i think we'll get started everybody's all settled thank you for coming tonight the junior future planning i really appreciate you coming out and i myself in a few other counselors are going to speak with you tonight we're going to give you an overview of the process of what happens after high school and we're going to start from six thirty to eight m if we if we need to go to eight we will we're going to give a presentation on all different types of options post high school planning options and then we'll take some question answers after we hear the presentation one of things i'd like you to do is try to relax a little bit not only do you have a study break here from your a midterm exams but you know the whole process of what happens after high school can be a little overwhelming and we understand that the idea of tonight is to try to give you a sense that maybe it's not so overwhelming and it's more exciting actually because you've got quite a few options and we're really going to present to the college application process ninety five percent of you are going to go on to four year two year colleges so that process as well is a process that the first time you take a look at it it may feel overwhelming but  there's a learning curve but we find it to be very accessible so consider this a first pass at the material we're going to go over some of the resources that you have to access after tonight as well sure just to begin our presentation just to review who your guidance counselor is you may not know who your guidance counselor is at this point hopefully you do and i want to say that if you haven't worked with us a whole lot up to this point that doesn't mean that the next twelve months we can't work together quite a bit we look at the next twelve months is very important this is really part of our expertise and kind of really our value added for us juniors so what do we really going to be talking about tonight well first of all believe it or not you're going to be graduating in a year and a half from now and so we're really in the last phase of your high school career so what we want to do is as i've said we're going to go over your options for after high school the details of the college application process i understand are pressing for many of you and we're going to be pressing into many of those details tonight so for some who are looking for a quick overview bear with us because we're going to go into some of the details and again not to overwhelm but so this is the first pass on all the details so that when you see them again when you meet with us individually it will start to make some sense just to review our graduation requirements as graduation is just a year and a half away for our juniors we're going to be meeting with all of our juniors next month actually all of our students next month to choose courses for you guys it'll be yours for your senior year and just to review then and we're going to make sure that you are on track in all these areas you're looking at four years of english four years of math three years of social studies two years of a foreign language one year fine in performing arts you need to have eight p e credits to graduate everybody also needs forty hours of community service we're going to talk about a p g or a prep school year after high school going to talk about what we call a gap year some of you might be entering right into the workforce some kind of career training maybe some of you are headed for the military and then like i said ninety five percent of us will be headed to college he did two year or four years so we're going to go over that i won't be going to college  so prep school what's a p g year all about probably heard for some people it's an excellent choice it is an extra year of preparation both academically  maybe from a maturity standpoint but it gives one full extra year where you can prepare for college and that's a different what you need to know about that is it's a different application process than what we're going to go over for colleges you're going to need an english recommendation a math recommendation and the specific prep schools have their own specific applications that you'll need to talk with your guidance counselor about and we know how to handle that but but different application process that's the main takeaway the another option is gap year gap year is becoming more and more popular again it gives an opportunity to have another year of maturity before you go on and take on the rigors of college it also gives you an opportunity to gain perspective that is very difficult to gain going right from high school right into freshman year of college students travel abroad they do service opportunities they may travel and do service opportunities all across the globe some of the colleges are set up now to handle students who would actually start school master in january and they allow opportunities to travel or serve abroad and start in january the important thing to know about a gap year is that you still want to apply to school next year just as if you weren't going to take a gap year that's very important in a in which case if you were going to take a gap year you would gain admission to a college and then you would defer your admission for a year almost all colleges will allow you to do that and that's the way you would handle a gap year couple of options for career training programs employment in the military you have been here and i'm not going to go over too many of the details there you have them on your handout we have military recruiters here school and some of those web sites there on your handout would be good resources for heading into the workforce and again any specific things that again this is a broad brush  talk to us individually about what you'd like to do and we can help you get more information specifically ok so let's look at the college application process that this is what the rest of the evening is going to be like ms taylor is going to talk about preparing to apply to college what are the things that you need to do so that you have a complete application you need to have some standardized testing you need to have transcripts what are those things i need to have recommendations how many recommendations do you need this type of thing she's going to talk about that this ross is going to talk about the college search we're talking a lot about going to college well how do you figure out what the best college is for you what's the right fit for you there's over four thousand schools we're going to talk about that and then i'm going to talk about the specifics of kind of the blocking and tackling of the application process itself you've got to have recommendations who you've got to send your s a t s scores we're going to write a recommendation for you what you actually have to do to have a complete application for college will go over that we're also going to touch briefly on financial aid and scholarships something that's important and we're going to show you some resources that you can access for that about why standardized tests and that's basically the way that colleges equal the playing field and see how students compare in comparison to different schools so obviously if a student goes to one high school it's a different situation the midwest but it's become very very popular on the east coast as well and almost all colleges accept either a c t or se t and consider them both equally and then another kind of group of schools that's becoming larger and larger are the schools that are test optional so there are many many schools that don't require standardized tests and they're basically are recognizing that a standardized test isn't necessarily a great indicator of what a student is capable  so great website to look at is fair test out work and that has a list of schools that are test optional and there's hundreds and they also are wonderful schools and they do and don't penalize you for not submitting your scor so the s a t test is a reasoning test is three hours and forty five minutes it costs about fifty dollars to register and there are currently three parts there's writing critical reading and math and they each are worth eight hundred points and that is broke down a little bit more but if you want more detail about what's in the section college board dot org is a great web site to go to and it'll show you examples of different