What do we got? All right. Test test test. How are we sounding up there, Jim? Good. Lighting. Okay, Jim. >> Okay. Thank you. All right, folks. if you want to get um settled in a little bit. It's so good to
see um all of you and I know we have some people tuning in from home. Can you hear me? Okay. Is our mic working? All right, we're good. Good up there. Okay. Um if you missed our handouts on the way in, um right where Mr. Williams is standing, if you want to wave, maybe
he'll walk the aisle here and drop them off if you missed one. Um u just just a place if you want to jot anything down, but it's all going to be up here on our screen. And our of course our program is live streaming. We've got people watching from home. Um and so if you miss anything, you come in late, you
have to leave early. Um you can certainly watch the recording. We put everything on the 100 central YouTube station so you can watch these at your leisure, watch it again, encourage your kids to watch it, whatever works for you. So um so we'll go ahead and get underway. This is our um annual early
college and career planning night. This is a program that we've run um for the vast majority of my years here. Um I'm Jen Nectarline. I'm the college and career counselor here at Central. Um and this is my 18th year. So we've probably been running this specific program for
about 14 or 15 years. Um as a result and a need for our families to better understand this process in the earlier years of high school. So, if you've come out tonight, chances are that 9inth and 10th grade college and career planning is of some importance to you. And we're
glad to hear that and see that because we think it is, too. Um, there is nothing wrong with a student thinking about this process in senior year or even junior year. Um, we do a lot of programming around that. But the earlier that you think about this process, the more knowledge you have, the more time you have, the better off you'll be. And
I'll I'll get into that in a little bit more detail. Um, so I want to do a few introductions. Um, as I said earlier, I'm our college and career counselor. I work with all four grade levels, but to help streamline that and, um, bring a little bit of sanity to that, um, I primarily spend my time with our
seniors, which I'm in the thick of right now. And then about midway through the school year. So around, um, late January, early February, I'll start meeting individually with juniors. Um, and I don't have a specific case load or part of the alphabet. So all of my meetings that I have with students are
are by request. Um, so I'll see any student who wants to be seen um, starting in January of their junior year. But this time of year, that first semester, I give all of my time to the seniors. Um, and when your child is a senior, you'll understand why. It's a really busy first semester. Um, at this
point, our senior class of about 560 has processed over 3,300 applications. So, we have about 70% of the class filing applications to four-year colleges. um a lot of students going and looking at community colleges and certainly other pathways and we'll talk
about all of that tonight. So, it has been a really busy couple of months and then um next month we're going to get underway um and really kick it off with our juniors. But December is a time where we we think a lot about our our freshman and sophomores. What can we do for them as we approach the halfway
point of the year? So, um these guys here are are your front line. I'm going to introduce them and you're going to get a chance to hear from all of them. So, for our ninth graders, um actually let's see in the audience how many of you have a ninth grade student. Okay, great. So, our ninth grade counselors,
we've got Caitlyn Hamburgg, um Kim Sui, and Taylor. They're the three covering our freshman class, class of 29. Um and they just came off of the college process last year. So, we cycle here at Central. Um and our counselors focus all on one grade level. So, just last year,
they were working solely on um senior year. So, they've cycled back down to the class of 29, and they'll carry them all the way through. And then our sophomore team, um, Kevin Cubberly, Olivia Lombardi, and Adrienne Williams. Um, they're covering our class of 28, um, and helping our students as they
navigate their second year here at Central, and they're going to be doing some work with them in the coming weeks as well. Um, we have a counselor who works u with our multil- language learners, Mariana Cordova. She couldn't be here tonight, but she has a case load here of students and helping them um um on their journey here at Central. And
like I said, um I'm Jen Nectarline. So, our counselors move around. Um our sophomore team will pack up their offices next year and head from the 910 campus down to this this is the 1112 campus where their juniors will primarily be. Um I don't I don't move. I
stay put. I have a a really cool um space in the 800s just around the corner. Our college and career center which allows multiple students to be in there at once doing work and it's been a really great space for our seniors as we're working on deadlines and applications and now we're going to get into some groups working on
scholarships. So, it's a really cool space and like I said, once your students hit that midpoint of junior year, I'll kind of come into the mix with our counselors and be working closely with them. Um it doesn't mean I won't talk to a sophomore or a freshman. I certainly welcome them every single
day during unit lunch that that 35 to 40 minutes they get where we want them to eat and decompress and do their thing. They're always welcome to make their way down to the college and career center and chat with me. But um at this point just to work through our junior and senior classes and help them that are
closer to the process. I reserve my appointments um for for them individually. But a couple things that we have coming up this month that I want to get to before we get into the kind of meat of our program is um in about two weeks we're going to be meeting with the entire freshman class. So our freshman
team and I will be seeing them through their PE class. Uh we work with the 9th grade PE teachers and we hold group sessions with them in our auditorium. So those are going to be occurring on Tuesday, December 16th and Wednesday, December 17th. So the week before we
head on our holiday break. and we'll be seeing the entire freshman class through PE sections and we'll be spending the entire 80 minute block with them. We're going to be introducing them to some of the concepts and topics we're talking about tonight. So, a little mini early college and career planning lesson. And
then the second half of the block, we'll be introducing them to a program called SCORE SIR. You're going to see that on the screen a few times tonight and that is our main college and career planning software. So, if you're thinking tonight, how does my freshman get this information? And I know there's a few students scattered
and maybe some watching our live stream. Um they're getting it. They're going to be getting their dose of it in a few weeks. And then our sophomore team has established some dates in um in the month of December as well where they're going to piggyback off of the groups that the sophomores had last year where they got their early college and career
planning lesson, their introduction to score, and our sophomore team's going to piggyback on that and do a career exploration with them through history classes. Correct. So everything you're hearing tonight is going to be delivered to 9th and tth graders in some way um over the next few weeks. So before the
end of this calendar year, all of this early college and career planning information as it pertains to each grade level will be disseminated to them. All right, so those are our teams um that are going to be working with your students. So here's what we're going to talk about tonight. Again, handouts are up there um if you didn't grab one. And
those of you that are viewing from home, we have a live stream on the live stream on our 10 Central YouTube station. Um, I just want to let you know that at the bottom of every slide, my viewers at home and certainly here in the audience, you can use it as well. But at the bottom of every slide, you're going to see a shortened web link. It's going to
be an opportunity for you to submit a question. So, just type that into any browser on your phone, iPad, desktop, computer, and you'll be able to submit questions, and we'll take a look at those um near the end. We try to wrap up our kind of speaking parts by about 10 to 8 and then do about a 10-minute Q&A
to get everybody out of here um by by 8 8:00 or so. And we'll certainly take live audience questions as well. So, as things come up, plug them in or hold them till the end. Um so, a couple things we're going to go over tonight. We're going to talk about the why around this. We're going to talk about what's important in freshman and sophomore year, what we'd like our students to be
focusing on, what's embedded into our curriculum, and then we're going to break down some topics as they pertain to college and career planning. So, what we think is important for a nth and tth grade student and their family to kind of put their energy on in um these first couple years, everything from activities
to academics to thinking about majors. Um and all just very surface like there there is nothing to take home tonight and take to your kids and students that are listening. Nothing you have to do right now. If you've come out tonight to hear this, chances are you're just curious. You you want to know a little
bit about the process and what might be involved. Um, and I don't think I asked how many sophomore families in here. We saw our freshman sophomore. So, a pretty good split. Has anyone been through the process before with an older child? So, you've got a little lay of the land, but um I don't want anyone to feel like we
have to go out run out and do all these things. We've got to visit. We've got to take an SAT. We've got to build a list. These are all just ideas to get you going. And we've sort of tailored this information to what is appropriate at the ninth and tth grade years. So, that's a little bit about what we're going to go over. I do like to cover
what the next couple years will look like for you when it comes to college and career programming just so that you know what is ahead and what's um here in our curriculum. So, a little bit about the why. I mentioned this earlier. Um I do think there's good benefit to thinking about this process now. And
thinking can be as casual as you want it to be. It's whatever works for your family. It could be a casual conversation around the dinner table. It could be in a long car ride. Um, it could be more formal like we're going to go on our first college visit in spring break of freshman year. Um, I really encourage you to do what works for your
family. I don't ever want to see um anyone feel forced into this process. It doesn't need to be that way, but I do think that there's benefit to just starting to think about this a little bit earlier. And we'll talk about what that looks like and where to start. But the earlier you put some time into this,
the more time you have to investigate different types of schools, different types of pathways. You get a better understanding of the admission process. Um there's just a lot of good benefit to putting some thought into this earlier. Um we also noticed that when students hit junior year, the time crunch begins.
