I started off using the college search to find more information about the universities I was interested in. Just this tool alone gave me so much information about a particular school.
It was my one-stop shop to learn about college. I was able to find information about college tuition, school rank, majors, and so much more that I can't list it all. The college search tool has helped me narrow down which college I want to attend, and it made a stressful process surprisingly not so stressful. I then moved to the scholarship search tool to find scholarships to apply for because I can't afford to pay for tuition myself. The search tool helped me find scholarships that I was eligible for.
The tool gave me all the information I could ever need about a particular scholarship that was being offered. The CollegeXpress scholarship search tool is so much better than other tools offered, like the Chegg scholarship search. Thanks to CollegeXpress, I was able to apply to tons of scholarships in a relatively easy way! I never would have found the college I plan on attending without CollegeXpress! I've always been a person of ambition and have been dreaming of studying and working on my passion for law, legal studies, and political science.
Washington College is where I plan on pursuing my career. My journey with my education has been difficult, and oftentimes, I was told I would never amount to much, but now I'm dual enrolled at Caroll Community College and have had experience in the fields I am dedicated to. Without the help of CollegeXpress even in its early days , I would never have found Washington College and the information I need to apply and become a part of their community.
I first discovered CollegeXpress during my sophomore year of high school while researching colleges that interested me. My SAT prep class the following year further familiarized me with the opportunities available through the organization. CX has personally helped me by exposing me to a diverse selection of schools as well as scholarships and life tips that have provided valuable guidance in my college search.
This scholarship will help me adjust to college life without worrying as much about tuition. This gives me more room to truly explore and benefit from all aspects of higher education. Self-awareness skills How well do you know your strengths and vulnerabilities?
To increase your self-awareness, try answering the following questions: Do you know which subjects are most difficult for you? What time of day are you best able to study and learn? Have you suffered from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or any form of addictions?
What are the qualities you look for in a friend? The goal of this project was to identify common effective practices for getting a wider range of students ready for college. We have synthesized our findings into a self-evaluation tool—the College Readiness Evaluation for Students and Teachers—which will help high schools determine how well they are addressing the four dimensions of college readiness.
Schools do the self-evaluation by having teachers, counselors, and administrators complete an online instrument.
This input generates a report listing the areas in which the school could improve college readiness practices, an explanation of why the highlighted areas are important, and which activities the school should undertake first. Also included are links to a range of proven resources that the school can use to get started on an improvement plan. The self-evaluation tool is being field tested during the —09 school year. By learning from a set of best-practice high schools, all high schools can begin to move in the right direction, emphasizing the knowledge, skills, dispositions, programs, and practices necessary for all students to be successful in postsecondary educational settings.
American Diploma Project. Ready or not: Creating a high school diploma that counts. Washington, DC: Achieve, Inc. College readiness standards. Iowa City, IA: Author. College Board. Standards for college success. New York: Author.
Conley, D. Understanding university success. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Texas college readiness standards. Austin, TX: Author. David T. Conley has contributed to Educational Leadership. What Makes a Student College Ready?
End Notes. Learn More. Want to add your own highlights and notes for this article to access later? Through extracurricular activities, you can develop important skills, such as teamwork, public speaking, creativity, leadership, and self-awareness. The first step is to explore.
As you start high school, you will find you have many new opportunities—sports, theater, music, art, debate, and computer science, just to name a few. There is not a required one-size-fits-all list of activities—what matters is that you find clubs and programs that interest you! Keep an eye out for clubs that may specifically help you prepare for a particular college major. For example, if you think you might be interested in earning a business degree , find out if your high school has a DECA chapter or similar association.
Allow yourself enough time to excel at the activities you care about most. It can be helpful to see freshman year as the time to try a lot of things. In your sophomore year, you can begin limiting your involvement to your most important activities.
This will allow you to spend more time on fewer things. Ask yourself these important questions: What is most important to you? How can you develop that area into a true passion? How can you take your involvement to the next level? How do you become an expert, a leader, or develop community awareness in that area? This is what makes you unique and allows you to shine on a college application or qualify for a scholarship.
Developing an interest into a passion may also direct you towards an area of study and choice of career. Keep a record of your extracurricular activities.
You can be asked about them in a few different ways on college applications. Your high school will keep track of your classes, grades, and credits. It is up to you to keep track of everything else. In order to be prepared for college applications, create a document that records your involvement in sports, clubs, volunteer work, community service, and part-time employment, etc.
