s a breakdown and I think
this is um better look to look at than kind of the odd years of covid but this kind of just gives
you have an idea of stats, okay and again I don’t do this to kind of like worry people to scare people
things like that but it gives you a breakdown so the uc system is accessible okay it’s not
something that every campus is necessarily easily accessible but if you want to attend a
uc you can it just might not be Berkeley or UCLA all right so you can see it goes from very low
admissions rate more difficult to very high all right and I think one of the biggest things I want
you to pay attention to is the difference between how many students applied and this number I guaran
I participated in a UCLA session uh towards in the last year and they highlighted their number
of applicants and they had over 130 000 applicants last year okay and so the numbers are pretty
staggering and so just know that um it’s not a lot of times and for as personal as it is
for families and students and us at school it’s unfortunately not personal um there’s
so many different variables and we’ll break down a few of them but so many different variables
involved in all college processes that it feels very personal like they don’t like me when
it’s usually not that simple if you don’t get in all right so I want to want
to just kind of give you that a little bit of a reality take in that you know if you apply
broadly you’re probably not going to get into all your schools that’s okay the goal is to get into
a few and have some choices from that so you’re going to fill out the UC application itself and
your eligibility is based on your a3g coursework and your GPA is calculated based on your 10th
and 11th-grade school years so your 9th-grade is not included in the GPA calculation
you do not use any letters or recommendations but there are personal insight questions that are
writing short writing responses for the ucs is okay during writing time in the upcoming year we’ll be having
different things I’ll be hosting … SAT workshops we’ll be hosting college kind of just drop in
help with my application times so you’ll be seeing some of that pop up here in the next couple
weeks most writings probably most Wednesdays okay so take a look at some of those different
things again ignore the pieces about reasoning tests and subject tests and stuff like
that that has gone away for this upcoming school year this is a picture of a comprehensive review
I’m just going to you know if you want to pause it and take a look at this I’ll let you do that
again test scores are off of this now so it’s reallocated the weighting of the test
score to other areas of the comprehensive review another way to look at this is a holistic review
and that’s basically when students are not just a piece of paper and a test score so they are
going to look at what are you doing in class and senior year this quality of the senior year program of
the study they are going to look at what is your gpa what did you take advantage of in comparison to
other peers did you show any improvement or did you maintain your high level of achievement did
you do any special participation how about like outside of school activities okay
they take into account all that stuff okay I am not going to go through the personal
insight questions I have them listed here okay but you can see that you’re gonna have eight to choose
from you’re gonna pick four and they’re limited to 350 words which sometimes is harder than you may
think a lot of times people try to write too much all right but it is something just keep in mind
um and they may have updated this I think they were planning on keeping the same the only
the thing I might that could be in there might be an additional covid question um so just
keep an eye out for that again filling out the application then this can be applicable
to any application that you’re filling out all right first and foremost read the instructions
I cannot emphasize this enough and, simply, it’s probably the most common thing that
I get it let’s see I don’t know how to do this and I would pull up their computer and read
the instructions to them like oh so literally sit down and read the question read the instructions
and then read them again if you’re still confused all right there are legit questions I’m not saying
don’t ask questions but do yourself and everybody else a favor by just doing your diligence and not
just kind of rushing and skipping some steps of going and asking other people usually they’ve been
asked enough where there’s a faq option if you do a Google search and find it on the uc website just
work on reading the instructions you can always call the admissions department if it kind of gets
beyond my recognition of the problem or things like that that’s my first go-to I’m gonna try to
get a hold of someone who knows from the inside okay and please do let me help you I’m happy to
review applications you know sometimes I catch little things like there’s number seven in your
first name that probably shouldn’t be there to bigger things like hey you left out an entire year
of English on your application let’s fix that this is your one shot you want it to be right don’t
rush it okay take the time to get it reviewed and get it reviewed several times I’m happy to do
that we just need to kind of set it up in advance so the common application has a couple of common
questions around it different websites most of your students are probably familiar with
if you’re doing in that application system okay but there are a few differences and you know you’re
going to have longer form writing components of it um but another thing that uh is often comes up is
we do not report class rank all right so on many of the applications that may ask you this you
just either hit not applicable we don’t report leave it blank different applications will have
you do different things with it all right so we do not report that and we will not so if you ask us