A lot of times they've they're now engaging in activities, putting more hours per week into specific activities. they filter down to what's really important to them rather than kind of trying out lots of different things. Junior year, we see a big shift. Um sometimes, you know, the driving begins,
the part-time jobs begin, the social life may blossom, and all of a sudden your calendar is filled and the time becomes scarce. Um that spring break of junior year, all of a sudden they're going on an exchange trip to another country or they're working or they're an athlete that can't miss practice. and
you wish I wish we would have maybe seen a few schools in ninth or tth grade or taken advantage of the opportunities when the schedule was a little bit lighter. So by thinking about this in ninth and tth grade, there's a little bit more time to research. We're not so crunched into junior year to say we've got to make a list, we've got to make visits, we've got to take the SAT and
all of a sudden it's all there and has to be done in one year. So spreading it out helps a little bit and and ultimately leads to a little bit less stress. Um, I've seen it in in the 18 classes I worked with here. The students who started building a list in SCORE or the previous program we used to use for
college and career planning when they started in freshman year, maybe took a visit or two in nth grade, maybe three or four visits in 10th grade, took the PSAT seriously. Those students who put that time and invested that time felt a lot more ease in senior year. felt like
the planning was worth it and it brought them to a senior year where they could actually relax a little bit and not panic and stress. Um, I will tell you we do quite a bit here in junior year to get them ready for senior year so that when they come back in September, it's not a crunch. It's not I have to start
my applications. We give them all the tools in junior year to start that process before senior year. So, I think we do a lot here to reduce it. Um, but it's all about what our students decide to to take advantage of. So, this is the biggest question I get is how do we
begin? Where should we start? And chances are if you're here tonight, you're curious about where to start. Um, I really think this is a family decision. I think it's starting with what is most comfortable for your student um and what's most comfortable for you. If pulling teeth and dragging them in the car to go see a college is
what you're thinking, then that's probably not the the best route to take. Um, you take them when they're ready. If they're not ready in 9th or 10th grade, that's perfectly fine. If junior year, you know, they want to go to college, but they're still not putting that effort in. That's where it's not a bad idea to loop us in and allow us to be
part of the conversation and try to figure out what the best approach would be to college planning. But you start where it's comfortable for you. It could be a dinner table conversation. It could be a conversation in the upcoming holiday weeks where family's getting together and all of a sudden there's a high schooler in the family when maybe
all the cousins are little and you know the aunts and the uncles and the grandparents. Well, what are you thinking about for your future? and then all of a sudden they start to sink into the couch and go, I wish I wasn't the high schooler anymore, you know, and it can get a little bit overwhelming, but even that is a level of planning. Even
those conversations are a level of planning. So, um, we're going to talk about some of the tools that we need to to get there. Um, don't let this list overwhelm you. You don't need everything on here, but we have found our families that have successfully planned early have have started with some of these
these items. First is is a little bit of organization and and some kind of timeline. And I'll break those down. Organization is also different for everybody. Um your student may start to receive emails from colleges and you wonder how'd they get on that list? Oh, maybe they took the PSAT. Maybe they
filled out a questionnaire somewhere along the way or came to the college fair and filled out a few inquiries with um with schools. Um they're going to start getting emails. They might start getting things in the postal mail. They may start to just hear the words college and career and post-secary and all these
things start coming at them and they think, "How am I going to organize myself?" Well, we have a system here called SCORE. A great place to keep a list of interesting colleges, to keep a list of interesting majors, to just kind of keep notes. Um, and also at home, you do what works for you. Maybe it's a
spreadsheet where we say, "Okay, you know, the spring break of your sophomore year, we've reserved to start seeing some schools." Or, you know, this one summer, we've got a couple weeks open. let's go check out some schools or let's look ahead to the academic calendar and see when is school closed but college campuses are open. Maybe we should
earmark those days. So just starting some type of organization that that works for your family. Um sitting down and developing a realistic timeline. Are you ready to start seeing schools? Okay. Well, let's see what's going on over this next break or these next couple of months and see where mom and dad can
take a day maybe from work and you can take advantage of visiting a college. We do offer excused days to visit in junior and senior year. Those are excused days, three per year, not in 9th and 10th grade, but there's also several days where we have off. There's in service
days where colleges are open, we're closed. Um, and there's a lot you can see within about an hour to an hour and a half of of our school. And with school letting out at 2:00, that's a that's a really manageable afternoon visit. So, um, just thinking about a timeline, thinking about what works for your
family, and just sitting down and kind of organizing where you want to be and when. Um, building some some good habits around the process. I mean, that's not just around the process, that's around high school. We're going to talk about habits when we meet with our freshmen in a couple weeks and just give them some reminders about good, positive
adjustment to high school. This is very different from middle school. everything from the workload to the campus to the the physical, emotional, mental, social, all of it has changed rapidly for them over the last three months and it will continue to do so. So, reminding them of good habits. This is a critical year for
our freshmen to build a good foundation. It's an important year for our sophomores to continue hopefully the the good trends they've been on and prepare themselves for their upper classman years. So, um good habits around this process are are going to help you quite a bit. If you're looking for one really
good solid tool to get started with, definitely score. I mentioned it and I'm going to take you on a demo through that. Just a great place to start with searches. You know, if you've got a ninth or a tth grader who's pretty invested in this already, thinking, "Yeah, college is for me. Want to be an engineer, would like to go about three
hours away from home, you are consider yourself ahead." That is a really good starting um home base, if you will. That's criteria. We've got a major, we've got a distance. Now, that can change. you know, there might be a night they're not so happy with you, mom and dad, and all of a sudden they're like, "Get me as far away from New Jersey as
possible." And now all of a sudden they're searching for schools on the West Coast, and then, you know, we might bring them back or they might realize they took a class in 11th grade and all of a sudden it's not engineering, it's going to be history. Um, and that can change. So, SCORE is a great place to continuously do searches, save searches,
build lists, allow your counselor to see the work that you're doing. Um, we also think that just simply exploring majors and careers and understanding that there's more than like a dozen things out there to do. Um, I I still have this conversation with seniors who all seem
to fall in a pocket of about 12 different majors. You know, we've got a lot of business, we've got a lot of STEM, we've got a lot of health professions, we've got psychology, but you look at a school like Ruckers, our state university, and you look at these lists of 150 majors, and all of a sudden they realize, I didn't even know I could
do that. And so when you're a ninth or tth grader realizing there's a major in public policy. Well, what even is that? What is that going to lead me to? So, um, you're going to hear a little bit more about majors and careers and see some places you can go to further investigate what is a major even? What
is a career? Are they the same thing? Well, not necessarily. What you study in college may not be exactly what you're doing for your paid profession. So just having those conversations, allowing your children to shadow you, your colleagues, your friends, the different fields, just exposing them to what the
opportunities are that they could study. Um, another really good tool to get going with this process is something that's probably underway for all of the freshmen, certainly for the sophomores, that's going to be their four-year plan. Um, you're going to hear from our grade level counselors to talk a little bit about the four-year plan, about scheduling. another really critical tool
in this process. After ninth and tth grade, the opportunities for electives here really open up. And I've said it before, I think our program of studies rivals a small college. I mean, we have endless course offerings here to the point where sometimes it can get a little bit overwhelming. What do I take?
I really want to use high school to explore and see different things. This is another just simple conversation to have around the table. Hey, there's there's classes in law. There's classes in STEM and design. And there's so much offered here, which is I think one of the the wonderful things about Central
among the many things, but we have so many different courses for them to explore while they're here before they zone in in in college or in a career. And certainly their major can change in college. We know that. But um working with that four-year plan to make sure they can fit in all those different
areas is important. And then last um just aiming to keep an open dialogue. I know it's challenging. I I talk to parents of seniors all the time on the phone because that's who I spend a lot of my time with and they say, "You won't believe, Jen. They came home and told me they want to go to California. Is she crazy? There's no way she's going to go
to I said, "Well, twothirds of her list is UC, so we better have a conversation about this, you know, or all of a sudden she wants to apply to schools in London. Where'd that come from? What'd you say to her?" I said, "Well, she came to me and she said she was looking at schools abroad." So, an open dialogue. If your student says, "Hey, thinking about
[clears throat] going to school internationally." Well, where'd that idea come from? Why would you? Why are you thinking that? Tell me a little bit more about that. And that's something we're seeing here. Or you know what? I I want to go in a driving distance. Um and I want to go to a small school. Well, why are you thinking a small school? You
know, just having back and forth, open dialogue, understanding where um their ideas are coming from. A lot of them are just they've heard someone talk about it here. The lunch table, the locker room, the classroom. Um, it gets really interesting when we meet with the freshmen in the auditorium in a few weeks and we let them kind of do score
for about five or 10 minutes and we sort of walk through the aisles and we hear what they're talking about and they're all adding schools really far away from New Jersey to their list. It's very consistent and we think, well, what is it about 9th grade and 14 that all of a sudden they just want to disperse out
and and all of a sudden then we then they come back. But um just be open to what they're saying, be open to what they're asking, loop in the counselor, um and and then get everybody on the same page. So um it's a lot when you look at this and go, "Well, where where do we start?" That's a lot. Do what
works for your family. Um if it's something like a visit this summer, you know, you're heading down 95 to the Carolinas or the Virginia beaches, see what the exits are along the way. I love helping with that. Um geograph people say, "Hey, Jen, we're making a trip to to North Carolina." and you know our
this is usually junior year. You know our child, you've met with them. Where would you say we should stop? We're going to take advantage of the time. Or I've got another child who's got a a tournament down at a school in Tennessee. Should we attack on some colleges? Yeah. I mean, if you're there and it works in your schedule and and your budget and and your time and all of
that, take advantage of being near those locations. Um and we'll talk a little bit more about programs we have that will help expose you to colleges. We've got a great college fair in the spring. A lot of things there. If if sitting around and talking about it isn't really for you guys or your family, that
doesn't work, then score. Let's score. Encourage them to use SCORE. The freshmen are going to have access to it in two weeks. Um, our sophomores already have access. And if you're like, I still have no idea what that acronym is that she's talking about. Looks like squire, but it's pronounced SCORE. Uh, reach out to your counselor and me and we'll make sure your student has an account. They
could have possibly missed their session last year and it it sort of fell off, but but about 98% of the class has it. Um, so encourage them to use that. Hey, do a search and I'd love to see what you came up with and then let that be your starting point. But there is nothing you have to do right now. There is nothing
that I'm going to show you the next two slides are going to be about kind of timeline, you know, points we cover in nth and tth grade. And I can assure you through the curriculum that we deliver here at Central, those things are already happening. So don't feel like there's anything you have to do, but these are pretty solid starting points
for 9th and 10th grade families. All right. So, um, the next few slides you're going to hear from from all of our grade level counselors. We're going to have Caitlyn um, who's got freshman take you through and then Kevin and Adrian are going to talk a little bit about sophomore year and then a few other points and then I'll, uh, I'll
circle back up here. All right. Thank you all for coming out. Again, if you're viewing from home, um, at the bottom of every slide, we've got a link you can pop into, um, any browser and submit a question, and we'll we'll aim to take as many of those as we can at the end. All right. So, Caitlyn Hamburgg,
>> thank you. How's everyone doing? We're okay. We're hanging in there. So, I'm Kaitlyn um Caitlyn Hamburgg. I'm a ninth grade counselor. I have the first part of the alphabet for the freshman. So, I have last names A through GI. So, if your
student falls in that little part of the alphabet, that's who I serve. And I'm going to kind of go through the ninth grade timeline. This isn't necessarily in order on the screen, but we do hit all these points at some point throughout the year with the ninth graders. Um, we just came off, as Jen
said before, an really exciting senior year. We sent lots of kids off to really fun schools and colleges. So, it's fun to now come to 9th grade year and see it from the start again and start building those lists and start figuring out what kids are interested in and really helping them to um figure out what
they're interested in. And it all starts freshman year, which is really exciting. So, first and foremost, of course, one of the most important things that we do freshman year is meet your students. Um, and that started, of course, first at freshman orientation where they met us
more in a group setting. We presented to them. So, that wasn't individual. Then we met them again when we did our class meeting with our vice principal, Miss Long. And then now between September and early winter, we're starting to meet with them individually. Um, and most of
us are finished meeting with our case load individually where we're getting to know them on a really personal and deep level. So, we're asking them questions about all types of things. So, we're asking them about their likes and interests. We're asking them about their classes. We're asking them about their
families and really trying to get an understanding of who they are as people. So, we want to kind of get you an idea of what things might also translate to the college application process, but might translate to their classes. Um, activities that we can kind of introduce
them to. Anything that we can help them get settled into in that freshman year is talked about in that individual meeting that we have with them. The next couple bullet points are also part of that individual meeting as well. So creating that four-year plan or starting
to talk about that four-year plan, getting involved, and brainstorming post high school ideas also all start to kind of naturally fall into those conversations that we have either in that first meeting or in our scheduling meetings, which we'll talk about a little bit more in slides later on. Um,
but we talk about this four-year plan, classes, clubs, activities, anything that we can help get the student feel more comfortable here at school, but also start to figure out what they want to do post high school. And we do ask that question to some of the students as well if they're open to that
conversation. What do you see yourself doing? What do your parents do? Do you see yourself doing something similar? anything so that we can get an idea for maybe something that might interest them so that we can start this early um college application process with them.