of different  questions just kind of a heads up it won't affect the class of twenty sixteen but these are going to be changing they're going to be more closely aligned to the e c t s but don't worry about that because you just made  and you can take up to three on a given day some students three is fine other students that would be a lot to proud of juggle and switch gears that many times and a lot of schools some schools require them some schools don't so that's where the research portion of figuring out the list of schools that you want to apply to is really critical and it's critical to start now because if you think about how many different things you need to accomplish by the time you apply and maybe that's in november and maybe that's in january but there's a lot you have to you have to plan out so just start thinking about what i say to subject test might be a good fit for you so when you think about your schedule this year are there are there classes that and feel like you have a really good knowledge of and that you feel that you would be a good fit to take the test and they're offered many times throughout the year but typically we recommend that and take the subject test if you're going to take it in may or june because that kind of maximizes how much content you've gotten from the class that you're taking it in if you're still unsure whether to take it i would suggest talking to your teacher about  for with the subject test and their subject you also should definitely do outside practice so either buying a book taking a book out of the library or going on line and getting a practice test because not all of our classes aren't aligned to the subject tests so that there might be some topics on the subject test that's not covered in your class and just as a side note you can't take the subject test and the reasoning tests in one day so that's the importance of mapping out when you might take these tests kind of piece that is required by the testing site they see it is another option so the major difference is it's more closely aligned to the high school curriculum it's a little bit shorter at this point than the s s two hours and fifty five minutes and just kind of to remember that when they say those those durations they're not taking into account for directions and breaks so it's going to take the little bit longer than wha and this is just a chart to kind of break them down the differences so the s a t currently is out of twenty four hundred eighty two years out of thirty six the writing is optional on that whereas for the s a s a t the essay is required just important to note that some schools if you're going to do that in substitution of the s c t they require that you do the writing so that they can see your writing skills as well there's no science on the shot there's more emphasis on vocabulary for the essay to be a little bit more contextual so they'll give you a reading and you kind of have to take the information from that reading to figure out the vocab words the s again figuring out what what test is the right test it's really about what the student what type of student so sometimes people say that you see t is more for the plug or so the student who works really hard in their classes and hasn't really got under stand in awe of the content being covered the s a t theoretically is supposed to be a little bit more reasoning based so maybe even someone who is a good puzzle solver  another way is if you've taken the p s a t's if you've taken the a c t s a t combo test that was offered this past november that's a great way to figure out which is the right test you're always welcome to take some practice tests on your own and just compare how you do on each and just as a little side note i think one of the more under utilized resources that the college board offers as my college quick start when you get your p s scores and you open it up at the very bottom and has an access code when you go to the website and you put in that access code eight uses the results that you've submitted as well as what you did well on what you maybe didn't do so well on and that helps you crea customized plan so when you're thinking about the cost of athletes here a c t perhaps this is one thing that's offered for free and more and more both companies are offering more resources online to kind of even the playing field but really it's just a matter of kind of sitting with your student and if you're a student thinking about what type of student you are and how you feel more comfortable in a test setting here the test but really the best way to figure out when to take the test and making sure that it's offered and where it's offered is by going to the company's web sites common question we get as if i get extended time in school does that mean i automatically get extended time on the a c t or the s a t s the answer is no so it's two different companies which means two different applications for accommodations and if you are interested in applying for an extended time or a special test set in for either of the tasks it's best to talk to your guidance counsellor or your liaison to figure out how best to apply so for s t t is you you do a permission form and then the school submits on your behalf and then a c t is somewhat similar to fill out a form we submit on your behalf the major difference between the two is that easy to use you have to register for the test and have a copy of the ticket with your application and by the deadline that you register whereas that sh t you need to apply prior to registering the nice thing about both of us as once you apply if you are approved i proof for the rest of your high school career it's really just what's the right fit for you and you can take both and see which one you to be better on and so on the one that you do better on subject tests some students will take a sophomore year but we're not to do new year so let's concentrate on that you want to look at your schedule look at the classes that you're taking in and figure out if a subject test is right for you typically if a school requires that a as a part of their application process they look at two to three subject tests and then we november so the toefl is another important exam for some students so it's often are quire meant for non native english speakers and so it basically measures your ability to understand  use english at the university level so it's a really great kind of addition to your essay teaser here which can show kind of your math reasoning and then the toefl is a good supplement to that and it's really something you want to look on the college website and i you'll hear us saying this over and over but it's always best to check the college's website for their admissions requirements because that's the only way you'll get one hundred percent accurate information so you'll want to check the colleges website to see if they require the toefl and for which students because they sometimes specify the number of years that you've lived in the country and so you just want to look into that it's really important for all these tests to  register early so toefl especially it fills up very quickly it's also not offered at belmont high school so you just want to plan out when you'll take that and same with s a t n a c t when students wait until the last day or maybe the last week to so the transcript is another piece of that puzzles me of testing me of transcript your transcript is your kind of your record that you bring to college so it covers nine through eleventh grade is what we end up sending and  the g p a that we send this unweighted which means that it doesn't matter what class you're in all of your grades are are equal they all are weighed the same so not to worry though so pieces academic rigor is another and so i think it's important just to kind of know who you are what you do what is reasonable for you and doing the best they can in the class as they are and there's more send your corner wanting quarter to grade senior year as part of your application and we'll set an updated g p a so it absolutely matters how you do senior year and we're also going to give you opportunities to look through your transcript and make sure it's accurate and in fact if you see your transcript earlier and you notice there's a spring sport sophomore year that i never did that's something that we want to make sure we clean up because once we