we don’t have it so we can’t even give it to you you uc and CSU applications do not this is
important probably one of the biggest errors I see on those two applications do not want your a3 to do
not want your non-a3 courses okay in your course history or your GPA calculation so that would
be like P.Ed. learning center strength development pathways don’t enter them okay if you generally
do not see your course in on your list of courses usually shouldn’t go on there with the exception
if you like came from an out-of-state school that didn’t maintain an a through g course list again
if you have a complicated you know history at different schools that kind of stuff again ask
for help, I’m happy to support you guys with that census probably the easiest application out there
all right so they’re very simple the application window and the application itself is not even
even open yet so you can’t log on to CSU and apply until October 1st but you can submit from October
1st to November 30th so you can start it submit it and do it all if you were dumb on the first
day I’m just kidding but you know you can get it all done the first day it opens because it’s open
to submit during that window you should not it’s all online again you have 23 campuses 55 bucks
per campus and just note that many campuses are what are called impacted meaning that they have
too many students okay and that’s going to help lower their admissions rate which causes problems
not getting in so you know places like cal poly long beach san diego state, especially in Pert you
know some of them are campus-wide and programs so like cal poly engineering campus-wide impaction
too many kids on campus and too many kids in engineering all right so they are having to
increase their eligibility requirements for that there is no essay no writing no personal
statement all right no letters or recommendation your eligibility is based on grades and just like
these are the UC’s ucs on their recalculated gpa when you’re looking at a transcript the best kind of
uh assumption and calculation is the one that is uh in the academic gpa 10 through 12 is what
you’ll see on it that’s probably the best guess of your GPA again they’re going to recalculate it and
many colleges do so try not to think too deeply about it it is what it is you can’t change
it’s okay again no sat or a ct scores are accepted in some of the most competitive schools in the
CSU is cal poly long beach san diego state some of the least competitive
more open and available Sonoma Humboldt l😳king at Stanley Claus el chico in San
Bernardino Sonoma state in particular has a large cadre of north tahoe high school
students and a lot of students do like looking at Sonoma State and have found it a very
welcoming campus chico is another one and many of our teachers are chico alum so it’s
a great school to consider as well I would say Sacramento state is probably the closest as well
as the least or sorry the most favorable campus to take us they’re what are called our local
census so they would probably be the simplest tips for CSU since we
have most students apply there don’t try and just remember your classes get your
app to get your transcript up you’re going to use a copy of that when you’re filling it out and
you’re going to be matching it okay and it’s something that you’re going to be matching with
and if you have to type in classes from north high school especially you’re probably doing
something wrong okay so it’s going to match and so you want to match your classes successfully
and again it’s more about entering that information right okay you’re not going to be
entering tons like extracurriculars and writing a lot of stuff it’s just about kind of putting
in your information, private colleges again have very very widely very different deadlines all right you
can have anything the next slide is actually about different types of applications which
I’ll highlight kind of why that matters for deadlines but you are in charge of kind
of knowing when their deadlines are and you might see a myriad of options we’ll break down
all these different admissions types here next to many of the private colleges again if you’re
going to be doing common apps or some other applications many of them will do require
letters of recommendation for the common app letters recommendation are me I am
pretty much required for all students um we are going to talk about letters of recommendation
like I said in Pathways this week a couple of notes for parents if you’re watching
so nobody is required to write a letter and I will never write a letter
that I can’t write a positive letter for all right so if I ever said like hey sorry
I can’t write a letter it’s either because we’ve had pretty poor interactions in
the past and my letter would not be super glowing on your behalf and so no letter is
better than that letter or I don’t know you and that’s a problem, especially for students
who just recently maybe moved to our school it’s going to be a little bit more challenging
this year and that’s why I’m kind of embedding a couple of things to help with that I’m putting in
some specific connection time in my week to just call students in and spend 15 to 20 minutes talking
to them finding out more about who they are because we haven’t had that in the last
you know since they were 10th graders and they barely were on my caseload at that
point so it’s been a little bit tougher but especially if I you know I know many of
our students but especially if you’re new many times in that circumstance I might ask hey
is there someone else that might be better to write this and you can submit one on my behalf
my only requirement with that is I have to be able to read it I’m not willing to submit
a blind letter of recommendation with my name on it and then two teachers is what’s most common okay
Stu you know parents just let us work with this with your students um they’re responsible for
this so in pathways students we’ll get to that student they also get a secondary