After that, we do the we talk about taking the PSAT um which all the nth graders have already taken and should have their scores. If your student does not have their score or doesn't know how to find it, they can ask their counselor. But when they registered to
take the PSAT, they got information how to find their score at the end. So, if they're not quite sure how to do that, make sure they reach out to their counselor. Um, and then again, we we talk about exploring careers and majors with them in our meetings that happen in
December. And we talk about discussing college finances as well. So, that's another big point that we want you guys to be open to and the students to be open to as well. We don't need to know personal details, of course, about your financial situation, but kind of understanding are we looking instate?
Are we thinking we can keep this nice and broad and look at private schools, big schools, small schools? Um should we start talking about dual enrollment opportunities as they get older? Should we start thinking about polytech? There's so many different avenues that we can explore um especially for
students who might have a niche unique um interest such as sports, right? NCAA offers certain athletic opportunities for students that start to come up freshman and sophomore year heavier in the junior year. we have students who are interested in music that might open doors as well. So, making sure that
students are paying attention to those financial circumstances and also opportunities that are available to them. And then lastly, utilizing score, right? That's the biggest thing that we really want our students to focus on after we meet in December is making sure that they are walking away from that
meeting and using score. not just using it in that meeting, but using it at home, going on to it when they can, and starting to make it a part of their routine as we move from freshman year to sophomore year, and then so forth, because we really do use it very
heavily, especially junior and senior year. So, now I'm going to pass it on to Adrian and Kevin. >> [laughter] >> Good evening. Um I'm Adrian Williams. I have um the a couple students with the
letter F [snorts] in their last with their last names beginning with the letter F and then mostly G through O. Um and this this is Mr. Cberly. He has the be beginning of the alphabet. >> I have the end of >> the end of the alphabet. I just know I have the middle of the alphabet. Um all
right. So, this year, 10th grade, we have 10th graders. Um, what does the timeline look like right now? What I'm I'm still finishing up meeting with all my sophomores. Um, I've met with most of them. I have a handful left that I still haven't I still haven't met with. And
what we're doing in that meeting is kind of similar to what um the freshman counselors are doing with their freshman student, but just more updated, right? So, I'm typically asking about, okay, hey, what did you guys do this summer? What did you enjoy? Did you try any new
activities? Um, are there any new things that you're interested in? And then I'll pull up a four-year plan and I'll look at it and I'll say, "Okay, is this what your is this the classes that you took last year? Are they updated?" We'll take a look at the transcript. You'll finally have some final grades on the transcript
because in freshman year, there's nothing on the transcript until the end of the year. Um, so we'll take a look at that and make sure that's updated, the grades are correct. Um, and then we'll kind of look at look forward into junior year and kind of see if there's an idea of like what kind of courses that you
can take because um, like like Miss Nectarline said, there's a lot of courses that open up junior year. Um, so we'll just kind of preliminary plan um, for what courses you're going to take. Um, one of the most important things that I always ask the students in this
meeting is what are the activities or clubs or or things that you're doing outside of of college or outside of outside of high school. Um, I asked that because we want to see students and I know I know um it's really important that students get really involved and
and and figure out what they're passionate about and figure out like what are their interests. So some students will do some students will do sports, some students will do clubs. Um and we'll just try to figure out okay well what is it that how are you spending your time outside of the
classroom? Um we'll also continue re researching post high school plans. So I'll ask so one of the meetings that I actually had today I was like last year you told me this is what you're interested in in um becoming the the student said that they wanted to be a vet and I'm like is that still the case?
and they were like, "Absolutely not. Like, I don't I don't want to do that anymore." Um, I realized that like it's not as glamorous as as I thought it would be. And I was like, "Yeah, so let's what are what are you thinking now?" And then they told me they're what they're um what they're interested in in
pursuing. So, I'm I'm trying to figure help you figure out, okay, what is it that you're pursuing? What careers are you pursuing? Um, we I also will ask, okay, what have you thought about college? Are you planning on going to a four-year college? Are you planning on
going to a two-year school? Do you maybe college isn't the option? So, we're again getting into those preliminary conversations about what's post-secary looking like. Um, and even so, in a couple weeks, we'll actually go into the
the classrooms and we will we're going to we're going to go into the classrooms and we're going to talk about um different different career development plans and and different I'm I'm tripping up on my words right now.
>> That's okay. Just different goals. I can I can jump in at this [laughter] point as well because u one of the main things that we do concentrate on sophomore year is post high school planning whatever that may be. Um that looks different for everybody. Um and it will change over
the course of four years. Uh one of the main things that we talk about and it gets it gets pretty deep as we're getting to know your kids a little better um is what their interests are. there are a lot of kids who aren't doing anything yet. Um, and that comes up in
our meetings with them. You know, we are looking to get them involved because if they become involved, there are there are are uh opportunities um to learn about different careers. At this point, they've been in high school for a year. um you know they've uh some
kids are working, some kids are are doing other activities outside and that does and that does lead to um that does lead to uh some ideas about what they what they might want to do. College isn't for
everyone. We know this. Um and a big part of sophomore year is is exposing them to potential careers. Um, one favor I'm going to ask of everyone at home and and here is please talk to your kids about what you do because in our in my
[clears throat] interviews with the kids, I have extensive notes and a lot of them I I always ask what their parents do. And for some reason, a lot of them have no idea what their parents do for a living. And that is a huge resource for figuring out what they
might like to do. Um, and I I just it blows my mind that, you know, like I they shrug their shoulders. I'm like, "What do you mean? You don't you don't know what your parents do?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Please go home and talk to your parents about their jobs. Please talk to your children about what you do." Um, you know, uh,
especially if it's I don't know, they work with computers. I mean, what does that mean? You know, um, it's very, very important. So, we're going to be doing a lot of of of career exploration over the next few months and into obviously into senior year. So, um please take
advantage of the score program and the career cruising program. I'm talking to my sophomore parents now. Your kids are going to come home with this information. Um and that would be a great place to start, especially if you're kind of scratching your head and not really sure where to start with
them. exploring careers because the the number one the the main answer to why do you want to go to college should be because I want to prepare for a career that requires a college degree. Um so that is uh that is what I focus on in in
my meetings. Let's look and see what you want to do. What are your interests? What matches your interests? How do we get there? So that's that's our plan for the for the for the sophomores anyway. All right. >> Okay. Hello everyone. Hopefully you're
still awake out there. Uh my name is Kimu and I am also one of the ninth grade counselors. I have the middle of the alphabet for the ninth graders. Um, and I am going to talk to you a little bit about the four-year planning. So, when we think about the early age
college planning process, um, there's not a lot of things at this point that's in our control that, you know, a lot of the details of the college process will begin when we are juniors and seniors and our students are moving through high school. The one thing that is in our control at this point is the four-year
planning. So, as um 9th graders, for any of of the nth grade parents and and students out there, we will start that four-year planning process this year. We'll start to map out what that looks like. And we'll continue to do that as you go through high school. Um but there's some important factors to think
about when we're we're thinking about that college planning and and what is important and what are factors that we should we should consider. So number one um colleges do are the one of the most competitive parts of the college application process remains the grades
that you receive in your core academic classes. Um so your English, your math, your social studies, your science, your world language and the rigor of curriculum and the strength of your curriculum. So, those are the two things that are in students control at this point as ninth graders is really
focusing on on your grades and in your core subjects and um what the strength of curriculum is. So, what we have to offer students and what you can take advantage of and we're going to talk about what that looks like. So, rigor is different for every student
and that is okay. So, what may be challenging for one student um may not be for another. We want to make sure that the goal is that we are challenging ourselves appropriately and that we're showing growth without creating unnecessary stress. So that's a
conversation that during the 4-year planning process that you can have with your your counselors and talk about what your level of interests are and what your strengths are and maybe where you want to add a little more rigor as you go through high school. The most important part is that you are showing
growth as you go. So maybe, you know, this year as 9th graders or 10th graders, you um, you know, took a CP level course or you a class is a little bit, you know, not as as challenging as you thought it was going to be. Maybe you're doing really well and you're like, I want to take on a little rigor
and you can move up in the in the next couple years. That's going to be the most important um thing when looking at the overall four-year planning. Aim to take four years of all subject areas. Colleges really appreciate the
consistency um and having a balance. So having subjects all four years of high school is going to help um establish that. So a lot of our graduation requirements end at year three. Um, so taking on a fourth year of a math or a science or social
studies or even a world language depending on your level of interest is going to open up some doors and maybe provide you with a little bit of of some growth in different areas and and make you a little bit more well balanced um across the board. Your transcript should support your
college major if you know it. So at this point if if you are out there and you know that you want to pursue something in engineering then um taking some advanced classes or classes that are going to support that engineering background maybe some advanced math and
and science classes or taking advantage of our elective a variety of electives that will support that level of interest. On the flip side, if you're interested in humanities or maybe you want to pursue something in the humanities field, taking on some um rigor or challenging classes or adding
some um electives that are going to support that level of interest. Again, these are conversations that you're going to have with your counselors during your course selection um meetings, which we'll talk about in a minute. And these are these are things that we can start to look at when we look at the overall four-year plan.