send it to schools it gets a little bit harder to do that so just make sure you kind of look over your record and make sure it looks it looks correct this is just a picture of the of an example of a transcript as well as of quarter one grades so you can see each box is a different grade your senior year you'll notice that you wouldn't have grades so it'll just say  classes so it's important to think about what you want to take soon here because that's kind of what colleges will be expecting you to be challenging yourself with that that y another piece of the puzzle and our recommendations so recommendations we recommend that you have to from academic teachers and preferably it's your junior year but i think more important and when you were taught by the teacher is how well you know they know you as a as a student but also as a person so if you feel like you really connected with the teacher software here and you feel like that might be a more valuable perspective then maybe i've seen a junior teacher that's ok so it's really about making sure that the people you ask are teachers who have seen the type of student and sometimes that means it's not necessarily in the class that you did your absolute you know highest grade but maybe the class that you really challenge yourself and really engaged in some higher level thinking we ask that you were ask your teachers brain of this brain so that's basically they give teachers a heads up and give them an opportunity to see how many they're writing some teachers do lotteries in which case they'll have their own system and then they also might have paperwork they want they want you to do so that they can kind of have more information while they're writing your recommendation we also write a recommendation for all of our students so that key is will ask that you fill out a student questionnaire and we also have a parent back seat and with those two documents we used to kind of help supplement the perspective that we already have and a lot of us would love to have that by the end of this year so june of yours of your junior year so we can get a head start over the summer so just keep keep an eye on th and then the other thing we send along with our your recommendation is are your transcripts we said the school profile these so that's that's basically our document that incident colleges that explain how many classes we have how many we have scores things like that so it paints a picture of belmont high school and then outside recommendations a lot of students might maybe want to coach or maybe a boss that's wonderful you just want to make sure that you check again the colleges admissions website to see do they accept that because you don't want to send anything to a college that they don't want to because they'll just toss it so it's important just to make sure that  you see if that's something they're looking for but a lot of schools really do want to see that that outside perspective because maybe that's where the student really shines and so it's important that colleges get to see that and that process happens outside the school and we'll get into the details of actually how you invite outside recommenders but the teacher recommenders and the guidance counselor recommendations happen in school and the thing to remember is that it's the student's responsibility to talk to their teachers about a if they asking if they can write a recommendation and then eventually senior year be letting your teachers know where you're applying with that we're going to move on to admissions criteria ok so just to that's working again i'm c c ross i am the counsellor for the beginning part of the alphabet and so now we're going to transition to talk a little bit about when you start getting into the college search what are the things you need to start thinking about what are the actions to take as you move forward with the whole process so we've discussed some of these already so the basic factors and college admissions the components of things you want to be getting prepared are what we've already discussed the his full transcript getting that kind of set to be painting a picture of who you are academically you also want your s a t your e c t scores if that's a component that you're looking at and then seeing your grades are very important and that's kind of one thing to pay attention to is that the transcript that you will be submitting has your grades the final grades for nin then we will be submitting to the schools you apply to the term grades starting term one term too so it makes it a little bit more emphasis on each individual term grade for senior year so other components in your application and things you'll want to start looking at doing will be your application mr patrick house he's going to talk a little bit more about the actual physical process of doing that after i'm done speaking and then the essay is also another component the college the common app which is we'll talk about leader to every year really says and you can even google it you can just google common app essay prompts for two thousand and sixteen and you recommendation is also another factor in terms of what the college admissions offices will be reviewing the teacher recommendations are another part and then again all the activities and all the great things that you do so those are really important to and there are places in the application where you can really kind of let the schools know who you are and sort of what your personality shine through in your interests and things like that ok so moving forward as we kind of take a look at it planning ahead at this point the reason we hold this and january of junior year is that so you can start gathering information and figuring out sort of what's going to work best for you in terms of application deadlines and things like that so we just kind of want to go over a little bit about the different application deadlines so the first one to discuss would be early action early action and it depends on the schools sometimes it depends on the g i joe graphic region of the country we tend to find that southern schools and schools in california have earlier deadlines the kids there tend to start their school year in august and things like that so they sort of get a push on that so and heller said before too it's really disappointing to a lot of times just check the websites of the schools talk a little bit about not beyond the bed that's another resource that you have that will help keep you organized and sort of plan out things as you move forward so early action is an opportunity if you're feeling prepared and ready at the end of your junior year to apply early to some schools instead of waiting until january so common early application deadline to be october november first is a huge one nov fifteenth is another really big one as well so why would you apply early or you know who would be in the position to if you're confident with your grades from nine through eleven that's a good opportunity to start doing so when you apply to some schools early they can give you some feedback by december so then you can kind of sit down a little bit later and say ok so i'm happy with what decisions i have made in the feedback that i've gotten in december or event students will decide at that point you know two months is gone by and you know life is changed and they want to be something totally different so they start looking at different schools so it can just give you a couple of time opportunities in terms of looking at schools to apply  simple rule of thumb with the early action sometimes to help show interest to a school sometimes if you are just a slight bit below you know the criteria that the looking for sometimes and give you a little bit of an advantage because you're really showing that you have interest  you do want to be a strong applicant though when you're doing an early patient there's also early decision so a lot of times people are curious to know what is the difference between an early decision application and an early action you can usually apply to many schools early action you can only apply to one school early decision with early decision what you're saying to that school is that is your top choice and you know my take on it and what i  know if it's a school that you are in love with and that's a school that you want to go to that's when you apply early decision because it's