Chloe and Joey Are Juniors

Welcome back to what will, hopefully, be a very rewarding school year.  I want to begin with a post that focuses on juniors who are planning to attend college after graduation.  Two great kids whom I'm lucky to have as neighbors, Chloe and Joey, are juniors this year and in June I gave them this timeline to help them navigate all that the college bound student needs to accomplish junior year.

Recommended Junior Year Timeline

June - September 

- If you haven't taken an interest inventory through your school, I suggest you visit 

http://www.college.gov and use it to get information on careers by scrolling down and clicking "Explore Careers".  This will help you find careers that relate to different areas of interest.  This site also has a lot of financial aid information or you can go directly to http://www.careeronestop.org.

- Once you get some career ideas, you can go to http://www.bls.gov.  Scroll down the "Publications" tab to "Career Guides" and click onto the Occupational Outlook Handbook.  Another good site to use to investigate careers, especially in the math and science areas, is www.careercornerstone.org.

- Go to collegeboard.org and do a college match which will give you an idea of which specific colleges/programs you may want to consider.

-Download a college visit checklist to use when you visit colleges.  A good one is available at bigfuture.collegeboard.org.  

October - November

- Take the PSAT.

- Investigate summer programs open to juniors such as the Prudential Prestigious Awards.  Recipients receive scholarship money and attend a week long conference in Washington, D.C. in the early spring.  More info can be found at spirit.prudential.com.

- Zinch.com also has a scholarship finder.

- Notify your counselor that you are interested in summer programs such as Governor's School - www.nj.gov/govschool and New Jersey Boys State/New Jersey Girls State www.boysandgirlsstate.org.

December

- You will receive your PSAT results and should use them to continue with your SAT prep.  I say "continue" because your schoolwork, study and even general reading is all "SAT prep".  Use them to see where your strengths and weaknesses are.  There are many SAT prep books you can use and even online test prep at sites like www.grockit.com and unigo.com.

January - June

- Schedule your SAT in the spring along with Subject Tests, if necessary.

- Continue investigating/visiting colleges and programs and applying to summer programs of interest.  Virtual tours can be found on many college websites and also at www.campustour.com.

- Go to www.neighborhoodscout.com to check out the safety of the areas in which your schools of interest are located.

- Also go to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education website, theFIRE.org, to see your chosen schools' current policies "restricting individual rights, as well as that campus' advertised commitments to freedom of expression."

- Download a copy of the Common Application at www.commonapp.org. Even if your colleges of interest don't use or require it (over 400 do!), it will give you a good idea of what information will be included on most college applications.  You can begin the activity sheet portion now, if you haven't begun one already.  You can also see what the general application essay topics look like.  If you begin one now, you can most likely edit it to use senior year.  Go to www.englishclub.com to get some great tips on writing the college application essay.

There are numerous college ratings lists and guides.  A recent one I particularly like can be found in the August 12, 2013 edition of Forbes magazine.  They take the Top 300 Colleges, "rankings compiled exclusively for Forbes by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity" and give them grades based on their fiscal soundness.  They created the Forbes College Financial Grades and analyzed the balance sheets and operational strength of more than 900 four-year, private, not for profit schools with more than 500 students.  Public schools are included in the rankings but not graded.  "Combining Forbes'  Top College rating with its new Financial Grades can help you home in on not just the best schools for the buck but also those that are likely to be around for many years to come."

"Lucie Laponsky, former V.P. of finance at Baltimore's Goucher College and a higher-ed financial consultant, cautions against ignoring the financial health of the colleges you choose: 'Visible signs of financial stress can include fewer classes offered less frequently, more classes taught by adjunct professors, less money for clubs and cutbacks in the upkeep of campus facilities.'"

The next post will appear on October 23 and will include a discussion of a recently published book, 

300 Best Jobs Without a Four Year Degree in addition to a summary of a July Daily Caller post, "As College Costs Increase, Alternatives Arise".  I will also comment on another article about alternatives to college entitled, "Thinking Outside the Education Box".

Up to Speed - Review of Posts from January-June 2011

This post will also include some of the websites and books referred to.

January 8, 2011
Discussion of how students should use their PSAT results and prepare for the SAT. Websites of interest - www.collegeboard.org, www.grockit.com. SAT study guides are available at www.amazon.com.