So, as I mentioned, it's it's just important to note that there's going to be movement throughout high school. You're going to be able to add classes and change up your your course selections and make sure that it's supporting all of your interests. Um, so that's going to be able to um [clears throat] you know, your teachers
are going to be a huge resource in that. They're going to be a part of your course selections in the academic subjects each year. They're going to be making recommendations for you and for your students. Um, so those will be important conversations to have. And I think it's really important to note that
this is a very fluid working plan. Um that things will change as you go through high school. Who you are as a freshman is not who you're going to be as a senior necessarily. So there's going to be a lot of flexibility and conversations and that's where you utilize the professionals that are here
to help you and and we're here to partner with you and your students to make sure that this is a successful 4-year plan. Um, so making sure that you utilize us is as is appropriately, you know, necessary. So, Miss Taylor's going to talk you through what we will be
doing with um the ninth graders this year for four-year planning. >> Hello there. I'm Ann Taylor. I have the end of the alphabet um freshman. And um I do want to just say that uh Caitlyn Kim and I have really enjoyed meeting
our freshmen and um they seem to have really uh transitioned really well. So kudos to you all. Um so I have a really hot topic scheduling. Um it's always exciting. Um and somehow we make it work but um scheduling we very much try to
make that process as least stressful as possible for you all and for our students. So know that um we got this and we are here to support you. So scheduling will begin um in probably late January, February. Um
what happens is the teachers will start making recommendations about your students and uh what class they should be taking in their their next year. And then you all um hopefully our our students go on to Genesis and put their
elective classes in. So um shortly after that we will start meeting with our students and go through those options, those choices with them and talk a little bit about why they chose certain electives, what their planning is. We do a four-year plan with them. We do that
every year. So that like Miss Sweet said is very fluid and and can change year to year and usually does. Um but we do that every year because we want them to continuously start thinking you know what what am I what are my interests? So we always tell our students please take
the time to go on to our program of studies on our website. It's it's a lot of information, I know, but um it's really worth it when they're making their schedule because uh there's so many electives and if they read the the course description, it really gives you
a lot of information about what that class is about. Talk to their friends, um you know, did you like that class, their siblings who were uh were here before. that is a lot of great information for them when they're making those choices because um it's very hard
later on to to change things up. So, we really want them to be invested in what their choices are. Look at the program of studies. Read the description. Um check out if they can take it as a sophomore or a junior. Um you know, make sure that they've if there's any prerequisite classes, any classes they
need to take before that class that they've met that. So it's going to it's you know it's it's a little bit of time that they should be putting in. Um and we are certainly you know in our meeting with them we go through all of that as well. So but we want them to be invested
as you know in in what they're choosing to take. Um teachers are a great resource and we are a great resource. Um if students uh want are interested in maybe changing a level for the following year um teachers are their first point
of contact. they should be talking to them about that. Um, some students, you know, they want to increase their rigor and that's amazing and wonderful. Um, but we want to make sure and our goal as their counselor is to make sure that they're comfortable and that they're challenging themselves but they're, you know, they're not overly stressed. So,
um, that's a big part of our meeting as well. So, uh, know that we are here for you. Uh, if you have any questions ever about that process, um, do not hesitate to get in touch with us. And now our Miss Olivia is here to give you some
important information as well. I'm Olivia Lombardi. I'm the new class of 2028 counselor. So I have the beginning of the alpha alphabet A through FR. Um so just some things on exploring majors and careers. Uh score was already mentioned and talked about a
bit. Freshmen will get that within the next few weeks. Again, that's kind of where they'll explore colleges, careers. There's a lot of there's a few assessments. So, then going into career exploration when we do it with the sophomores, we'll take some assessments.
That's a really big thing for majors and careers in general are these assessments, which are great. College Board has some, score has some, and we have other platforms as well. It's a great way to kind of explore what you want whether you know I know some of my
students I ask what they want to do and they know exactly what I want what they want to do where they want to go and that is great so that helps also just exploring majors what about that major do they want to do what maybe colleges look for for that major then there's
students who have no idea which is also perfectly fine right so that's where a lot of these career assessments come in handy and they're really Great. So, they kind of help you look too on various levels of education. I took a quick two-minute one today and of course some of the things that came up were
counselor and then my second most popular was crossing guard because I like to work with kids and be outside. So, there's different ranges, but it's great because it shows different options of what you can do. Maybe even things that you didn't realize were a career.
So, that's something even again like Mr. Coverly said, talk to parents. Parents, talk to your students about what they want to do because then that goes into shadowing. Maybe they don't know what to do or that's something that when I realized I want to be a school counselor, I talked to somebody realized I didn't want to do
that job and what I want to do is this. So asking around finding people maybe they're interested in shadowing, volunteering in areas. I know some students volunteer in hospitals. So if you're thinking health sciences and anything that's a great opportunity as
well, things similar fields. Some other popular majors, computer science, engineering, business, nursing, biocsychology, health. These some of them are more competitive. So again, try to see at the majors what colleges like to see in that major. There's some
classes that they like to see high schoolers take when going into that major so they have that background. And there's some that maybe maybe more flexible like psychology is one thing, but just looking into all of that. Yeah. So that's the big thing is there's a
various options and programs that you can use. >> All right. So lot of good information. I mean every everything that we're we're sharing with you all like when we when we put up you know things to do in nth grade, things to do in 10th grade, all of that is embedded into a a very
comprehensive curriculum that I'm I'm really proud of I that we have here. I mean we've got activities at every grade level. We have activities at every month. there's there's quite a bit going on and coming from our counseling department here. A lot of really good work that that we're all really proud of. So, if you're thinking back like
when I go back to these slides and you're going, "Did we do all this? Are we doing all that?" Yes. It's embedded in the work that we're that we're doing every day. The four-year plan um what what Liv just talked about with the exploring majors and careers, all of this is embedded in the work we're doing. We're mentioning it to you
tonight to to gain an understanding of this is all leading us to helping them discover, find, create their best path after after central. So, it's not like we we kick off senior year and go, let's start planning life after high school. It really is part of all the work that
we do here um every day. So, um I'm going to pick us back up on on activities here and get us through the rest of our slides. Again, if you're watching from home, we've got a great great group watching on YouTube. Thank you. Um, every at the bottom of every slide there is a link. You can type it into any browser, submit a question, and
I'll get to those at the end. Um, and of course in here, we'll take live questions and submissions there as well. We got a few already coming in. So, I want to talk a little bit about activities. This is the one where I could probably do a full 90minute evening program on because I get I get on my soap box about activities. I think
this is such a critical part of their high school experience. You know, not every single student is going to thrive in the classroom and they're still going to do really incredible things when they leave here. And that is because outside of the classroom is where they put a
tremendous amount of time, passion, energy, expertise. Now, it doesn't downplay how important their academics are. I mean, you saw when Kim was up here talking about it. It remains the most important factors in college admission is the courses, the grades, strength of curriculum. Um, these are
important too. There are going to be schools that look very holistically at applicants and take a a deep dive into their activities and the things that they bring to the table. The things we call we teach these terms to our juniors and seniors about what we call hard factors, soft factors. Hard factors in
admissions, the the concrete stuff, the black and white, the transcripts, the grades, the scores. This is the soft factors. This is the stuff that really makes them whole. The reality is not every student coming out of Central and getting into college has a 4.0 you know, or higher AP and honors classes and
straight A's. And our students do really, really well in the college process all over the GPA board at all levels of curriculum. And the reason is is these colleges that take a deeper dive into what they're doing outside the classroom. Maybe the academics have struggled because they're working 25
hours a week at a local fast food restaurant to help their family financially. Uh maybe they're not able to engage in a whole lot of tutorial to bring up their algebra grade because they got to get out of here, get the bus home to help a little brother off the bus because mom and dad or someone doesn't come home from work till 9:00 at
night and they've got to feed them and do their homework and take care of home responsibilities. And I could go on and on. See, these guys know when I present I get real crazy about activities. Um I really encourage freshman and sophomores to take advantage. I mean the the club list here, I talked about the program of
studies rivaling a small college. Our list of activities and clubs is tremendous. I walk through the halls here. Our bulletin boards are covered in beautiful Canva colorful flyers of all the different things students can do. So, if they're coming home and students, I'm going to put you on the spot. If
you're going home and saying there's nothing to do there, there's nothing going on, they might be lying to you. They they might be because there there is so much they can get involved in here. And if there is not something for them at that moment, they can find a
couple friends, find an adviser and create it. Um, every year new clubs created new opportunities for students. So, I think our resources here are endless. Um, I I have the luxury of getting to know high schools all across New Jersey just with the work I do. I have a lot of colleagues I work closely
with, other counterparts, college and career counselors, and of course through my travels um, other high schools. And I can tell you we we we are the best that and I'm a little biased, but I mean it there is so much opportunity here. So if they're saying there's just nothing,
there's no clubs. I don't I I don't I don't know. There's morning announcements, they mention things. I'm not really interested. There's a lot to do here. Um and if it's not here in under the umbrella of Central and it's something they're doing outside of school, that's perfectly fine as well. I think students forget like when we say,
"Well, what are you involved in?" like in these these initial freshman meetings and they say, "Oh, everything I it's like not here." That's okay, right? Of course, it's okay. When we start to talk about activities and how we present those to colleges, to employers, to trade school reps, to whoever we're
showing ourselves off to as we become seniors, we tell them everything you do as an activity that you give structured time to, with a few exceptions. Okay? There's a couple exceptions. There's a couple like typical teenager behaviors
like hanging out with friends, playing video games, long naps on the weekend. Like that's normal. We're not going to put that as activities on our college applications. But your hobby of crocheting or baking or learning how to take apart computers and put them back
together or weightlifting at the gym, something that you give consistent time to on a weekly basis is going to be presented as a structured activity. and they don't often think about it like that, but activities are really really important in in all of these processes.