a binding contract so if you're accepted to that school you're committed to go and when you get the feedback on that it's in december so at that point you haven't done any of your financial paperwork or anything like that so you kind of just really need to be confident secure that that's a school that you are prepared to go to when you get that choice you can apply to other schools early action when you do an early decision you just need to rescind those early application applications if you do decide to go to the early decision school that you've applied to if you're accepted so moving along and then some schools will have early action single choice and again this is why we say definitely get into the nitty gritty of the schools that you're applying to check their websites because we can't keep constant as much as we try to with the nuances of every school they change things from year to year in terms of what they're looking at so some schools will do an early action single choice where you can apply to that school early action a lot of the private schools will will do that and they then don't want you applying to other private schools but you can apply to public schools so just really make sure that you take a look at what they're looking at and you adhere to their guidelines so then there's also rolling applications and so usually with the schools and you rolling you can get your application ready whenever it's ready and then submit it sometimes they'll have a hard deadline maybe like by march they want to get all the applications and it's sort of a good rule of thumb now and you know kind of the nice thing with rolling is it does give you a little bit of lax time to get things ready you know with the whole game of college admissions now and the volume of applications the schools get they start reading the applications as they get them and they usually will process them and make decisions and send those decisions out so it does work to your advantage to get applications in earlier for a rolling decision rather than wait until they've filled up all of their slots there's also regular decision which happens in january depending on the school so january first is a big deadline january fifteenth some schools will do a february first so it just gives you another opportunity seniors who might want to take some time improving their grades that's a good time to do a good option to do a regular decision maybe freshman year wasn't their strongest and sophomore year means more improvements in junior year you know still a little bit more but you just want to maybe keep showing the schools that you know this first term of senior year i really nailed it so that could be a good time to do a regular decision as well and then there's open enrollment and that applies a lot to to your schools so a good rule of thumb with that one also is you know just the sheer volume of people applying and trying to get spots at places just if that's something that you're looking at doing definitely sign up and register for classes sooner than later so that you're able to get a spot so then after you have sent in all of your applications you'll start getting feedback and so we just want to go over some of the terminology of the different decisions that are made and kind of like what they mean so accepted obviously that's great congratulations that school wants you so you can sit back and think about it if you apply early action and you were deferred what that means is they are going to take your application put it aside and when they get to the regular pool they will reconsider your application so what you want to do if you get it deferred from a school that's really a high interest is continue to show that school interest it never hurts to write a simple thank you letter to the admissions representative who may have read your application call the school find out where that person is also send any sort of accolades of yourself that have occurred since the the other terminology to be looking at here too is wait listed so that happens a little bit more frequently in the regular pools so when you're weightless and from a school what it means is you get basically a waiting list and as all the students in americas ar figuring out what schools they want to go to when they start communicating this with schools the schools are filling up their slots and some times there are slots and don't get filled so wait lists are interesting because sometimes it can be thousands of kids  wait less and sometimes it's you know maybe a couple hundred kids so again that's another reason you really want to try to communicate with the schools you're plying to and just get a sense of things and call the school and say you know how many students do you have on the way less right now  you know sometimes we find that a lot of kids get put on a wait less then you just need to know that information of what the chances might be in terms of kind of sorting out your decisions later on and so then you'll get to the point after you and we'll get into how you find these schools in just a moment but you will start hearing back in either december for the early days usually by april you'll have all the information we'll talk a little bit in a little while about the financial aid piece too so you'll be submitting all that information to colleges and then you'll be sitting there with all of your acceptance is the financial packages things like that so usually that's around april of senior year that all of that information is available to you and you can sit down is how do you find that school so there's a lot of resources available in terms of doing that there is definitely always like the princeton review's the barents books like all of those different  resources and publications that you can start going through and we definitely encourage that doing google searches just saying i'm interested in this and seeing what comes up what we have though is a resource that we provide for students is a  software program that we subscribe to it's called not be on it's it's one of my favorite things in the universe and what it dies is instead of like the dark ages when i went to college my parents bought me a book this thick and just gave it to me and said you and what not be answered also does which is really helpful and useful as it uses data based on previous belmont students so you can get a good sense when you start looking at colleges in terms of a case of the g p a that the school looking for is x  so also another that they would not be on says it's a way that we can communicate as counselors with the students so we can get into your account once you start adding schools your account we can go in and we can take a look at that and it's just it's a good two way communication for us to kind of be kind of in the know what you're what you're looking at a little bit too so we'll go in a little bit in terms of how you get into your cow and different things that you can do once you are in there the student accounts your students do have an obvious accounts if for some reason you're new to the district this year you might not encourage a student to come down to guidance and see mrs french or a secretary and she can certainly get you set up with an account freshman year the students would have signed up back when mrs keppel was around and she usually have the students sign up using whatever their personal e mail was at that time and then the password typically the kids would enter whatever their password was at that moment in time so that obviously might not be the same thing so you might want to talk to your son or daughter and try to find out you know what that is to help them get and we're looking at getting parent accounts but right now we don't so we're you know whatever communication and teeth pulling you have to do at home to get information from your student to get that information shared would be helpful but in terms of getting in the website we do have an on the power point and you can simply google nobby on stock and there's a pretty simple way to get in there as well so you'll just go in and find type in belmont zip code and then you find the school and then you can get in that way but this is the prime scream in terms of your e mail and zipping your username and then your password so it's pretty simple to get into and then once you do get in there are it's a very user friendly software