school report so that’s going to be a transcript an overview kind of a little bit of
information about our school they also get a mid-year report census UCs they don’t actually
get typical updates from your first semester of senior year most private schools will mean
they’re going to see your first semester grades before they’re making decisions about you all
right however you know it’s something that we’re going to generally do pretty seamlessly as
we go through high school all right let me kind of highlight a little bit about this I know we’re
probably going to be a little over our time today um but uh do not worry most of the stuff
we will cover pretty much as we expected to so there are several different
ways that students will be applying I would say the most common one kind of going from
left to right is that regular decision okay it’s kind of put in two categories non-restrictive and
restrictive application plans the non-restrictive this regular decision that would be what most
people consider regular applications all right meaning they have a start date say it opens like
CSU’s uh on october 1st and the decision date is November 30th census and UC’s are
only regular decision schools do not have any other application type
okay don’t let anybody tell you otherwise okay submitting your application on November 1st is the
same thing as submitting your application on November 30th all right and so that’s something just to
be aware of so it’s you know it’s just kind of a window of time typically
but they usually have a deadline for rolling admissions Montana State’s a
a great example of rolling admissions rolling admissions means they’re going to
process your application as you submit it all right so when Montana state gets you to know
starts their school year they open up their application on a certain date and usually
have a very long extensive window to submit many times it’s like we’ll take it starting
october 1st and you can submit it through April 30th right they have that window of
time and they’re going to process as they come in so say you apply in November
usually, within a couple of weeks, they’re going to turn around and let you know if you’re in or not
usually schools like this it’s not so much of you’re competing for a seat necessarily it’s so
much are you qualified or not all right and so this is a nice one often if you have
a rolling admissions it’s kind of nice and kind of a nice chip off your shoulder to have a school
that already knows you can go there all right early action um is a benefit for you
the student or family and that’s really where they might have an early deadline that says
if you meet the ea or early action deadline we will send out an earlier notification
of acceptance or denial or deferral all right it does not benefit students okay other
then the informational piece okay it does not help your application process doing this and
sometimes it can hurt in the sense that sometimes students are rushing to submit
an early action application and you might not submit the best application because you were in a
hurry okay but it has no impact on your admissions kind of likelihood all right where
the other side see early decision these are what are called restrictive application
plans and what that means is you’re often limited to only one and you are kind of legally entering
a contract basically with that school that says if you let me in I’m going to meet this early
deadline many times it’s pretty early November sometimes you know that you have to
apply if I submit this I’m only going to apply to one other early
decision school I can apply anywhere else regularly rolling but only one
another place early or the decision or early act or restrictive early action and if you let me
in I’m going to withdraw all my other applications and I’m going to place a deposit immediately okay
and so this is a big deal okay this is one that a lot of people I think kind of rush through and
think oh I’m just going to play your decision it’s going to help me and it does okay it does
help the admissions process they’re looking if we had some time I’d take you through
the enrollment management process but I don’t if you’re curious about it let me know we can talk
it is through but an early decision is a for sure seat they are looking for yield at the end of
the process means how many students are going to show up on day one of school this early
the decision is a sure bet for people who are going through admissions so what that means is
they’re going to look at you a little bit more fondly it’s not going to generally take you from
an admissible student to admissible student it usually just helps you get over the hump all right
but it’s going to allow you to look be looked at a little bit more favorably by the school which
can help you get in potentially the downside is if you get in you don’t get to choose
and look at other options you’re going to have to withdraw those things you also have to know that
you can afford and pay for it there are a few kinds of finagling ways out that you can kind of you
know if they offer you a 40 000 difference in terms of your costs they oftentimes might let you
out of that decision but it’s up to the college, okay so it is a big deal it’s something
that parents have to sign off on I have to sign off that we’ve had a conversation
about it, so it’s not something to be taken lightly so do that with caution and restrictive
early action is kind of the same thing except you don’t have to typically place a decision
in a deposit immediately like you do an early decision okay but you still can’t apply
other places in that early time frame we talked a little bit about the common
application but what do we do if we’re still looking for schools okay so what if we’re
still like developing our list which is not a bad thing necessarily okay but it’s something
that you want to definitely kind of work towards all right a couple of questions that you might