Not just presenting yourself to college, but presenting yourself post-graduation. Um, it could be if you're heading out of here and going right into the workforce and you're meeting with someone at 18 years old to secure a full-time 40-hour week job. They're say, "What what do you do in your free time?" "Well, I I landscape. That's why I'm applying for a
job with your landscaping company." I mean, we want them to stay involved. We want them to find things they're excited about, not things they feel like they had to do. do they to check a box? I have to volunteer because that's what they say is going to help me get into college. Volunteering is actually not going to help you get into college. Engaging in activities you're passionate
about is what's going to help you. Um, so we we talk about this at all different levels. Ninth grade, it's a lot of exploration. You know, there was an activities fair. They can continue to come out block five, check out different clubs and activities, continue engaging in what's important to them outside of school. Sophomore year, we're still sort
of in that exploration phase. And when we hit junior year, probably not a bad idea to see them sort of filter down. They might think, oh, you know, I only went to that club twice last year. It was kind of not my gig, but I'm I'm going more for this. And that's where we start to see the filter. And that's where we really push quality over
quantity. You do not need a long list of 20 clubs. The college isn't going to believe you anyway. They're think, when do you sleep? When do you do all this stuff? Because when we present ourselves to colleges, we actually give things with numbers. Hours per week, weeks per year. How much time are you actually giving to Key Club? How much time are
you actually giving to your part-time job? And if we add it all up and we figure out you're not sleeping, something's not working. So, um, and we know you're in school, too. Um, so quality over quantity is what will matter. Finding two, three, four things that you're really excited about and
letting those be your things. You don't have to join every club and think, "This is going to look great because I'm super involved." They just colleges, they they see through the padding of a resume, if you will. Okay. Um, and don't worry about what everyone else is doing. You know, all my friends aren't going to that club. That's not their thing. But I thought it sounded really cool on the
announcements. Or that flyer caught my eye in the school hallway and I thought I should just go check it out. Go check it out. Go check it out if you're by yourself. Just walk in, see what it's all about, and and see if it's your thing. So worrying about worrying less about what your friends are doing and what everyone's talking about and doing
what's important to you. That authenticity will truly come through when they're going through the college application process. And like I said, everything counts. You know, there's students who do come here from 7:30 to 2:3. They get on the bus, they get home because they've got to go to um ice hockey or they've got to go to martial
arts or they've got to go to dance or they've got to go to scouts. There's things that have nothing to do with this high school, but they're really engaged in them. Um they're going to babysit and all of going to their part-time job. Yes, we have a lot of offerings here, but there's a lot that students are engaging in outside of school as well.
Um, and I don't want to I don't have this on here, but I I mentioned earlier about home responsibilities, family responsibilities. This has increased significantly and the presentation of this on college applications has become a lot more abundant just simply, you know, since 2020 when students were
doing a lot more at home. home. I know we we talk like post pandemic and it's been almost six years, but it it is um much more widely accepted. The family responsibilities, the home responsibilities, the things that don't always fit in a perfect box as a structured activity, but you're putting
10 to 12 hours a week into it. Colleges want to know, employers want to know. Um summer as well, you know, they get anywhere from 10 to 12 weeks off. Yes, we want them to be teenagers and enjoy those summers before life really hits them and into their 20s, but summer experiences are important. I've seen
multiple colleges ask on an application fall of senior year, what did you do over the summer? Well, if you didn't do anything, you don't really have a whole lot to share. Maybe you worked great. Maybe you went on a summer program. Maybe you traveled abroad to your family's um you know, native country. Whatever it is, it's it's got to be
something that you're willing to talk about. I do find in ninth and tth grade, you start to get these invitations, these fancy glossy envelopes. Usually every year, January, February, some of the counselors will come to me. Um, I'll get I'll get an email with a picture in
it and it's this glossy gold envelope and on the back there's like a fancy seal and you open it up and it's foil print. you have been invited to and it's usually including the words national leadership forum youth um con all these
fancy words and at the bottom at the cost of $4,995 you have been selected to participate in this program and you send it to one of us and go is this should we do this because on the flip side it shows all these colleges that kids got into that
did this fancy summer program in Washington DC we're going to tell you 99.9% of the time you absolutely do not need to do that. That's going to create no benefit to your child in the college process. Those are all marketing. Um I don't want to say they're scams. They're certainly not. We have had students
engage in those programs. But to spend thousands of dollars on a summer program thinking it's going to help with the college admission process. Trust us, it it is not. Um if you are thinking about a summer program, please run it by your students counselor or myself. but they tend to really start coming in in ninth
and tth grade because they're trying to catch you in those summers before your student heads off to whatever they're going to do after. So, we start to really see them in the underassman years. And if you get anything like that in the mail, by email, you think, is this worth it? Should we really invest $2,500 to send Joey out to this campus
for a week because they're telling us this is going to help him get in. Please run it by us and we're happy to give you really honest advice on on those. Um, and then find a place to log it all. I mean, I I work mo like I said, mostly with seniors and I say, "What did you do in nth and tth grade?" I forget. It
feels so long ago. Encourage them. There's going to be a place in score to do it. We show it to all the freshmen. So, when we meet with the freshmen in two weeks, we're going to show them how to build their resume and score. I'm sure our sophomore counselors will remind them of the feature to do that. If there is nowhere started for that and maybe score isn't it just a simple
Google sheet just putting activities in dates hours that is not something they're going to have to send off to a college but they're going to have to collectively put all of their activities together into their college applications. So how many hours they've acred at United Way or the food pantry
those data points are actually going to be really beneficial on their college apps. And when you're a senior, you forgot how many Wednesday nights you went to the food pantry for the last three years, but you've probably now accumulated over 75 hours. And that data point presents better than I volunteered
at the food pantry since 9th grade. So providing some of that data is helpful. And it it logging it now is is really going to benefit them. So I could talk a lot about this. Um, and we do we get into this heavily in sophomore year and definitely junior and senior year. Really focusing on all the things they
bring to the table outside of just their transcript and their academics. All right, let's flip gears a little bit and talk a little bit about searching for schools and visiting. So, we got to this a little bit is what we talk about. Where do we start? We start with score. We do a little bit of searching. I'm going to take you through that in a
moment, but there's a lot of resources out there to search for colleges. We would like everyone to sort of gear towards SCORE. You can get lost in the hundreds of websites out there for searching, but we love obviously love score college board. So, College Board you're familiar with because they run
the PSAT, the SAT, and AP. Those are the big programs we use with them, but they also have a pretty massive search engine within Big Future is kind of their college planning resource. Princeton Review is a solid site. Um, any books by Fisk are really good. There's a lot out
there. Um, those are just some of our favorites. Obviously going right to the official college websites, theus great place to do searching. If you're, like we said earlier, there's schools with 160 170 majors and you're thinking, well, what does that list even look like? I'd like to sit down and just show
my child what does a list of majors look like? Hit the Rucker site, the Penn State site, one of these larger universities, and just scroll through and you're going to see things. You'll probably see parents and go, I didn't even know you could study that for four years. Um, so just getting them on to websites, showing them all all of this
information is going to help. And before I show you score, I just want to touch on that fourth bullet because we do have families who say, "Well, we're going to start our search right here with this magazine. It's called US News and World Report and we're looking at the top 25 engineering programs. That's where our
search is. We're taking one of those." And I have to sit down with families and explain to them, you know, those rankings are um are not really a valid use in in the college process. I mean, that's that's ultimately going to be the 25 most selective engineering programs, not just in the country, but across the
globe. Um and and those top 25 schools, well, what makes them top? Is it is it is it data points? Is it a survey? How'd they even get on that list? Yeah, they're well-known schools. They're great names. They're Ivy League. They're the best of the best, but says who? So, we encourage you to kind of stay away
from the rankings and push more toward fit. And we won't get into that a ton in ninth and tth grade, but we definitely will in junior year. Junior year, we do a whole lesson with our juniors on what is fit because now they've kind of dabbled. They've heard some names. Maybe they've built a list and score, but
they're thinking, "Okay, I got to get serious about this. What what's going to work for me?" Because I'm hearing my friends talk about all these names, but what fits me socially, academically, financially. So, we get into that a lot more, but for now, I would encourage you to keep the rankings out of it and just
have casual conversations, do searches, have fun with it because we're we still have a couple years before we have to get real serious about list building. I encourage you to have fun with it and kind of keep those those rankings, if you will, out of it. So, let me take you on a little tour of SCORE. Um, again,
it's score, not squire. We still have seniors that say squire. Um, and that's all right. So, we've had SCORE now. Um this is officially our fourth year with it. Um and it's probably the most intuitive college and career planning tool out there. Um we brought it here um
after years of another program that was also really really great, but this just takes it to another level. This really exposes our students to um everything from admission data, videos, um places to build information. It's it's really a great tool. And I'm going to touch on this now because um as I start to look
at the questions that are coming in, I did get a question already. Can parents access scores? So I'll touch on that now. We're in two weeks we're going to introduce this to all of our freshmen. So they're going to get their account. Sophomores got it last year. So 10th grade students have it. If you'd like parent access one of two ways. You can
log right into your students account. Just ask them for the password. And if that doesn't work, you can reach out to your students counselor and they can with your email just add you as a parent right to your students account and you'll have parent access. So So that's all available for you. So this is just a basic home screen. Um I'm going to just
dive around and show you a couple things. This this tab up here, discover, allows our students to do searches. So I've done searches, but if I just begin here really really broad with four-year schools in the US, but realize well that's far too many. Um and you can just start to narrow things down. Maybe
you're interested in a medium-sized school. Um, you know, I don't know, maybe you grew up in Hunter County, our students, and are ready for something a little bit different. Um, maybe you'd like to be um, you know, if we plug in um our our I don't know why this isn't coming up, but our our zip code, it
normally does. It will give us um a certain distance from here, like a 100 miles, 400 miles, whatever. But I'm actually going to go with this. So, the northeast, we don't want to be too far away. And just right there, we've got matches. Okay. Okay, so now students are looking at this and going, "Well, maybe
I should pick a major." But this is just starting to give us a little cluster of schools to work with. Eventually, we want to get our students here in this section called my colleges following schools. This is kind of like when you build a list of favorites on a website, this is what their favorites are. And
so, by the time they hit junior year, I've got students with dozens of schools in this list. I have students with a couple. What's really cool is that the our freshman groups that we're going to run in two weeks, these students um these freshmen, I'm amazed some leave that group session and have 15 schools in the list. I didn't even know they
knew 15 names of colleges, but we're really we're really surprised and some aren't really sure what direction to go. And that's fine. But ideally, we'd like them by junior year to have a kind of working list here. If college is in their future, they've got a couple names. So, I'm going to go ahead and
just kind of play around here and show you how score works. So, I'm going to click here on Clemson. It's been a pretty hot school for our students for a couple of years. In fact, um the last few years we've been one of their top sending high schools coming from New Jersey. So, we've got a great relationship with them. Um and and what
it's doing is immediately Clemson is pulling up some data based on me. So, right now, our freshmen, they don't have a GPA. Um if they finish a class in January and the semester's over and they get a final grade, that's going to create their GPA. And of course, in June when the school year ends, their GPA
will be cumulative of the entire year of courses. But as you go into sophomore year and junior year, we continuously update GPA in scores. So right now, my GPA is plugged in there. My test scores, my SATs are all plugged in there, and it's telling me based on that data what