Begin with the summer after eighth grade you were a high school student at that point and continue through your senior year. Keep track of the time you spent on each activity and look for trends that highlight your involvement in meaningful activities. This list will be extremely helpful—not only when you are applying to colleges, but also for scholarship applications or building a resume. If you wait until your senior year, it is really difficult to remember everything you accomplished.
You likely have a high school guidance counselor assigned to you. Make an appointment with him or her! It is important to connect with your guidance counselor regularly, starting with your freshman year.
Your guidance counselor knows your school offerings and opportunities, including visits from college admissions counselors, college fairs, test prep classes, scholarships, and much more. Your guidance counselor is also a great resource for social and emotional support as well as career and college readiness. Unfortunately, most guidance counselors are extremely busy and overworked. Make their job as easy as possible. Thank your guidance counselor for information, help, and advice.
Remember that you may need a letter of recommendation from your guidance counselor. To write a good letter, your guidance counselor needs to know your best characteristics and as what stands out about you.
It can be helpful to think of your guidance counselor as you might think about your doctor. They are busy, they care about you, they know a lot, and they give you advice. Coaches, teachers, employers, and religious leaders are all potential mentors who can provide valuable support. Learn from their mistakes and their successes. Share your dreams and concerns with them and ask for advice about choosing a college and career. Professors can be difficult to deal with and college roommates might be bullies.
Think about how your teen would address these situations. Being able to solve problems and advocate for themselves are essential skills for college students. Likewise, when life gets challenging how does your teen let off steam?
Teens who turn to partying or other unhealthy behaviors for coping will struggle in college. Meanwhile, teens who know how to deal with stress in healthy ways will be more successful. Other factors to consider when determining college readiness include the ability to take care of themselves and perform normal day-to-day activities like cooking, cleaning, laundry and other chores.
There will be no one there to help them get these things done. When teens are not responsible enough to do these things on their own, this is a sign that they may not be ready for college.
Finally, consider how well your teen can assess risk and stay safe. For instance, the first few weeks of college are extremely dangerous for college freshmen, especially young women. Not only are they new to campus without a support network, but they also may lack the skills needed to keep them out of dangerous situations. In fact, researchers have identified a "red zone," or the first few weeks of the fall semester, where incoming freshman women are at the highest risk for unwanted sexual encounters and sexual assault.
It is important that teens have some basic safety skills to ensure they are not injured or assaulted as they are getting used to their new life on campus.
These skills include never going to parties alone, using the buddy system at night, limiting or not drinking at all and never accepting drinks from others. If your teen does not have a good radar for unsafe situations, you might want to consider delaying college or encouraging your teen to live at home the first year until they have developed some maturity.
While going off to college may seem like a declaration of independence, it does not mean a teen is prepared with the responsibilities that come with that independence. Students need to demonstrate that they make good choices, manage their time, learn from mistakes and live responsibly in order to show college readiness.
And it is your job as a parent to help prepare them for that next step. Avoid Making College Assumptions. Remember that not every high school senior is ready for college right out of high school. It is important to ask students what they want. Some kids are aware that they are not ready or prepared for the workload and responsibilities that come with being a college student.
For this reason, it is vital that you have an honest conversation with your senior. Listen to what they want and remember there is no shame in taking a year to work, participate in a gap year program, take a light course load or attend a community college in order to gain more experience as well as maturity and autonomy.
Additionally, be realistic about the high school workload and coursework. Ask yourself if the classes they took truly prepared them for the next level of education. For instance, college requires a lot of reading. If your student was not reading their textbooks on a regular basis, they may not be ready for all the reading that is required in college.
Before you invest thousands of dollars in an education, be sure your student can handle a college workload. Many kids head off to college either with their tuition underwritten with their parents' hard-earned cash or with student loans. For this reason, it is important that your teen is responsible enough to handle the time management and self-advocacy that is needed to survive in college. A good first step is teaching teens how to budget their time.
Teach them how to use a planner or an online calendar to block out time for studying, catching up on reading and studying in advance for a test.
Stress the importance of scheduling in some stress-relieving fun time , but not at the expense of other priorities such as studying, work obligations and sports practices. Additionally, your teen should know how to interact with professors when they need extra help or feel that a grade is not accurate. It's important that your teen be able to approach their teachers now to ask for help when they need it. If they do, they will be more likely to ask for help from their college professors as well as advocate for themselves.
Provide Money Management Experience.
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