For the entire week of Nov. 14-18, students had the opportunity to experience College Week. With workshops, evening events, a resource fair, and even onsite admissions from ten different schools, students were able to get a small taste of college.
School counselor Chris Lennon explained that College Week is meant to help students with the college application process, helping everyone from the student who is putting the finishing touches on their application to the student who doesn’t even know if college is the right path for them.
“It’s just the whole benefit of college and how to go about it,” Lennon said. “It helps the whole, wide spectrum of students.”
Lennon said that College Week was truly open for anyone who even had thoughts of college, no matter what age or grade.
The guidance department offered workshops and night events throughout College Week. One of the workshops was on how to use Naviance, a college application platform that is being integrated into the county to replace the Common App.
Lennon explained that Naviance is new to everyone, but it has a lot to offer — not only college applications for seniors, but also for researching colleges for grades nine through eleven.
In addition to the workshops and night events, ten colleges and universities participated in onsite admissions. Longwood University and Radford University were among the most popular of the schools that came.
Seniors Sami Major and Alejandra Lopez-Godoy were two of the students that participated in the onsite admissions. Major was admitted to Ferrum College, Averett University, and Longwood University, and Lopez-Godoy was admitted to Radford University.
“It was pretty easy, I just had to complete their online application which I printed out when I was done, I had to print out my SAT scores, and they already had my transcript there,” Lopez-Godoy said.
Major applied to four schools in total and Lopez-Godoy applied to six schools.
While Major did not participate in any of the other activities offered during College Week, Lopez-Godoy met with admissions officers from both Elon University and Eastern Mennonite University.
“It was very beneficial, especially because it’s a long drive to meet with somebody at the actual college,” Lopez-Godoy said. “It’s in school and you can meet with them and just ask them any questions that you have about their college and it’s a great way to get more informed.”
Both said that College Week did present some challenges, however.
“The hardest part of College Week is not being nervous and preparing for the questions,” Major said. “You want to be yourself, but you also want to maintain a mature and composed attitude. You don’t want to seem like you’re a kid about to go to school just to party and go crazy.”
Lopez-Godoy agreed that one of the hardest parts was not being nervous for all of the interviews, and she also said that it was hard “getting over the mentality that I wasn’t good enough for that college or that they wouldn’t like me.”
Overall, Major and Lopez-Godoy each said that they really enjoyed College Week and found it very helpful.
While Lopez-Godoy has to wait until April to find out if she was accepted to her top two schools, George Mason University and James Madison University,, Major was accepted to his top choice, Longwood University, during College Week.
“Just knowing that you have somewhere to go just lifts the rest of the stress [of college] off of you. Just knowing that if I don’t get into anywhere else, I know I have this one place that I can go to,” Major said.
“It gives you a wide range of schools to pick from, and it also gives you an opportunity to look at some schools that aren’t as big or haven’t really been heard of.”
Other schools that participated in the onsite admissions included Mary Baldwin College, Liberty University, Bluefield College, and more. However, some of these schools had very poor graduation rates, including Averett University with a rate of 32.8%, Norfolk State University with a rate of 33.4%, and Ferrum College with a graduation rate of only 28.3%.
“For schools like that, it mostly just making sure the students know what the school is about when they are applying,” Lennon said. “That’s true for any college, but especially schools that have the lower graduation rates.”
Lennon said that, while they do not try to steer students away from the schools with low graduation rates, they do try to inform them about it so that the students can weigh that into their application and decision-making process.
Despite this, there were still many ways that College Week could help students that were not interested in any of these schools.
“If they had a good idea [of which school they want to go to] there were some tools, workshops or night events in place to help them get to thwwat school from paying for it to doing the applications,” Lennon said. He said that the financial aid night would help with the monetary piece and that the workshop on scholarships was able to “help students figure out a way to pay for that school.”
Lennon also said that there were workshops on how to fill out college applications and write essays, because many students are unclear about how to do that properly.
“College Week is to help bring about the knowledge that if a student wants to go to college, it’s a definite option,” Lennon said. “It can be a very intimidating process for students, so the week is kind of meant to help with making all of the tools and resources available to wwwstudents and showing how we, as a school and as counselors, can help make college a reality for students..”
According to Lennon, College Week is in its third year and this year was by far the most successful, including having the most students sign up for the workshops and the most onsite admissions yet.
“The goal is to help any student from the one finishing up their application to the one thinking ‘I don’t know if college is right for me,’” Lennon said. “It’s definitely been the best we’ve ever had throughout the three years, and we’re hoping that every year we can increase the number of students that we help.”