my overall chances are of getting into Clemson. So um this is going to be a bit of a reach for me. I've got I've got um less than 20% chance of admission. And this is all factored. Um it is artificial intelligence. It is doing it for us. So, we we want that to be a
starting point, but we need to be in the picture, too. So, I might sit with this student and go, "Well, let's talk a little bit about the major you're interested in. Oh, you're now you're a double legacy to Clemson. Oh, you didn't tell me you have three siblings who all went to Clemson." So, we start to unravel different factors that might change their chances of admission. So on
and so forth. So, this is just kind of the surface for now. All right. So, we're going to go down here and we're going to pull this drop menu down. This is called a scattergram. Okay. These scattergrams are really great for our folks that are a little bit more visual and trying to get an idea of where they stand in this process. So, I'm going to
take a look just because we have so much application volume. I'm going to narrow this down to just the last two years, our classes of 24 and 25. And what we can see here is where I am and where everyone else that that was admitted. So, we've got our little green dots are admitted. Our red triangle is not
admitted. And you can see as I zoom in, I'm that purple star. Our ninth graders won't have any star yet because they don't have any stats. They don't have a GPA and test scores. Our 10th graders may not have a purple star because some of a lot of them don't have test scores,
but you can use this as kind of a prediction. So, if you look up here, our green dots, they're they're going to be students with a little bit of a higher GPA and higher scores. And I'm kind of hanging out here with some red triangles. So, we know that just for starters, if we're trying to gauge what
are my chances as a junior, I know this is going to be a bit of a reach. But as a freshman who's starting at the base level here and is thinking, what do I what am I aiming for? What kind of school? Clemson's my dream school. And I know that to give myself the best chances of admission, I'm going to need
to be up in this green area. I just turned on this little acceptance heat map. So, once we show this to freshmen, they stop looking at our screen. All of a sudden, everyone's looking down at their Chromebook. It's pretty wild to watch in these groups that we're going to do in two weeks. All of a sudden, they're plugging in a school. They're trying to get the idea of the data
because they're thinking, I have a 0.0 right now. I'm I'm see it's freshman year. We're not even halfway through the year. And this gives them something to work toward. It tells them if there's a dream school and they want to be in that green, they know what they're working towards. So, this is why we do a lot of
our early college planning. If I was to show this scattergram and this program to students in junior year, they're thinking, well, I'm already two years in, two and a half years in. I wish I knew in freshman year what I had to work toward for these schools that were on my mind. So, this is another big reason why we do um a lot of this early college
planning in ninth and tth grade. So, we can just continue um to play around with different schools. Um I'm going to show you kind of kind of a heavy one. Ruckers New Brunswick. Obviously, um I have a little bit of a better chance of of admission, but this this is really wild. So, let let me let me just shrink down
here just to last year's class because obviously this is our number one four-year school. We have a lot of students applying. Um, I have a little bit of a better chance of getting in, but you can see again the higher the GPA and test scores. And that's just part of the process. We talk activities, we talk letters of wreck, we talk about all the
other things, but you can see if I'm a freshman and I have interest in Ruckers, um, this this gives me something to work toward. This tells me if I want the best chances where I'm going to want to be academically. So, we can plug any school in. If there's a school like, you know,
not up here on my list, we just go up here, we type it in, and it gets pretty interesting when we're working with the ninth graders, they just start, well, a lot of them start typing in really competitive schools because they want to see if our students have gotten in. And yes, they absolutely have. Um, but what we love them to do is if they're checking out a school and they're
looking at it is to is to mark that school as one of their favorites and it ends up on this following list. And that is such a great place to be in nth or tth grade. They don't have to be there. They don't have to be building a list, but it's a great little house of uh to keep it all in and keep it all organized. And as each year goes on,
usually score will update around July with the current class. So our current senior class, the class of 26, their data is not in here because we're still actively applying. We're starting to hear back from schools. All of that data will be official in here in July. And you can see how the next class did. So no names, nothing like that, but data
points that really help students understand sort of where they where they need to be academically. All right, so that is score. I didn't even get into the career um exploration because we don't have a lot of time for that tonight, but our sophomores certainly will in the coming weeks. Um and our
freshman will show them how to use all of that. And again, parent account, reach out to your counselor and they can get you set up with that. Shifting a little bit to visiting. So that's a lot of our searching. Visiting happens when you are ready. Um, like I said earlier in the program, if it's pulling them into the car, we've got to go see
schools and every, you know, they're they're miserable the whole way there and it's pulling teeth, it's not it's not time. Um, and you are fine to start visiting in another year or two. It doesn't have to happen now. We talk about it though because like we said, the calendar gets busy in junior year. They're older, they've got jobs, they've
got sports, they've got different responsibilities. So, if the calendar affords you time and you've got the ability to take a day from work here or maybe line up your day off with one of our days where we have an inservice and they're off, great time to get on a campus when it's alive and active. Just keep in mind that their breaks don't
always align with our breaks. You know, a lot of college spring breaks tend to be in March. We're in April. So, you don't want to take some time in March and go and the campus is empty. But that often leads me to, well, what about summer? Can we visit colleges in the summer? Yes. If that's your only time to get there, absolutely check out a campus
in the summer. I often say try to avoid Fridays because there are a lot of colleges that operate on four day weeks in the summer. And if you can make it work, try to see it in late August because a lot of colleges tend to get back and they start to really the campus becomes alive and we're not always quite
back to school yet. So, if you can aim for that later part of August, you're going to see a lot more students on campus. Um, New Jersey is a great place to start. We're loaded with colleges here in in the state, public, private, big, large, Ivy League, less selective. There's a lot just within two hours. Um,
and we have a lot of students who stay in state and certainly a lot who go out of here. Um, I've had parents asking, "How many schools do our students go to?" And we typically metriculate our senior class to somewhere between 140 and 160 schools a year. So, yes, all
over New Jersey, our surroundings, our bordering states, but all over the country. And like I said earlier, abroad. I mean, we have students go to Canada. We have students could go overseas. Um, that's a growing trend. So, there there is a lot out there. Um, and then if you are going to get out and visit in 9th and 10th grade, bring the
phone out, jot a couple notes down, students, take a couple pictures because in two years, if you've seen now 12 campuses, they're all going to start to run together. Um, so jotting a couple things down, keeping it in a Google Drive or a place in your phone just to keep track of what you're seeing so that
two years down the road if you're applying to that school and you went on a tour, you can pull some things from it or maybe you'll go back for a second visit, but they will all start to to kind of run together. So, I encourage you to find a way to record things. Um, and then eventually for our families, maybe some of our sophomore families
that are here tonight are listening from home, you might get to this point. And if you're not at this point in ninth or tth grade, it's perfectly fine. I'm just talking to those who have started talking about this, have maybe seen a campus or scheduling. This is where we start to sort of formalize this. Now, we
do it in score. We build a list, but you know, we're throwing schools on there that are interesting, that maybe our parents went to, that are playing in the football game on ESPN on Saturday. Those are kind of informal ideas. At some point when the students ready, we'd like them to start to really formalize a
list. This is really a big junior year task, but if you are, you know, a little bit more ahead in this process, um, this is what it looks like. When you're ready, a good, healthy college list is going to consist of a couple probable schools. So, good chances. Words we might have used in the past would be
safety, but we don't use that term anymore. probable high probability of getting in a couple targets and a couple reaches with our reaches being no more than a third of our list. And I have to say that a lot to our students um
because they tend to want to reach kind of heavy and just see I just want to see what's going to happen and it sorts starts to kind of overpower their list and we certainly don't want that to be the case. So um the average student here applies to between eight and 10 schools. They don't have to have eight, they can
have more than 10. I have seniors that are into the teens, maybe even hitting the 20 mark. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about why. There could be a really logical reason why, you know, maybe they're applying to a really selective program or one of these combined accelerated seven-year medical
programs and they've got to keep that list long to increase their chances. Or maybe they've got four schools on their list and in consultation with their counselor, we sat down and said, "Your chances of getting into all four of those is excellent." And they say, "You know, Mrs. Nen, I I want to be in Jersey. I'm going for education. And
I've narrowed down to Montlair, Rowan, TC, and Jay and Ryder. We know they've got a great shot of getting into all of them. And they're just going to see how they do, see what kind of merit money they get. And that's a good smaller healthy list. But for the most part, our students are falling in that kind of 8 to 10, 8 to 12 range, giving them about
2 to three, 2 to four probables, targets, and reaches. And you're probably thinking, "Wow, that's that's a lot, you know, and how do we get there?" We'll get you there. That's what SCO score is going to do. That's what advice from us is going to do. and we're going to make sure when they get to senior year, three years away or two years
away, depending on your grade level, that their list is well balanced. And if it's not, we're going to be really honest with them because we will not set our students up for defeat. And it's spring of senior year and they've got more nos than yeses. That should not be the case. Not with the thousands of options we have out there. So score and
us will be the ones to help you. And again, back to where we start, a simple search, pop it into score. What's important? And if your student says to you right now, you know what's important to me is I I just really really want to be an engineer. That's all I know right now. I don't know where I want to go,
Mom. I don't know how far I want to be, Dad. I don't know what kind of campus activities I want. I just know I want engineering. You've got something. Plug it in. Okay, we're going to have a couple hundred results. But sit down with them and say, "Do you want me to be able to come pick you up on a Friday afternoon to bring you home? Or if we
send you with the car, do you want to be able to make it home in two hours? or how would you feel about navigating an airport on your own and I have to fly you home for breaks. Set up those situations with them and they might go, "Oh, I never thought about a plane. I never thought about having the expenses
a three $400 flight to get home for a holiday. I never thought about the fact that I might not be able to just come home on a weekend to do my laundry and eat, you know, my favorite meals." when you start to talk about it in real life terms rather than do you want to be three hours or five hours or eight hours start to set up scenarios for them and
help them understand that you know hey how about money you know we've saved this much for you or we've saved not a lot for you we haven't been able to do that so this is going to be a responsibility of yours are you going to be wanting to take out a lot of loan or do you maybe want to consider community college to start and transfer those
conversations are just a really good place to be right now just talking about it because The options are endless. And if you're still feeling overwhelmed by that, loop us in. You've got great counselors here to help you out. We'll dive a lot deeper into it in junior year, but there's a lot to talk about
just to get this process going and we'll certainly help you help you narrow it down. A little bit about testing. Um, not a huge topic for underassmen. Obviously, we had our PSATS like Miss Hamburgg said, those are done. The scores are out. Um, we will probably not
see students touch the SAT in 9th or 10th grade. There will be a very small number of students who might sit for an SAT in the second half of sophomore year. Mostly depending on their math level. Um some of our high achieving math students might might get to that
then. You know, a lot of the SAT math is going to be algebra 2 concepts. So if they're at that point, they might think, you know, I've taken a couple practice questions. I've seen what this thing looks like. I'm going to go for it. But from a reading and writing perspective, the other half of the SAT, they're not quite there yet. So then they might take it again in junior year. Now, we've got
two attempts and we're going to do this thing called a super score and take our best across multiple test dates. Um, but really we see most students taking their first SAT or ACT in junior year. Again, though, everyone's plan is different. They might not see algebra 2 till senior
year depending on their math level. So, that's a better time for them to take the SAT. So, it's very individual for students, but for the most part, we're seeing this in junior year. We like to mention it so you can plan ahead. Test dates are out for usually the next two calendar years. So if you just do a
quick search, SAT dates 26 27, you can see when they're offered next year. You can obviously see when they're offered in this academic year because they're on weekends, they're on Saturdays and you have plans and they've got plans and sports and things and vacations. So earmarking those dates now is is good.
