and ms april ragland to the principals here at peterson of high school these two ladies have kindly agreed to come onto our show to speak about students on their journey from high school to college and only a few do we really do appreciate you coming and taking time  is whether or not their child is prepared and has done everything that they need to do in high school to make sure that their college transcript is going to look good and that they have done everything they need to do to make sure that they will get into the college of their choice and that they will be successful there and if you want to do that i didn't think that but also parents going through this for the first time it can feel overwhelming that your first child applying to college the number of choices options steps the variations but from one school to the next with their application process there's a lot of information to take and should the students start applying to colleges junior should they wait till senior year to start thinking about college or does it all high school high school is they should start thinking about which college in particular that they want to start applying to probably their junior year they should start thinking about college in one credo and what they want to do after they leave high school that's really when everything starts to matter to grade and kind of building that resume throughout their high school years but applying to colleges they should she should be doing their senior year along with building their resume what types of things you call or look for whenever there is a building there resume for college sure one thing that's really important with your resume is not necessarily how many things you do but how well and how deeply you do certain things things that show your passionate your passion about the subject or about a potential career things that really show your talents it's really important not to just volunteer on a broad scope but to show that you can be a leader you can make a contribution to your school community to the greater community but you really care about something should students be working on things that they want to do in college say if they want to major in engineering should they be doing engineering programs or something to be prepared for college they can start working on that it is difficult because a lot of students really have no idea  o we try to not have students start panicking in one to grade having to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives there is a lot of time to try and figure that out i think the important thing is that students  start exploring different options and trying different things and trying to get exposure to things that they may be interested in if they know there's a path that they want to pursue and they know that they're going to apply to a specific type of school like engineering those opportunities will help them and they should pursue those what do you recommend for students who don't know what they want to do they have no idea what they want pursuing life talk to people if there's a class that interests you that you feel like you're you have a strength there that you really connect with the teacher talk to them what kind of careers could relate to this course you might be surprised at the number of different career possibilities there are beyond that there are a lot of opportunities that you can find on the enrichment tab that knobby arts there are different summer programs you can participate in we have a lot of support in the peters community so if there's something you want to explore talk with your counselor and they'll connect you to a resource i think it's important that students keep an open mind and just pursue as many options as they can there are careers that probably haven't been created yet and that our students will be doing there are so many different options and our students tend to think that they need to fit into a certain category that they're already aware of but there are so many things beyond what we know even in our community and so just getting information is the most important thing that they can do it students of the year off to discover what they want to do next you recommend that an off year before they start their four year college however long they would like to go for i think that's very difficult it's very hard to walk away from school and then come back to it not that students haven't done that successfully but i think that's really tough to do in most cases when you start college you have a lot of prerequisites requisite courses that you have to ta so a lot of students their first year of college are still trying to figure out which path that they want to do so if the students onshore they can find a college that they like that fits kind of their style and and start there and then find their interest i would recommend going down that path i agree but i also think it's important to remember it's a very individual process trained so don't feel that you need to follow what everyone else is doing be very honest with yourself have conversations with your family with your counselors with your teachers come and speak with us if you want another point of view but make the decision that's best for us now if a student went out and did that and they say they need help they when they need help or financial financial aid whatever what could they come back to you and how you guys could help them afterward they need in their future absolutely our guidance counselors can speak to that they talk to alumni very frequently after they've picked a college and they want to go say they're in pittsburgh and they want to go to florida just because of florida do you recommend transferring i feel like it's harder for students to transfer after they've been two years at one school and they want to move to another one that depends upon the program some programs are intended to be in one location for two years and then continues elsewhere i would caution someone to make a decision solely based on climate suddenly decide i hate winter i want to go to florida the climate isn't isn't the best reason really go to the school familiar right familiarise yourself but there's no reason why you can't make a change halfway through and i think it's important for students to know that they do have that choice so if you make a decision and you realize once you're in it