want to ask yourself on the screen here number one how much does it cost to attend do you
qualify for financial aid all right most if not all colleges that most people are going to look at
will have a net price calculator you can google it cal poly net price calculator usually has you
ballpark your income and things like that and it will kind of spit out a rough idea again keep it think
of it as rough we’re not when we go over financial aid we kind of do it backward we reverse shop
figure out where we want to go and then we figure out how much it’s going to cost herein
America it’s not the best but that’s the way it goes generally speaking the sticker price is
not how much you’re going to pay however college is an investment and it’s expensive okay so
you have to kind of get at least some general ballpark directions to kind of make sure again
you’re diversifying not only admissions you don’t want to all reach schools all safe schools you
also don’t want all private schools that are going to be super expensive you want to spread the love
we’ll break down how that happens in october but what other resources are available to students
okay you might know do they have study groups have health on health support on campus
do they have tutoring do you have a library do you have intramural sports do they have support
for students um with disabilities I mean there’s all kinds of things that you might want to know
about what kind of activities to make things um enjoyable and fun for students around campus
because it’s not just about academics it’s also about the environment it’s about location
it’s about how students feel on campus what are the housing different options you know
sometimes that’s a secondary question that people ask okay yes of course you have to get in
first, before you look at housing right looking at housing before you get in is kind of a non-starter
but you should probably do something some exploration at least to make sure that you
know the kind of what you’re getting yourself into that’s also important for junior college
because most junior colleges don’t have dorms so you need to kind of know what the living
experience is going to be like placement offices things like that are all going to be awesome
visits are tough and they have been tough given the lack of openness lack of transportation
things like that worrying about covet and travel and that kind of thing so if you’re able to
awesome if not at least do some virtual tours most colleges have done virtual tour
experiences that you can find online we talked about doing the FAFSA
already in the net price calculator just the one thing that I want while you’re
in this process of kind of like applying refining things like that again diversity is important
you won’t know how much college is going to cost until you kind of get a full picture back all
right so usually I want people to kind of start their initial list without considering cost but
at this point you want to start having it come into play in families this is a good opportunity
for you to sit down with your students say here’s what we maybe have available here’s what we need
you to kind of work hard on Okay we have nothing set aside you know you know depending on
your income the government says you need to have some stuff to decide so you might have to kind
of looking at your financial situation a little bit but you know you might just have that frank
conversation like this is real this is reality okay and the other piece about finance is
you want to have a four-year perspective all right this is not something
that happens once this is at least four years in the making all right and so
you don’t you can’t make a decision based on well we can swing it for a year
okay it wipes out your savings or you know the loan doesn’t sound too bad but it’s
only one year and then you multiply it by four or five and it’s kind of astronomical or not possible
all right so you do have to kind of consider the longer-term impact of applying to certain colleges
and consider different alternatives if some of them are maybe outside of the realm of possibility
we’re going to kind of skip through some of the deciding elements to kind of get through
we can cover this at another date but let me talk briefly about what happens
after we submit since students might get there pretty quickly all right so when a
student hits submit on their application in the past we’ve done a college
admissions case study maybe you’ve participated in that we haven’t been able to do that since covid
and not going to be able to do that this year but hopefully, in the future, we can for younger
students but student you know when they hit submit many times that the colleges are going to
have to go through and read them and every college does read the applications all right ucs like you
saw 108 130 000 applications every single one of those applications gets read by a human being
at least twice okay it might only take four or five minutes per read but every single one does
get read all right so it’s very quick they don’t have a lot of time, okay but they are purposeful
they’re in their reading and process okay um students might have to follow up with some
additional items that are that follow-up component I mentioned on the timeline you know they might
ask for if you submit test scores for them to submit those officially they might ask
for transcripts, they might ask for additional letters or recommendations for other pieces of
detail that they might need from you that’s where checking emails checking portals things like that
all become super crucial in this process usually in mid-spring anywhere typically from
around January through generally April you start to see the admissions results come back in
they usually come back digitally through a portal as well okay very rarely see anything in
the mail is kind of like the good old days and then usually after that admission you’ll start getting
notices about financial aid and that’s the offer that they’re going to be giving you and