January 19, 2011
Discussion of how to use www.collegeboard.org

January 26, 2011
Discussion of whether to choose a two or four year program

February 2, 2011
Information on NJ Boys and Girls State Programs www.boysandgirlsstate.org

February 16, 2011
Discussion of features of www.unigo.com, specifically College Match

March 2, 2011
Choosing a College, continued. The book, The Best 373 Colleges,
is featured.

March 16, 2011
Discussion of "feeder schools", undergraduate schools from which many graduate programs accept students

March 30, 2011
Virtual campus tours, college rep visits and college fairs www.campustour.com

April 13, 2011
College admission and the Naviance guidance delivery system www.naviance.com

April 27, 2011
Suggestions for how to get the most out of a campus visit
College Visit Checklist available at www.unigo.com

May 11, 2011
Campus Safety www.neighborhoodscout.com

May 25, 2011
Intellectual freedom on campus www.theFIRE.org
Closing of the American Mind

June 8, 2011
What juniors should do during summer vacation to prepare for senior year. Good review for those who need to catch up!

June 22, 2011
Writing the college application essay www.commonap.org, www.englishclub.com

It's January and Junior Year

When I began this blog, I thought I should begin with junior year in high school. However, there is so much preliminary work that should be done before that. On the www.college.gov site, mentioned in an earlier post, they use three main sub-headings the first of which is "Why Go?". If you have been following the blog, you have, hopefully, done the suggested career exploration and have an idea in mind as to the kind of career(s) you would like to have and the type of post-secondary training/education it requires. If not, review some of the previous posts and go from there. From this point we're going to discuss how to find the place that moves you forward toward your career goal.

By this time juniors should have received the results of the PSAT/NMSQT they took in October. Many sophomores may have taken the test as well, although they are not yet eligible for the National Merit Scholarships for which juniors may qualify. If you took the test and have not received your results, be sure to see your guidance counselor.

If used properly, these results are invaluable to help you prepare for the Scholastic Aptitude Test required by most college admissions offices. The ACT (American College Test) is another test which many schools use as part of their application process and will be discussed in a future post. The PSAT provides you with your scores (ranging from 20-80) on each of three subtests: critical reading; mathematics and writing skills. More importantly, they give you a percentile by which you can see how your scores stack up against other students in your grade level who took the test. A score of 48 in critical reading, roughly what would be a 480 on the SAT, doesn't seem so great. However, when you see that that score was better than 69% of the other students in that grade level who took the test, it's much more competitive. These other students are those who will compete against you for college admissions. As a visual, in a room of 100 students in your grade throughout the country who took the test, you did better than 69 of them. Looks a lot better, doesn't it?

If you don't want to bank on the rest of your group sleeping through segments of the SAT, use your PSAT scores to prepare. Your test booklet should have been returned to you so now you can actually review the specific questions you got right or wrong. The results also give you the level of difficulty of each question and the specific skill it was meant to assess. They also provide an analysis of which skill areas you can improve and provide suggestions as to how to do so.

On the second page of your results you are given a code with which you can fully access the College Board website and use its services for free. The MyRoad program offers the ORA Personality Profile, mentioned earlier. If you don't have a career goal in mind, this will help you. Even if you have a life long dream of a specific job, take the profile to see if it produces results compatible with your plans. It may even broaden the scope of possibilities.

Collegeboard.com provides information on the SAT, which they also administer, and suggestions as to how to prepare. There's a lot of money in SAT preparation. Many students hire private tutors who "tutor to the test", giving them tips and exercises to hone their test skills in general and SAT taking specifically. The Princeton and Kaplan Review(s) along with Huntington and Sylvan Learning Center(s) are just a few among many companies that charge handsomely for these services. Books are available for those who are self-starters and can discipline themselves to prepare at a much lower cost. Among over 1500 titles amazon.com lists when you search "SAT prep" are: The Official SAT Guide by the College Board

; Kaplan SAT 2011; Barron's SAT and McGraw Hill's 12 SAT Practice Tests
There is an interesting online test prep program at www.grockit.com.

No matter what plan(s) you follow, don't just wing it. DO SOMETHING! At the very least, READ - not just subjects you enjoy but pick up something technical if you're a poet and poetic if you're a scientist. You can be both. Decipher it - read with a dictionary - understand it - seek the guidance of a parent or teacher. In May or June many juniors with take the SAT for the first time. (I recommend the May date, as it provides a question/answer service which can be further used to prep for the test if you decide to take it again.) Colleges use a composite of the highest scores for each section of the SAT(s) a student takes.

It may not seem so now, especially for those of us in colder climates, but Spring is just a blink away!