this isn't the right choice for me that there's you can always change your trajectory is something i personally did in my path i switched what college i went to it was the best decision i did for myself and i know a lot of students and up changing that their path that's our right to do it's just important we know ourselves and know that it's individual for everybody so i think what mrs ragland is saying is very important that it is an individualized decision and students just need to really think carefully about what is right for themselves do you think it's difficult to transfer for a different subjects that they're learning in school that if they want to change their whole major is that difficult it sometimes is it just depends usually what it will cost them is time so it may be that well now i have to take some extra classes that i hadn't taken before so it might be i'm going to pick up a summer class or two here or there just to to make up a little bit more time so i can graduate on time but in the long run in the grand scheme of life that might be the right decision to me do you think summer classes is a good idea for students who have i know penn state has a nice summer program that you can take before college if you didn't have the good like the best i think he scores whatever i know they give you classes in the summer you can get the penn state mean it's a good option it also allows you a time to get on campus become familiar with campus make a group of friends prior to that to the full start in the fall so there are a number of opportunities that can bri e be presented in the summer if you think of about the transition between middle school and high school it's kind of similar to that there are a lot of nerves and anxiety the big difference is you're not really going to know anybody you may know a small group of  students for peters that might be going or one or two people that might be going but again if you're involved in something they're already you might have a little bit of a connection it might bring your anxiety album a little bit so along with that what are students biggest concerns whenever they're going to college for the first time being successful i think students number one concern is am i going to be ok am i going to be able to handle the workload of college in my gun in my going to be successful in the classes in my well prepared that's probably the thing i hear the most and you're starting over but there's also just the the general nature of being afraid to change and experience change it's school but also have other options don't you know don't flecked just one school and have your heart set on that sometimes life takes us in various directions and if you weren't the right match it wasn't meant to be and sometimes that's for the best so you have to look at all of the different factors it can be heartbreaking when you don't get a hold that you really really had your heart set on but that might mean that your path is just going in a different way and our counselors have been great and working with students who have found themselves in that situation and they speak to a lot of students about when they're applying making sure you have multiple different schools that you would be happy with  that would fit you as well as you would fit them so there are a lot of different factors to consider because you just don't know from year to year what a college is looking for when they're looking for applicants that are applying yes and everything's different for each student i know some people are good at small schools big scores everyone's different so great you never know which will be right for you until you try that's what do you recommend kids go into colleges to visit i know we have cause meetings here at the school and those are very helpful as well but i think it would be better for them to view the campus so they can feel it out and see what it's really like for them absolutely absolutely really stopping on the campus especially during times that classes are in operation you can get a feel for what it's like and decide does this match mean it's very difficult to get to get an idea of what the school feels like and what the experience would be like from a brochure or from a television ad or of a web page stepping on the campus visiting some classes check and see if you can spend the night in a dormitory get the experience let it try it on see what it feels like and you will leave one campus saying this is the right man you know me and speaking with professors at colleges also is very helpful for colleges nowadays they do ask for a live for usually all things are different this time of their strange to be testing great g p a great academic but what if they lack horsemanship or like school activities and there are some that everyone's different with their strains so what i'm asking is since everyone is different is it ok to shoot something harder to challenge themselves to take the s a t s and do their best or to focus on their sport and get this fourth from scholarship i always take the challenge with which it will open more doors for you don't limit yourself take the challenge you also can't guarantee if you if you focus solely on sports you can't guarantee that's going to be possible for you speaking with a teacher earlier today he shared that he had a baseball scholarship to a university was very focused on baseball in the getting into a car accident damaged his hip lost that scholarship if he hadn't explored other avenues it would have limited his his on potential affairs and the one thing we do hear from college is they want to see in a student's transcript and in their resume that students have challenged themselves so it's not just about students achieving success they want to see that students have pushed themselves so it's not always about straight a's and high scores individual decision so for me i have a daughter who's a junior and she is going through a process right now having to make some decisions about where she is going to attend and what she's going to do and it's very nerve wracking for her so i have to play the parent role had to step back and let her make some of those decisions so it is allowing your child to make those decisions and kind of taking that that other role of just being a support to them all right well i know time's running my grandfather served in world war two spending time with him