Um SAT or ACT, it doesn't matter. They're two different tests. A simple search will tell you the differences between them. We are still predominantly SAT. It's really regionally we're SAT. Um, but schools will take either one and we have students who try both and their better score on the concords table is
what we'll be sending to colleges. And of course that's all if they decide to send their scores to colleges. Um, test optional. That was another question that came in. I just want to read that um, word for word. That was a that was a really good question about um about test scores. Are schools still test optional?
Yes, there's a lot of schools that are still test optional. There's a really great comprehensive website. ite I don't have the link up here but it's called fair test f a i r t s t fair test um fair test will give you the most comprehensive most updated list of test
optional schools schools that do not require scores for admission um and this is a great bet for many of our students they'll take this test they'll try it once twice maybe three times and in consultation with us say what do you think should I send this 1220 to
colleges and we'll look at their overall transcript look at where they're applying and we'll help them determine if it's um if it's a go or not. And that's definitely a lot more of a junior year, senior year topic. Um and then of course, if you want to make an investment in test preparation, you certainly can, but there are fantastic
free resources out there to help them prep for these exams. We'll talk about those a lot more in sophomore year. If you have a sophomore, consult with your counselor. Khan, though, Khan Academy is a great place to start. No need to spend thousands of dollars on a prep course. Um there's a lot of good free resources out there. So again, testing very
individualized. I encourage your students to work with their counselor on the best timeline for testing. We won't get into this a whole lot. This is obviously a much more um a much stronger topic in senior year. Every year we do host a financial aid night. It's a virtual webinar. If you have any
interest in watching this year as it is posted on our website, it was held back in October. You can find that. Um, you know, if you if you really want to get a head start and just plug some figures in, the net price calculator, there is one on every single college website. If you have a school in mind, I'll just
throw in a private school here in New Jersey. You plug the school in, it'll bring you right to that college's financial aid web page and their NPC, their net price calculator, which they are required to have on their website. If this is a school of interest for your student, plug your your stat your um
financials in and it'll give you just an average, an idea of what your overall cost will be. Those are on every website. Um and then um getting to know the FAFSA website, the free application for federal student aid, good place to be, ninth and tth grade, just getting to know how the process works. Um our
families, our senior year, uh this year's senior class is applying for financial aid right now. A lot of them began the process in late September, early October when the FAFSA opened up. So, you don't have to worry. You're not missing anything right now. That'll be a senior year task. But between the net price calculator, getting to know the
FAFSA website, studentaid.gov, um you can get kind of an idea of how this process works. We'll talk all about different types of loans, grants, and scholarships more in junior year and of course into senior year. But the big question I always get is, Mrs. Nectarline, how do we get the most money? Where is the merit money? Well,
there's merit money at every school. They wouldn't survive without giving out scholarships. Um, a lot of students dream is I want to get into my reach and I want to get lots of money and I have to bring them back down really quickly. That that's not going to happen. Um, getting into your reach getting in is
the reward. Likely getting merit money that not going to happen. Where your merit money is going to come from is going to be predominantly your probable schools. Students are rewarded for high academics. So, if your student is getting into a probable school, chances are they're at the top of their
admission pool. That's where the money is going to be. Um, now it doesn't mean that they might not get into a target or reach with a little bit of scholarship money, but if your student is looking to really maximize merit aid, so let's say you've put away a little something or you're anticipating you might not
receive a lot of need-based aid, but we need to find a way to pay this bill and you want to maximize your students merit aid, I would encourage them to apply to more probable schools. And we have students who are strategically doing that and are going to be well rewarded with half tuition, threequarter tuition,
full tuition rides. So getting into a big name and a more selective school with a lot of money is very rare. That and I'm just being transparent because I never want to set students up to think I'm going to get into a selective private institution and it's all going to be paid for because I have straight A's. That is not a realistic way to look
at it. It's thinking about schools where you're at the top of the applicant pool. you're going to be rewarded for that not only with merit money potentially with an honors program or honors honors college invitation um with opportunities because you're part of the most selective uh the most accomplished group of students coming in. That's where
they're going to see the most merit money. So, we talk about that a lot more as we get into junior year and really start refining our list. And then as you're visiting, ask the tough questions. Let me see the outcomes. Where are students going? What kind of jobs are they getting? who are you bringing in to your job and career affairs to make sure this is all worth
it. Um it's not worth $80,000 a year of debt to come out with all of that debt and not be able to secure a job, not be able to have the resources to secure a job. So parents I know are out there asking the tough questions, not the students quite as much, but I encourage you to ask, tell me what the class is
doing, who is coming here for your job fairs, how many employers, how many students are securing jobs before graduation, so on and so forth. But financial aid night, like I said, is on our website. Every October, we run that with a financial aid officer, and you can certainly watch that to get a little bit of a better understanding of how the
process works. All right, I think I've got two slides. Gear up for any questions you have. Um, I want to talk a little bit about what else we do here at Central when it comes to college and career planning. So, you've heard about these meetings. Our grade level counselors are going to be meeting with students all throughout the year. these
conversations are happening, talking about post-secondary options, talking about what interests them, what activities they're involved in, their four-year plan. So, that's consistent. A little more formalized. Here's some of the programs we have coming up. This is one of my favorites. This is a virtual program, so you can watch from home. Um,
we bring together through our admissions panel. I'll collectively bring together I'm actually work started working on this this week, inviting people. um usually between four and six admissions officers, so enrollment um directors, deans, um heads of admission to come
together on a virtual webinar. It'll be February 19th of of early next year to talk about the process from their lens. Very transparent. I ask very candid questions. Um we get viewers who tune in that night. They can put questions in the Q&A of the Zoom webinar and then
watch it later and go, "That was amazing. I've never heard anything like that." and we're getting admission officers together to talk about the process from their lens. So, as a ninth grader, it's kind of it's a lot. They're we're getting into some more advanced topics. As a 10th grader, a 10th grade family, I mean, anyone can tune in. You start to understand what this process is
a little bit more about. I mean, we could go on and on about our resources, but hearing from the other side of the desk about what they're looking for, and I ask tough questions. Um, that's that's really helpful. All right. Third bullet, probably um one not only the biggest program that we run, probably the one of
the biggest programs our school runs and that is we host the county college fair every year. So it will be Tuesday, March 17th. You can wear your green. Um and we'll have about 150 schools here. Um our fair has consistently been one of the best fairs in the area. We do invite
school all the Hunter County schools because we are the only college fair in Hunter County in the spring. However, the last couple years we have partnered with our friends over at Hillsboro and they host their fair Monday night. We host our fair Tuesday night and usually another school within about 30 to 40
minutes will host a fair Wednesday night. We do that from our angle to to encourage reps to all come to the area and go to all these big fairs. But for people who have a a conflict that night, kids couldn't get off work or whatever, um you there's other fairs in the area that week. So March 17th, it'll be all
scattered through our hallways and our commons. We put it out to every grade level. Um, it used to not really be something that seniors would come to, but believe it or not, in March, a lot of them are still deciding where to go and they're looking for those last chances to talk to admission reps. So, they'll be there. You're going to see predominantly juniors and sophomores,
but I get excited when a freshman comes um to the college fair. And we promote it. When we meet with the freshman in a couple weeks, we're going to promote it. It can be overwhelming, but we send out tips and tricks and how to get themselves ready. They'll be walking around with these things with a little barcode on there and colleges will be
zapping their phone and scanning them to connect with them. They get a full report after the fair of who they connected with. It is like a one-stop shop night, but as a freshman or a sophomore, a really good starting point. Um, yeah, overwhelming to go table to table. You'll get a little bag. You'll
have all these brochures at the end, but what a great way to just kind of peruse the tables and go, "Wow, like look at all these schools that are out here." you, your student might have some really interesting conversations with an admission rep and it might spark something that you've been waiting to spark. So, please please mark the
calendar March 17th. This program tonight is really part one of what I consider our three-part evening series. So, every December we host this event, early college and career planning night, 9th and 10th grade. In a couple in about a month, I'm actually going to host our
11th grade college planning night. no reason for you to come because if you if you come to that, you came to this one before. So, 11th grade college planning night that I host here in January, it's always in January. So, look forward to that next year if you have a sophomore. Now, uh we really start to dive in. We
start to dive into the research, the list building. We take everything a step further. And then every September, we host 12th grade college planning night. We have now surpassed the research phase, the list building phase, and we talk solely about the application process. We do dive into that in junior
year with our juniors in our daytime groups, but senior year we're we're really hitting it. So, um, and then of course we've been talking about these groups that we're running. So, this month is a busy one for the 9th and 10th grade counselors and myself. We're going to see the freshman in, um, a few weeks. The sophomores are going to be seen.