that’s kind of where you start to again go through this other evaluation process you kind of evaluate
where you get in then you have to reevaluate and look at where it looks like we
can go because your first choice school might not be your first choice after looking at the finances
so you have to kind of re-evaluate that process okay we’re going to look at that comparison and
again may 1st has kind of been this target date in the past some laws and rules and court
stuff happens and may first can no longer necessarily be the date other schools might look
at different dates but it’s a good kind of window of time and kind of a target for most schools and
I would say many schools still do apply on that date we’re gonna skip wait lists um but just know
that if your student gets on a waitlist um it’s a good practice to kind of view that as
a denial and here’s some data that come just from like ucs for example ucs “b” for example had 4
800 students on a waitlist eight of those 4 800 students were admitted so it’s really kind of a
the cruel unfortunate way that they approach it but sometimes it happens I mean the best way
to get off the wait list is to get on it but the reality is most students don’t so it’s
good to kind of just move on from that if you do and then denials do happen in this process all
right and like I mentioned earlier if you apply the kind of like like we suggest a good chance you do
get denied from school and that’s not the end of the world the goal is not to get denied by all
of them, the goal is to find one that will want you and hopefully several because that’s
that’s kind of the best-case scenario so I’m going to kind of just highlight briefly a
couple of different how-to’s and then I am going to just walk you through two different tools one of
them is Naviance and one of them is our website just highlight a couple of resources
that you might want to poke around there remember this is a very general overview we
are going to be starting here in the next week and a half two weeks booking
our post-secondary planning meetings okay what those are going to be individual
meetings that’s where we can get more specific with each of you about your process about
your interests about where you’re at about questions that you have okay but we’re going to be
booking those and those about half-hour 45 minutes long with the student and pr you know preferably
a family member or a trusted adult of some type who can come and be in person or on the computer
for our conversation and so you’ll be getting some information about that here in the next week or
two about booking that and those will go those will happen throughout the fall and we’ll be doing
a couple usually we’ll have a couple of slots a day, unfortunately, I can’t just do those all day but
um we’ll have a couple of time frames throughout each day that you can get online and book and then we
will probably hopefully target having those done before Thanksgiving all right and so we’ll have
met with all the seniors hopefully by that point okay so you might be getting some more calls or
information from your student about that as well so just a heads up on that and that’s another
a great place where we can talk more specifically about some of these questions maybe you have
and take this information and kind of kind of consolidate that down into what applies to your
particular situation and child because this is general it’s hard to address large pieces of
information to everybody because everyone’s going to be different you’ll see the same thing
with some of our financial aid information too we’re kind of covering the basics and kind of the
overview but everyone’s going to kind of have a slightly different flavor on it so some tools just
to mention so you can look them up but college board’s big future is a good search tool if you’re
still building that list or need to find some data excuse me for the Naviance search which I’ll just pull
up here briefly in a second has is another great opportunity to find data and also find similar
or schools that maybe you want to consider that maybe you weren’t talking with me
a lot of people work with independent consultants that kind of stuff go
for it if you have the means and desire to do so what they will do is they will
provide some additional kind of one-on-one support in a more frequent kind
of the more consistent type way unfortunately with even just the 11th grade 11th and 12th grade
students I’m not able to meet as frequently as some students might like and that’s fine
I don’t fault anybody it doesn’t hurt my feelings but you don’t have to do that I’m happy
to help you guys throughout this process one of the biggest things that I need
from you guys as students and family is to show some of that initiative if I have to
track you down to do that it’s tough if you kind of want to talk more frequently set
up some meetings and we can do that all right but you don’t necessarily spend money to do that
but if you do I’m happy to work with them as best they can I do encourage you if you are finding a
consultant or a college counselor as they might call them they usually call iecs or independent
educational consultants make sure they’re part of an association like Knickknack or similar whack
ac because they hold them to high expectations and then also make sure that they understand that
there’s a team process I’m open to communicating with them but um many times they’re
a little unfamiliar sometimes with our policies procedures expectations at school and so sometimes
they kind of you know most of the ones I’ve worked with most commonly are good sometimes
if they’re new they just kind of come barge on the door and expect us to kind of like take
every single piece of advice that they give us or you that’s not always the case that’s possible
but we try to work closely and hand in hand with them when possible and so we definitely
if you want to pursue that you absolutely can let me show you the two tools and then we’ll