which i think is great and everybody uses a differently but there are three components to it in terms of like the main features there's a section that's about me there's a career section and then there's a college section so we'll just kind of go do a little bit of an overview definitely encourage you to sit with your student or get the password have them sort of start getting in there and playing around with things so the first tab that we want to overview a little bit for you is the about me tab this one is really great in terms of doing some self organizations themselves reflection and getting some you know insight on yourself there is a personality  it's it is hard to see and i apologize on that as there is something called a personality type which basically is a meyers break personality assessment it's kind of fun to go through gives the kids their personality type but then what you can do from there is you can also start getting lead into information ok so maybe i'm interested in something with science but i have no clue what that might be so you can go in and they can start generating information for you in terms of ok so i'm interested in science and people with my personality type have you know often are drawn to these careers so it's not a hard fast of you have to be this when you grow up but it can start generating ideas for those students who at this point aren't quite sure of what they maybe are thinking about doing with their future another really good function in this about me to have that we really highly recommend students start using as a resume tab and you know kids tend to find lots of different activities and then they sit down and they can't remember exactly what they've done so few reasons why the resume tab is useful obviously as adults we know that resumes are something that you need and will be using for your careers but in terms of high school students if you're going to be looking at summer internships or jobs or things like that it's it's good for building that it will also help immensely when you get to the college application process and you're sitting there and you have to start remembering and recalling all these things that you did so if you have time you know get into that resume tap and start building a resume it's really useful the next app is careers and again that's another way of going into just kind of finding out different information so if you have thoughts in your head of maybe i wan into public health or something like that you can start getting into some more details about different careers sort of job descriptions things like that salaries you know you know projected you know number of jobs in those fields and things like that so that's also a good function and not the answer as well in terms of looking for colleges which is probably the main function of what our students use  really good array of different things within that you can do into who sort of identify schools that might be good matches and fits for you so the first the first function that i want to review if you go back up on here and you can look it's the in the second step down it's that super match which is a newer function that has which i think is amazing i think it's great it's basically taking that big book that my parents got me and helping me figure out what schools might be good matches for me so when you get in there what it will do is it starts with lying down criteria so it takes the big list of all the schools and then as you say are putting in criteria it will start reducing and giving you a list of customized that meets those criteria there is a little tab up at the top where it comes up with like the amount the number of schools that are being shown i always recommend expanding that list to at least one hundred she start getting into more detail finite searches you're going to probably you know sometimes we end up with one school when there's really more so definitely increase that and we're happy to sit down with your son and go through these as well too so you know individual appointments and we will be getting into positive decision making classes with soon is to go over with the information that we're giving tonight and also kind of getting into a little bit more in terms of how to use an audience with the students so the super match again like i said is really helpful nodding off in general is really helpful for certain things that will help students star identifying important criteria to them in terms of like school science to you graphic location you know just lot of different factors that they might not be thinking of yet because it's right there in front of them and ask them you know to put in these in this information so get some thinking about those criteria not be answers also really good at helping students kind of see how they compare and will show you that  is so what you can start doing when you are an obvious is you can start adding colleges to a list of schools that you're thinking about and then what you can do from there is you can start kind of getting a comparative idea of and i get my apologies hard to see on the screen but so this is a list of schools that we've generated for a mock student and what it does is it shows you the list of schools that the students interested and the delivery type is important to know also in terms of is a school on the common application does the school have a different application of their own or do they do it for the old fashioned snail mail applications which some schools actually still do that so that's good information is saying organize it gives you deadlines and things like that so that's really one good use of nabi assets just be organizational piece and taking a look at the schools that you're interested in and kind of lining everything up this is another function in there it's under the college match button so once you do start and putting schools into what you're looking for at the left are names of schools that the students identified as schools that they're interested in and then at the right it's saying so if you're interested in applying to amherst college which is the top one on the left then the schools on the right are schools that students who often apply to amherst also also often apply to those schools as well so it's a good way of just generating more information and more ideas about schools the scatter grams are you know in terms of utility are great so what they do is they pinpoint on a graph for you the horizontal line represents so what school are we in here right now we are at providence college so the horizontal line represents the average g p a of belmont students over the past like five or six years who have been accepted at that particular school and the vertical line represents the average s a t s score and you can there's a drop down where you can change it to a c t as well the green squares that you see up there represent students who have been accepted to that school who have been belmont graduates the x s are students who have be  really usable and user friendly this is french does have to put all of this information for the junior it should be updated at this point but if you're taking a look at that you think that your g p a might be incorrect or your scores are incorrect either contact your guidance counselor or if you just happen to know that they're not just you know you can eyeball where the circle would be but you know kind of what we see from the perspective of guidance and probably from parents also is what's really useful about this is it's a good way for students to start really discovering on their own  schools that they are kind of in line with or you know maybe not so much in line with so it's really a good way to to start assessing how you would compare academically especially with having the data from belmont students so it's a quick overview an audience and again we will be getting into the positive decision making process with your juniors to go over a little more in depth we also encourage you know kind of after we get through january into february to make individual points with us are definitely welcome to do that you know so we can kind of sit down collectively one on one and go over the information a little bit more so to some quick review no it's not me on it's like i said before to everyone uses a differently have fun with it explore it see what see what you know functions and