They're going to get their dose of this. And then in January, I run 11th grade college planning groups with our junior team. And then in September, we ran 12th grade groups. Everything that's running at night has a daytime portion as well. So you're you're getting your dose of information. Students that are here tonight or listening from home, you're
getting it twice. And then when we deliver to the students, it's it's a little bit of a different spin. You know, obviously we're talking to them and we want to give them a little bit of of a different spin on this information. We host college visits here at Central. Those are for our juniors and seniors, but if you're a sophomore, look forward
to those next year. This year we hosted about 115 admission reps between midepptember and right before Thanksgiving. They came here during the day. Students signed up on score to get a pass, excused from class to come down and meet right here on campus with a variety of different college admission
reps. So, great opportunity if they can't get out to campus to engage in conversations. Of course, our financial aid night. We we do quite a bit here when it comes to college and career programming. So, lots of opportunity. Almost all of these programs are recorded. So, if you want to watch old editions on our website, it's all there.
And then, I'd be crazy to not mention this. You might be sitting here tonight with an interest in your student or students that are here in going to four-year college. Um, but plans can change. Um, and here at Central, we have we have a little bit of a shift of
students that are pursuing other options after high school. And these are what we call our our our postsecary pathways. We just finished a really great week of what we call pathways programs where we brought in RVCC. We had almost 50 seniors in this room successfully apply
to RVCC for next year, our local community college, which is truly one of the best in the region. Um, we brought in trade and technical school reps. We had a panel of local business leaders to talk about going right out of high school into employment. We talk about gap years. We have our polytech program
that caters to adults, so graduates come in and talk. So, even if four-year college is the route right now, things could change. Maybe it will end up being um the opportunity to stay local and do RVCC for two to three years and then transfer. Maybe it'll be RVCC's career
development program and then into the workforce. So, please keep this all in mind. These programs are really great. We have military recruiters that come in a few times a year. Um some of these will be represented at our college and career fair in March, but just know that about 30% of our population is going in
one of these directions. And all your student has to do is let their counselor know, you know, I've been thinking about the military, maybe community college. I'm not really sure four-year college is for me. What do you got for me? And they'll dive into the resources for them. Okay. All right. Keep an eye on emails. So, so important. Please
encourage your freshman and sophomores to build good habits around email checking. Um, it's tough for us to get them to to look at them, but that's how we disseminate information a lot of times. And you can certainly follow us on social media. parents, obviously, you know, you're getting your list serves because you're here tonight. This is our
college and career planning web page of our website. Um, it brought me right to it, but right from our homepage, if you just hover over counseling and come right here, this is everything that is coming out of of of my office and our grade level teams working on different things. All of our 11th and 12th grade
info is embedded in. Early college will get everything from this year updated in there. A lot of the things we've talked about, a whole link about how to use SCORE. So, take a dive through this um when you are ready. All right. So, that's a lot of talking. I'm going to take a sip of water, think about questions. We'll take them. I know we're
already at 8, but we'll take a couple minutes um to answer any questions. Anything out there while I take a look and see if anything was submitted. Anything out there on your mind? Yes. >> I love that question. So, the question was for those who couldn't hear and
those at home about managing expectations for our students who might um who are high achieving, strong scores, strong grades, strong rigor, they've taken advantage of some of our most competitive classes and they're applying to the most competitive colleges and universities. Um I I I manage those expectations and I'm I
can't speak for all of our counselors. We all have our different approaches, but I'm I'm just my approach having done this for almost 21 years is complete transparency. Just complete transparency. And and a lot of times I I end up seeing a lot of those students and I'm very realistic with them. I show
them scattergrams. I tell them advice straight from admissions colleagues that I have. Um and I I make sure their list is balanced. I say we can aim for this but you are competing not only with the best of the best in the region in the country but across the globe because
when you are a school that has an admit rate in the single digits you can recruit from the best of the best across the entire globe. So when we build that big picture and say you've done tremendous, you've done everything we could have possibly asked you to do and
more here at Hunton Central, but now you're competing with everyone who did that across the whole globe. And we build that bigger picture. It's not just in the walls of Central. Yes, you are evaluated in the context of where you come from. In the walls of Central, you've done it all and more, but now
your competition is greater. So, we try to build a bigger picture and we try to help them realize you you're going to apply to a couple of these. We're going to throw it out there. We're going to see what sticks. But the reality is is getting into those schools is incredibly selective. There is a place for you in
an incredible honors program at a large university. There's a smaller, little bit less selective school that's going to serve you really well. Just really transparent conversation. Um, and and I know ultimately those students might walk out of my office and go, "But but I
really really want Duke." Like, "I'm gonna get anything I can to make it happen." I go, "Well, then let's start talking strategies, okay? Like, we're going to just break it down. Are you really Are you considering early decision? What else can we do?" Like, we're I'm going to just get down to down to it with them. And and yes, early decision at highly selective
institutions can help a little bit. Um, outside of that, there there isn't a whole lot more we can ask of them. if they've got a brilliant transcript, they've done all the right things outside of the classroom, it um it there's no algorithm, there's no book about it, and if you're reading it, I
encourage you to probably not because after 21 years, I don't have a formula other than I'm going to do everything in my power to help them build the absolute best application they can because they're up against the best of the best. Great question. I hope I gave you a decent answer. All right, I'm going to
take a little peek here at my um at my questions coming in, but anything else from our our in-person audience that I can answer out there? Any question at all, folks? Um I know I had a question in here. I'm just searching for my um all of a sudden I lost my my
spreadsheet. Hang on one second here, guys. Um I had too many things open. Um but anything out there? Yes, right here. Um, >> yeah, I mean, we we get things all the time. I mean, we push them out. I disseminate them through our grade level
counselors. Um, I would say, you know, our our biggest ones in the area, obviously, our food pantry is United Way, a lot of our different churches. Um, what am I missing here, guys? Miss Hamburgg. Yeah, go right ahead. Oh yeah.
[clears throat] >> Yeah, absolutely. And for those at home that might have not heard um the response, I mean really starting with our clubs here, you know, like like she said um and and outside organizations. I don't think there's a place you could really go in Hunter County and not ask, do you take volunteers? You know, sometimes they're too young to start
working full, you know, working a part-time job, but just asking around. If you're really struggling, reach out to your counselor or me. Um because we get a lot of things, all these flyers around of all the different clubs that are doing service. Um a great place to start, too. So, I just finally got my spreadsheet up and there's there's a lot
of questions in here. I'm going to do my very best um to to try to cover some of these. Um okay. Will participation in our school clubs like the things that are doing that we're supporting here be on transcripts? No. Um and that's resume building. So, our transcript here, and I
encourage your students or parents, if you don't know what your son or daughter's transcript looks like, there's an unofficial copy in Genesis in the grading section they can go look at. But transcripts represent the academic picture. Classes they've taken, credit weight, grades earned, GPA, all of that. And that's about it. There's no
standardized test scores on there. There's no exam scores on there. Sometimes students think, "Are my absences on there?" No, it's an academic picture. How you'll present those activities is going to be through college applications. So, we'll encourage them to use scores resume building feature in the meantime as a
place to log all of that. But no, we are not the ones reporting out in any official way the clubs that they've been in. Um, oh my gosh, there's there's quite a bit in here. Um, is it frowned upon for students to have part-time summer or summer jobs rather than volunteer? So, I talked a little bit
about volunteering as this assumption that it's a checkbox and everybody has to do it. That's not the truth. Every admissions person I speak to, I say to them, is volunteering required to get in? No. Does it look better if a student volunteers with when it comes to admission? If it's important to the
student, yes. If they feel like they have to do it for college, no. Volunteering is something students want to do because they're passionate about helping other people. I can't tell you how many seniors come in and they think they're doomed in the college process because they've never done a volunteer
hour. I go, "Well, what do you do?" "I work. I have to work. I got to work. I got to make money. I got to pay for my own car payment, my cell phone bill." I go, "Then that's what's important to you. That's what we're going to demonstrate on your college application. So, um, you do whatever you want to do in the summer that's productive. If it's
going out, working at the yogurt shop, lifeguarding, making money, working in a retail store, restaurant, because that's what's important to you, you do that. If volunteering is important to you, then you do that. You do what's important to you, not worrying about boxes that have to be checked. All right. Um, anything
else here? Because I'll take one more in my Yes, go right ahead. Yeah. So the question is um handling social media accounts what's the feedback from admission? So, a couple years back um we did I did a lot of um of research on the studies about that
and it turns out that about onethird of of colleges this is going back like 2000 2018 1920 pre- pandemic about a third of schools were investigating students via social media. So pulling up Instagram pulling up Facebook those were the two
kind of big ones. were not really weren't really fully into Tik Tok and all of those yet. Um to look at students um and to just search their names and see what was out there, Google them, Google images of them. I have found that's a lot less talked about now for a lot of reasons. Number one, admission
offices don't have time. They're spread thin as they've lost people in admission offices and you've got one admission reader who might be reading 40, 50, 60 files a day, does not have time to see if that student's on Facebook. Um, but there might be an activity that pops up and this is again true stories from my
my colleagues and my friends in admission where they're reading about a student's activities and they're talking and they're one of the their activities is they have a weightlifting account on Instagram where they teach weightlifting to other people and they might think, "Huh, I'm interested in weightlifting. I'm going to pull up my own Instagram account and I'm going to pull that up
and take a look." Well, it turns out somewhere in those pictures were things that they probably wouldn't want have wanted a college to see. and they didn't realize that talking about it means someone might actually go and look at it. So my encouragement, my advice would be keep things clean. I mean, it's out
there. It's on the internet. So someone could it could become permanent. Um so if they've got Instagram accounts, social media accounts to keep them private. Um unless they be comfortable with a future boss, future employer, admissions person, grandparents, somebody else seeing it. Um and they wouldn't be comfortable with that, then
it shouldn't be there. Um, but I I don't think our friends in admissions have the time as much these days to sit and and and do do a whole lot of that, but it can certainly happen. Great question. So, um, I don't want to keep you all. We're 10 minutes past when I said we would be, and I want to help you all get
home and enjoy the rest of your night and your week. So, thank you for coming out. Please, please, um, use your resources. I'm sorry if I didn't get all the submitted questions answered. Reach out to your counselor, to myself. We're happy to help. Um, this slide these slides will be posted because I know some of these dates are important. I'll
leave that up if anybody wants to to snap that. But we hope to um to get you here to some of our programs in 2026 in the second semester. But again, use resources, take advantage of what we offer here and and we look forward to working with you in the coming years.
Thank you all so much for coming. >> Thank you.