wrap up for today like I said we’ll have some additional information coming up about
junior college information some of the other resources and opportunities after high school
as well as we will be doing the rti sessions um every week for at least throughout the fall
as well as uh different pathways lessons that you’ll be getting so I know you guys missed out
on pathways last year so we’re going to kind of try to get going on that right away and get
some important information into your guy’s hands so please do ask questions please do you know
come and seek some of that stuff out so let me kind of just I might have to
adjust here real quick so let me um see how I want to do this I want to add my browser here so bear with me one
second while I pull this into my system here and then we will do so I’m going
to show this here on the screen and I’m going to show you guys your
naviance system first and this is a system that’s available to all students at
north high school including non-seniors so let’s see if we can get this up
here on screen now I think it is awesome cool let me get out of
here so I can see it all right so when we’re looking at Naviance
I’m going to pull this demo account so what we’re looking at um just getting it open a new screen for me let’s do this instead all right so this is a demo
we’re going to make this a senior and so what you’re seeing on the screen is what
students look at when they log in they log in with clever which is our Google that account
all right and there are a few key pieces up here we do not use this to apply to college
that’s an important note but students may be say for example requesting transcripts here and
we’ll kind of highlight that primarily with the students but the key pieces that are going
to be helpful in this college process especially up here underneath this colleges area
if you click on it it’s going to kind of like take you through a generally advisable process of finding
schools that fit you if you’re still doing some of the research diving more specifically into
some research processes applying to college okay again we’re going to be mainly looking at managing
your transcript here and then we will be updating scholarships lists for our lo some of our local
scholarships that are not part of our kind of common scholarship process on this link here
so one of the biggest things if you’re looking at say extending your college list be like i
have a couple that I probably should add a few more the super match called search is pretty
excellent so it’ll take a second to load up and I’m just going to click start
over to kind of clear everything out and there are a couple of different things
these different items on the top will bring up different kinds of interfaces
that you can choose from and these are going to be the search criteria okay we have student
life diversity institution characteristics right size cost if they have athletics academic
elements things like that okay and if we click on this it’s going to extend and
let us pick majors all right and so what this will do is down here as we add so add any major as
we add colleges it’s going to populate this list down below and so say for example we wanted to
stay on the west coast or stay in California okay we can do California and as we can see as we
do that it’s going to populate this list there are a lot of schools in California and that’s
the only search criteria they’re looking for so it’s going to find a lot of matches and it’s going
to say this is your match because everything is in California everything matches however if we
start adding a few more and you want to kind of fine-tune this to maybe three to five you don’t
want to overdo it doing it kind of limits things but if you start with like even two
to three that’s a pretty good starting place if you say academics all right so let’s say we want to
stay in California and we want to study nursing and see if it’ll let me type it’s not like my typing hang on oh come on I’m gonna scroll so if we
go down we find n look for nursing okay what you’ll One thing you’ll notice is that
it’s going to have a lot of different options okay same thing with like engineering or other
items like that so you’ll have different um specific majors and so if we said
um let’s just say nursing education we’ll see how close that comes
up you might want to add maybe a couple more on there if you were
finding different nursing or if you want to add health or things like that so like
biomedical science as well all right so we’ll do that so it’s got those two this area here
has information about so when it’s in this area it’s going to filter anything out that’s not
matching if we’re like California is important but not a deal breaker you can click
the arrow and it’s going to move it over here what that says is it’s going to like rank higher
if it’s in California but it’s not going to weed out schools if it’s not okay same any
of these things can be moved between the two so think of this like it’s an all or nothing
the thing this is like uh we’ll just consider it but it’s not you know that’s the end of the
world all right if you say admissions you know if you say your gpo this is out of 4.0
so it’s not weighted so if we said like 3.7 okay we did that so it’s going to kind of roll down and
it’s going to say okay it’s saying you see riverside all right average GPA looks like
about a 3.61 okay and your GPA is above that if you had sat scores they can do that and
you can pick out different things up here so you set admissions info all right so
it’ll say acceptance rate 51 app fee 70 kind of a rough estimate of tuition and room and board again
this is before any type of aid just in the state, okay and you can see why this is a
match so you can see okay it’s got biomedical sciences it’s located in California so
it’s a match now this is nice it kind of gives us the list to explore but if we want to kind of dive