features work best for you it's really good at saying organized helping you do resumes and things like that and then again too in terms of locating schools that's where the individual quite minutes really do become personal intimate and important because we really do like to sit down with their students and take a look at the schools that they're identifying we usually sit down i always just kind of have a sheet of paper  notes about the student and then the back you know kind of do a safety list at target school list and then to reach school lists and we just want to make sure that your students are looking at schools as sort of fall across the range and not all reach schools and not all safety schools and not all realistic so we just kind of want to make sure that you've got a broad scope of different things that you're looking at so other factors and the whole college search in terms of you know what can be considered the fun part we definitely want to  students to do you know some visits and things like that at the schools and getting to know the schools that they are starting to identify as being you know something of interest and so one thing that we offer at belmont is we have representative come in from different schools so that's another part where you're not be out to count can help you out and when you start entering the schools that you might be interested in we'll send you an e mail alert when mrs french starts making appointments with these different schools and  say oh so you're interested in providence college there's going to be a rep and guidance and you know october fifth at ten o'clock in the morning so you want to make sure that you pay attention to that and not be on to see what schools are coming in because it's a really good opportunity for you to meet that representative usually like ninety percent of the time the people who come into our office and talk with students are the people who are reading the applications so it can give you a great advantage in terms of if they're looking at your application and you're looking at a student from application and paper you look really similar if you took the time to go down and speak with that representative and get to know them ask them questions and they remember you  know it's one of those things that can give you a little boost and it can give you a chance to say well maybe that's not right for me based on the information but i got from that representative but definitely take advantage of your parents to have to call you out for the duration of that and the rules are in the handbook somewhere about how many you can miss for that but take advantage of that i think it's a great idea we also do an annual college fair which you know at the point when you're a senior i think is a good opportunity there again is sort  of the she using but it kind of is a little bit of the schmoozing so if you go around that day in the colleges that you're interested in are there again just talk to the wraps because sometimes it can give you that advantage in terms of just getting more information getting kind of some name recognition those things help because there's you know thousands of kids who are applying to each school so you want to do what you can to show your interest and your enthusiasm and then visits to schools when you have the opportunity probably the best way to get a feel if the school is someplace that you want to be we do recommend that you get campuses when students are in session you know we do allow days again and the rules are all in the handbook i can never remember exactly how many it is that you're allowed to do but you can do that you know if you can take a family trip and visit some schools definitely do that you know the weekends are good too i would recommend not going to a college campus before noon because you probably won't see any college kids they won't be  so you really want to get a feel if that college in the setting and everything like that feels good for you so make appointments to get tours when you're there try to see as much as you can sometimes you can sit in on classes sometimes i'll show you the dorms and you know eat at a dining hall just really try to get the full experience like talk to talk to kids at the school that are there see what kinds of publications the school has because a lot of times are if they actually still have physical newspapers that's like a good way to get a good vibe of what's going on in the school last thing in terms of you know kind of hashing through the schools that you're identifying are a good fit for you would be interview is not every school does interviews a lot of the smaller schools will offer that but you want to find out if it's a component in a piece that's available to you some schools will do a long interview so say you're looking at schools or maybe on the west coast and there's you know just not an opportunity to get out there you know you can see through the admissions office if there's a possibility to do an alum interview you know be afraid of it as a student you know might be kind of bizarrely awkward to sit at starbucks and have coffee with some adult you don't know but that's what they want to do and they are kind of putting their time out there to do that so if that's available to you i would highly recommend doing that as well search is have fun with it because it's a very fun process thanks chris ross ok so the application process just to kind of wrap up here you actually have to apply to the college that you want to go to so how do you do that there's a few different ways most of it's done online at this point something called the common app to work out of a common application has over the years here we've tried they've tried to simplify the process of applying to college so there's over five hundred schools that use the comma now can you hear that term a lot that allows you to fill out all your general information fill out how interests and also write one main essay for your college application experience then you'll be asked to do supplemental questions smaller questions depending on the schools that you actually choose to apply to now some of the schools you apply to will not be on the common application in which case you'll have to cut and paste in and just kind of work through those applications one at a time that's common app dot org now again to help you with this process this is a first pass at all this information at the beginning of your senior year speaking to junior students now at the beginning of your senior year we're going to invite you down from your senior english classes and we're going to review everything and i'm talking about with you now in terms of actually how you're going to apply to college so no that is also what we're going to have to do is you need to sign a further statement  basically what that allows you basically what you're doing air is you're you're waving your right to read your recommendations now you don't have to sign that but we recommend you sign that because the colleges tell us that if you sign that agreement then they put more weight of course into the recommendations that they receive because they know that you're not going to see them now let me just say something about that just to ease any  anxiety ours our teachers are about writing very strong recommendations the teachers that you ask we're going to know you well and they're going to have a sense that if you ask them to write they're going to write positive recommendations i can tell you from guid counsel standpoint when i write recommendations and our colleagues as well we're looking to pull out your strengths put together your strains i describe it as i'm looking for one to two or three points that aren't going to show up in any other part of your ok ok so responsibility so what are you responsible for what are we responsible for i think about it in four mainstreams the first thing you need to review you need to teach your recommendations you're going to ask for those this spring your teachers are then going to upload their recommendations to nabi onse what you're going to do is you're going to give them a sheet that lists the schools that you're applying to and the due dates of when your application is due and then the teachers that you ask will upload their recommendations to nabi onse the next dream is your standardized test scores very important you're going to take your