were the best memories of my life i became a physician in v a because of my grandfather so i can help others like him i can't imagine working with better doctors or more dedicated staff i'm fulfilling my life's mission with the help of my team and thanks to these veterans i'm proud to be a doctor in v a i'm proud to honor my grandfather every day search v a careers to find out more here something we bet you didn't know nearly half of all cancers can be prevented that's right half nearly fifty percent mostly by making small everyday changes in your diet and controlling your weight walking more eating less and eating foods that help you and your family to seriously reduce the risk of cancer and of course by not smoking visit the cancer prevention together we can website and get a free thirty day planner filled with tips recipes stats and more about protecting your family go to prevent  of information it is a web based programs that students can access it here at school or at home and eventually that is when they are when they are seniors that's how we're going to send their transcripts and letters of recommendation so that's why one of the reasons why we wanted to get  there are i think the only difference between something like that and something like navi oncet is you know we start to upload p s a t scores we upload a said to scores you know we have g p s uploaded in there so the information that you're receiving  least from what you know i've seen the students you get out of it what you put into it so the more you use it the more acquainted you become with it the better off you're going to be the more information you're going to get out of it and that is one stop where you have that career piece and you is from a peters township organization like the p t a has a scholarship there's national scholarship searches so you create an account and the scholarship will typically be emailed to you based on the criteria that you put in that's pretty simple there's a number of different ways to look for those types of scholarships the other part is the college themselves may have their own separate financial aid and or scholarship process so it is  twofold the other thing to add is if you're looking for scholarships we actually have them separated out by requirements so you can look through and see if there are you know need based or if they require an essay or if they require service hours so you can kind of go through that list and weave through everything that i guess you know how much time that you essentially have so it's not so much about having an easy scholarship so much as you know do i have time to write this five page essay that this whole ship is requiring more you know do i have the g p a to apply for this one so it's really just kind of going through picking the ones that apply to you and you might already have an essay written that you wrote for your college applications that maybe you can modify for that scholarship and there is the club for that for school but the writing you can take your essays in this an we read also for i tell my students are read for content yes not for matter you can always bring your essay and your counselor we can read through it you know give you some pointers but are that english stuff you probably want to talk  potentially in june testate for both a city and a city and all the way up into the fall of your senior year if you need it so if you start in the spring that's going to leave you ample time to get as many tests done as you want yes that's where they get all the knowledge and everything and how many time is too many times for it takes i think the research says no more than three times typically is i mean in theory you can take it as many many times as you're able to but really  three times isn't is probably the best we actually typically tell students twice and then if you need to take it the third time in your senior year you can have time to do that time they starts supersport it right and they bring them all together they are third time not necessarily so super scoring as something a college will do where you know and that will be actually on the application where they a will say to you say for the s a t we'll take your highest you know math score we'll take your highest critical reading score we'll put them together for your best overall score that may be from two separate test scores were just coming out this week so there is free practice with the college board and the khan academy so it tells you areas you need to improve upon benchmarks and just certain things that you need to improve umbrella of this whole college process and at the testing process but it is so individualized so for the a c t there is that science section on science component so for students that may be like american history say you might be reading a passage about american history the two scores come down to critical reading and math that's what you're being scored on essentially a c t instead of just having those two is going to have three essentially so you don't have that science section are going to have the math section you're going to have the critical reading so for instance if your critical reading is you know not your highest score on your s a t that's fifty percent of your overall a city whereas would only be thirty three percent of your e c t so that's why we say it's kind of an individual decision of our junior families for conducting our post secondary individual planning meetings we like to call pets so for anybody who hasn't had once a really good opportunity so we start talking about that process now i know for a lot of our juniors it's oh i think about that under your senior year but when you look at that testing schedule it's something every single month so we usually suggest an organizational strategy that works best for them so is it a folder is it a binder is it a calendar we have a checklist in our college planning guide is a checklist so whatever kind of works again an individual whatever kind of works for the family do students continue to apply to college do they help you guys help them with all their applications  does that whole process work a little bit about yeah a little bit about you know there's some students that you know they they get through all their applications they come in they just ask spot questions others want to actually log onto their application and we go through line by line so