into more specific details you want to click on it you’re going to hit riverside and
it’s going to pull up this window once it loads and again you’re going
to be able to dive more deeply into what other schools are okay how do you compare
against others who applied say if you said your weighted gpa you said it’s like that range
if you’re in a student’s account we upload gpa’s semi-regularly so if it’s not quite up
to date probably needs an update but you can get a rough estimate of scores of things like
that so you can kind of get yourself compared when you have that you can understand a little bit more
about what majors they might offer so if you’re like I don’t know what majors uc riverside offers
so let me kind of scroll through and you kind of see it broken down by college so engineering
here’s all the engineering programs all right you can do a student life again this is the stuff
that makes people happy on campus how big is it how far away from home is it okay different
types of the breakdown of ethnicity on campus admissions are probably the number one and cost is
probably the number two tab that people look at okay admissions deadlines it shows you also
this is key information about our school okay so this will break down and show you details about where students who attended north
Tahoe high school got in or not okay and it breaks down you know as we go through this year unless
people take the s a t or a c t this graph on this side is going to be a little less reliable but
the GPA should still be accurate who gets in I believe these students were wait-listed all
right so you can kind of see GPA test scores may be wise where people are getting in or not and these
are normal high school students so that goes a lot you know very different away from kind of
where we look at maybe larger scale data okay it breaks down the overall cost
again estimates ballpark figures all right um if we go where there was one other one so
this one is on the overview tab if you’re like hey I like riverside’s on my list
but I’m kind of trying to explore some other options this is also kind of
cool so this college overlaps an area I think it might open in a new window
oh there we go it’s going to work cool what this does is it says from
our historical data in Naviance of the students who applied to the riverside
students also applied to the following schools many times students who apply to certain
institutions maybe have a similar kind of focus or areas of taste all right so you can get some data
here as well and this is again all of our students here at north tele high school data so how many
students were accepted at any individual campus where their average scores were average GPAs and so
on so good data points here all right and can you can do this with any type of school there’s
there are probably almost four thousand schools in their database so I’d encourage you to do that the
another one that I want to kind of highlight is just showing you where some information is about um
college about counseling and that kind of stuff that you mentioned on our website so
again up here at the top counseling support, you can look through all of this stuff if you’re
curious about working with a college counselor there’s some advice that I’ve written there
okay but if you just click on this menu item it’s probably the best place to start that
a junior workshop that I mentioned is here if you want to kind of get an idea about a FAFSA
demo it probably won’t be too wildly different it’s not available so don’t start it now but if
If you want to kind of get a preview you can use that but these links are all here okay there’s an
application spreadsheet which I’ve shown students and I talk about in this video as well there is
also, a link to the senior profile some of these items are only available to the students when
they’re logged into their account okay but it just provides a lot of things information about
rankings if you’re curious about why that is read college in Oregon wrote this up and I just
linked to it because it’s pretty great okay so if you want to understand why people
don’t like rankings and why it’s not a good fit, okay but you can get a ton of details here so I
don’t I would encourage you to explore if you’re if you have the bandwidth to do that um like I
said post-secondary plan meetings coming up here in the next couple of weeks lots of stuff coming your
the way that’s probably the biggest thing about this year is it can be very much information overload
I’m sorry for doing that to you today as well okay but it is very very crucial for us to really
kind of jump into it and make sure that we are starting this process together we are starting
broadly and we will get more specific as we go trust the process trust the systems it’s its it’s
scary because of all the media and experiences that people have had however it is something that i
would you know very few students have ever been disappointed all right some people might not
necessarily make it to their number one school but will make sure that your student is okay
okay if they do their part you guys do your part we’re going to do our part and generally speaking
the college is also going to do its part they’re going to recognize the hard work okay and
as long as we do that well we do it wisely and diversely we’re going to get you to a very
great place when you graduate so thank you for hanging in there with me a little bit over our
the hour-long goal sometimes I’m long-winded but thanks for hanging in there if you guys have any
questions feel free to shoot me any emails as well I’m happy to do that phone calls are a little bit
tough just because I can’t typically answer them I’m in meetings out of the office that kind of
stuff but emails are preferred and then students will be meeting here very very shortly
thank you for hanging in there you guys and have a wonderful wonderful whatever part of the day
that you’re in when you’re watching this cheers
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