standardized tests and you look we're going to send those scores directly to the colleges there's something called score choice you need to know about that you're going to second time you take it those are the scores you're going to send to the school so you're going to control that teacher recommendation standardized test scores then there's your transcript and our recommendations we're going to take care that there's something called a transcript release form you're going out for us for any guidance you're going to list all the schools that you're going to apply to and the due date for your application and that will allow us to release your transcript and our recommendation and then that fourth piece is you need to apply to the school you want to make sure that you get your applications in on time whether it's early whether it's november first november fifteenth january first whenever you're applying in terms of missing information it's your responsibility as the student and who's applying to the students applying to the school just to make sure that the colleges have all your information now things have changed a lot as we've gotten all of this  line because when we load up your transcripts we load up the recommendations it's all electronic so when you load it all up to not be honest we can see you can see when it was sent what's received we can see when it was delivered when it was pulled off and not beyond's so this is helped a lot and what often happens is it takes a bit you might have a january first deadline at a school and many of the schools have portals now or you can look and they'll tell you you're missing the as you're missing this we have this we're missing this what you need to do is just come see us with that and often times we'll we'll let you know we'll say we your information on such a such a date need to get back into the college and let them know that it's right there on often times when the student calls back and lets the school know yeah they have it it's not a problem  for whatever reason if we need to fax information we're happy to do that or send it in any other way so we just need to track it after we send it out you just want to make sure that they've received everything a couple of weeks after after your du what we want to do is we want to meet with you individual it is to communicate and meet with your counsellor slide is important like i said we get a chance to meet with you every year we select courses we've met with the freshman year meeting with you sophomore year but at this point we really want to get to know you we really want to kind of press into this final and very important stage and so the best way to do that is to make an appointment with us parents we want to encourage you to come to that junior college planning meeting we called her junior postsecondary high school meeting your welcome to join your student  give us an opportunity to figure out what you're thinking about what you're excited about for after high school just a couple more slides financial aid some things very important the main thing with financial aid a couple things fafsa e d dot gov is a very important site if you want to apply for any type of financial aid from the government that's the website that you actually have to apply for financial aid that you can do that any time after january first so as juniors next january first january first two thousand and sixteen you can go to that site and we recommend you do that in january and fill out that information that's for student loans that's for grants you want to get familiar with that there's something called c s s profile if you're applying to prep school private schools you want to look at that college board dot com if you want information ahead of time you have specific questions with regards to financial aid we really don't get into the specific details of financial aid in the guidance department but this  recommendation is actually me for a dot org and a dot org that's the massachusetts so lucian for college financing they've got a lot of details there and then we're going to have we offer do offer a financial aid seminar next following next december we'll offer a financial aid seminar which we recommend attending so that's financial aid scholarships and scholarship information here scholarship information you have to do a lot of searching for specific scholarships there's also something called merit scholarships if you apply to school and you are very strong academically how to school you may be able to earn merit scholarships and that's scholarships and b h s scholarships that we recommend everyone applying for they range in the hundreds of dollars but certainly every every dollar counts so we recommend everyone applying for those scholarships as well there's some free online search services there fast web and finally dot org and college board dot com of course is an excellent resource very quickly any athletes in the group if you want to play division one or division two sports there are some minimum requirements both g p a as well as standardized tests course and minimum requirements that you have to meet if you want to be involved in college athletics so the n c double a clearinghouse process is here you have to let us know that you want to send your transcript to the clearing house and that's something you should talk to your counselor about if you want to play division one or division two sports in college just to review some of the resources that we've talked about navi ons is a major resource it's of it's fantastic college board as well i would say if we didn't have the we didn't have enough software that we have the college board is an excellent resource as well so you kind of want to run some parallel searches you have not be on see have college board there's also a college planning guide that i want to make you all aware of at the belmont high school website go to our guides department website there's a college planning guide it's very detailed and if you just prefer to read through it chapter by chapter very clear you don't have to read the whole guide but if you just searching for something  excellent resource there on our boats and just back and no we haven't spent a lot of time on a career or military opportunities our guidance office bulletin board is frequently updated with information pertaining to ga years and employment and and also military and then we also have a very interesting list which each guidance counselor has in their office we can give you a summary of  number of students that have applied to certain school from last year's class i guess it would be for we have them year to year so we might know that twelve students applied to  sometimes a little less sometimes more we've given you a lot of information i want to give you an opportunity now to ask him questions and questions that don't get answered if you're not comfortable asking reach out to us you can email us you can call us anytime we're here for you guys to help you through this process yes well we're not going to hold this this event again and we apologize for the timing we know that it wasn't the best timing so i apologize for that we are going to be meeting with the juniors to go over all this information so they're going to get it but we're not going to run another event like this i'm sorry yeah do we have a sense for when it's going to be shown or how that's going to work out work and they get that working they get the download ok don't want media dot org to get to your students who are studying tonight fantastic and thanks for doing the taping and thanks for the question yes past and it works pretty well yes yes going to need some kind of additional preparation you have to look at the subject test test by test but many of the honors level classes are are closer to a straight preparation for the subject that's what i would answer that would you and the other thing to add i think like anything it's just important look at the practice test talk to the teacher and see what they think because they've seen over the years how their students have done on the s subject test so i don't think there's like a clear cut answer in terms of c p honors and a p it just it just depends on the course tell yeah  yes so question about just wanting to hear about the college essay so the college essay very important an opportunity to really show  show yourself in a different way one of the main things there is there's five or six different options within the common app for essays so one of the things to focus on in the  is you want to share about yourself but you also want to share something that also shows that you're prepared for college so for example sometimes college reps will tell us that they get fantastic ashleigh's about someone's grandparent or a family member and you learn a lot about the family member and it's well written and that type of thing but it doesn't actually speak to the student and and the students experience and how the student experience has prepared them for college ok so take whatever prompt they're giving their end and share something personal right well but also be aware of trying to be clear about holding it in two to how you can help you be successful in college that's what i would say about that would you have anything about ses i would just add that it's good to start writing this summer so juniors after your junior year during the summer it's great to have been a draft of that come fall and then you can meet with your english teacher or maybe another another faculty member and kind of get that  some english classes do have opportunities to write a college essay it just might not correspond with your exact application timeline so it's good to write at least a draft or two over the summer after your junior year yes yes yes so question about what do we include what classes are included in the g p a yeah and it's all of them so it's up to the college whether or not they recalculate which sometimes they do for on or to account for honors a p classes sometimes they take out elective classes but our g p a is all of your classes yeah they probably use whatever data as the has the best reflection on them yeah so that's i mean along with score choice in terms of their score choice but there's also stupors korean so super scoring is when  the college is considering your highest score from each of your sections to create the highest possible as a tourist they do that because it's helpful for them too so it's bubs their average so you don't have to worry about the colleges want you to look as as good as you can because it helps them in turn so  it just yeah just depends on how they're calculating it but we wouldn't necessarily know you know school to school since you might not be answers helpful because it's that's just to be  t students and so that's why we current students use not beyond maybe a little bit more than the national data set because you're can you're being compared apples to apples in some ways  guide that do we have that lists the students from last year that the numbers that applied how many students applied and what their g p a necessities scores were and whether they were accepted or denied application or spring opportunities for students to meet with her in workshop form and then we've also talked about panels so it's definitely she is if if you're students interested in a gap year we have her contact information and we've made connections via e mail and she s ets up a time to talk with them she's in the process of creating a creating an organization that helps students with gap year says a really great resource  interviews this is a question about the interview so we're happy to do mock interviews and i think that's kind of it's fun for i think it's fun because i get to know the student a little bit better and see how they answer different questions but this year you know there's opportunities you know i met with a couple students several times just to see how their answers you know improve so we're happy to do that there's also on the college board website that's it has a lot of the same resources as an obvious ones but it also has an interview tips and interview practice questions so you can do some prep on your own our job is to give an overview of the process and really guys you through the the process everything that you've seen here tonight and and we can try to help with recommending some schools but but somebody who really specializes in the college process is going to really get to know your your student specifically and they're going to really bore down into the process in a way that we don't do  guidance counselors here and they may be able to really recommend some certain schools now the process is come a long way with nobby ons because electronically now you have access to a lot of data that can really help you make a decision as well but my sense is that there is some expertise out there that could be helpful i think also if it's similar to that as a prep courses i think if it's something that is available to you and accessible it's a great resource have to make a decision i think personally that it makes sense to take if again if you have the resources and it can work with your testing timeline i think it makes sense to take both tests because i think we've seen that some students really do much better in the a c t a versus the s c t so if you have the opportunity to and again if it works for timing if you were to take both test ones that would really give you a sense of which you could do better because there's a skill that tells based on your scores and my above on the year on the city and then i might just take that one a second time but definitely to take  whatever test you plan on sending it's good to take it twice just because students are more comfortable you know they tend to do better well you can adjust the scatter grams but when you go into a super match and you're identifying schools there's a criteria line now which is really nice where you can put in your g p a and put in your essay if you scores and then they can give you a generalization  you know kind of fitting into the schools within that within that range yeah yeah yeah and the other question  n but again you can always obtain your g p a that we have and take a look at it from there that's a good point and if anybody else is a transfer student in terms of your transcript one thing to know is that the g p a that we will be releasing is just reflective of your grades from belmont so if you came in sophomore year and you have sophomore year here and junior year that'll be the two years that your g p a is calculated for we would put the grades  classes that you took for ninth grade at your previous school and a list so that'll show up and then we'll just have a key indicating that you pass those we will also then send the transcript that you brought with you from that school with a separate kind of where you get a good reflection of that you know then again you can check the school's website see what kind of overall g p a they're looking for the g p s sort of a finicky thing in terms of you know what it means at belmont versus other high schools so you know i kind term it as a gateway first school looking at your application so you want to be within the range and then the strength of your course line up will help the school make a decision so if you've taken classes and you have a three  that's going to mean something different then if you have a three g p a and you included honors and a p courses you know so that the schools will take a look at that but you want to be within the range of what the schools are looking for to be a good apple keep you know a good apple and know also  strength of schedule will help you out more in the admissions decision making process and i'm going to give the quick spiel that i give to your students it's really cheesy but to reframe this to make it a little bit less stressful so it's really more about finding the school that will help your student become healthy and happy adult and there's thousands that can do that so i think just keeping that in mind makes it a little bit less stressful and as mr brown likes to say it's finding the right school not the bright school so i think just help your student kind of reframe the search as where's this what's a school that's going to be a really great thing and help them become a productive citizen and that's really that's really what it's about  and thank you all for attending and if you could put those post survey the primos if you take a couple minutes to do this survey that be fantastic and you can drop those off in the back and again this will be on belmont media dot org and we definitely encourage you to make individual appointments with your student and with us have a great night thanks