##VIDEO ID:ve0V8QoNO5A## this is the 11th grade uh College and Career night uh part one so we'll talk a little bit about that I'm going to share my screen now and we will get going as always this will be recorded and then put up on the website um so here we go can everybody see that all right so again this is College and Career night um part one for 11th graders we're just going to go over who our staff is on the guidance support team student support team um so tonight we have Miss Jennifer PR who is one of our guidance counselors and um she works with the last names uh and starting in a a to F also with students that are in grit sale and she helps with our early college program then we have Miss Stephanie Bates she works with last names G to M and students are the dhh step and helps with the dual enrollment program uh Kelly Bowman is our other um our other guidance counselor she's not with us tonight but she works with last names and Z reads and best and that then we have Miss Heidi kinus who's our school of career specialist um and she you'll hear a little bit more later on I think Miss breu is gonna have a slide that talks a little bit about what Miss K does and then Mr masan Daniel maran's our Administrative Assistant he helps the students in a number of ways and helps us out uh with things like transcripts and and other uh duties that help us get the students ready and their stuff off to college and then I'm Vincent Cersei I'm the director of counseling and therapeutic services so um as you start this college process as 11th grade uh parents and students some of the things you're going to want to make sure you do is stay connected with us um all of the high school um classes so the 9th through 12th grade have their own guidance Google Classroom so your students have a guidance guidance Google Classroom um that they have been signed up for and um in that classroom we have information about College Planning and missions visits Community Service opportunities and scholarships and a bunch of other stuff so this is the best way for us to stay connected to the students and um if you can get them to share their information with you as parents that might be helpful as well um and then the high school website um we have if you go to the high school website and you scan scan over to departments and uh go down you'll see the John Atwood guidance service center um you can go there this is where for example this um this presentation will be hosted there's a bunch of other information on there as well and um we also want to just make sure everybody realizes that on that uh part of our website we have the College Planning guide this is literally Soup To Nuts everything you can Poss possibly think of in terms of uh the steps that are taken um we have things about first first generation students um financial aid uh searches acceptances all of that is in that College Planning guide so that is a very detailed process with hyperlinks to get you to specific areas if you um you want to do that so um so for for this part of the presentation what we're really focusing on in the past we used to try to do all of 11th grade everything you needed to do at 11th grade in the fall so the search process the application process the acceptance process everything all at once and the feedback we got a number of years ago was like that's like drinking out of a fire hose um please don't do that anymore it was just too much information so what we've done over the last few years and and parents and students seem to like this is to break it up into kind of two parts part one and part two for our um for our Juniors so the first part what we're going to be doing tonight is really focusing on the search process things you should be thinking about the tools that we have to help our students um and and then in the spring we'll do a part two which will be more about the actual steps they need to take in order to start the application process um for the the college that they choose but really right now it's about getting out there seeing the colleges using the tools like Naviance um to begin really narrowing down which college they're going to want to apply to um so our big tool that we use which um can be used for the search process and then again you'll hear like I said in the spring more information about how we use it to send transcripts school reports letters of recommendation and so forth but I think it's an underused resource by our students um in terms of connecting to colleges doing some searches and we're going to get into that in a little bit more detail um so it's important that we know that right now all most Juniors um if they've been uh with us the last couple years have already have accounts and have logged on we've shown them how to do that over the last few years um but we are going to do a kind of refresher presentation on um on November 18th so next Monday during lobb so all the guidance counsels will be there we um make sure that that the Juniors remember how to log in if they don't they can always go and see Mr navian Mr navian Mr masan um or one of the counselors to help them get get set up but we're going to basically do the same presentation that we're giving tonight the parents and families to them so they'll have an idea of what they need to do as well which is honestly going to be very helpful for us and our uh guidance counselors for next year so um this is what they're going to see they're going to go to their navian homepage this is what it's going to look like um and you know this is well they'll begin the search process um and how did students use Naviance well the biggest thing that they can do is when they go to um the colleges they'll say colleges I'm thinking about and then they can go down and you can either use the ones that we highlighted here super match College search which is something we're going to get into more detail about college match or college lookup these are different ways for students to begin that search process um a number of our Juniors or all of our Juniors I should say did uh take part in our College Fair this year um and they actually we got a lot of compliments about the junior class in particular about how they were very engaging with the the Reps and so forth um so they've had a taste of this already with us and I'm sure there's many families that are watching this who who have already begun the process but this is one way for them to stop and now I'm going to turn it over to miss Bates thank you um so uh our favorite tool is definitely the super match tool on navian it has a lot of different criteria you can search for you can search for uh the first one would be location so they have regions like the northeast or the South or we can even go more specific to State locations you can go into the academic tab where you can select of wide variety of Majors um they also have admissions so you can have more selective colleges less selective colleges um diversity is about different um different populations um institution characteristics are about the size of the school so if your student really wants a smaller school you can select that or maybe they're looking for a really big school um then there's the cost and then Student Life Athletics so if you have a a student athlete who's interested Ed in um you know division two track you can select that um and then finally we have resources so if you have a student on an IEP or a 504 they'll be able to select those colleges that are um more accommodation friendly or also they have things like therapeutic resources and counseling services on there as well um so that is kind of like the biggest tool that we use use this all the time I use this today with a student to kind of figure out um different colleges to kind of narrow down the list and take a look at some that work for best for them sorry I seem to be Frozen Here There we go all right so once you select all the criteria that your student wants it'll give you a list of colleges that meet that criteria so if you as you can see the 100% um Circle tells you that it meet all of your criteria it tells you the university name where it's located the type so small City large city rural suburban um and if it's a public or private institution and it also gives you the average GPA sat an ACT score even though some of these may be test optional um and it kind of gives you a rundown of the average cost um but this is a great way to kind of figure out some colleges that work with that criteria and then once you you know select one of those colleges maybe you've heard of Bryant and were interested in Bryant you can select one of those and it brings you to their navian profile every College um has some type of navian profile and it gives you kind of a rundown of what the college is about so you'll typically see a lot of pictures everyone super happy and in groups and stuff like that um but what I try to have students look at is like the facilities the technology in the classroom um you know what's surrounding the campus and then it also on the overview you have the average net price um and it depends on income there's a drop- down to select uh your family's income their graduation rate acceptance rate and um the college overlaps are kind of similar colleges that you can learn more about those colleges soim much to Bryant um on the studies tab it lists all the majors that are available um and even the most popular majors at L the top five student life is more of statistics around the students who attend there um admissions is a great tool to use if you're looking to find where your student kind of lies within that admissions process so in the admissions tab um it shows how many Norton students have applied in the past five years how many have been accepted and then enrolled there's also a scattergram to compare your students you know GPA and or SAT scores to past recent Norton grad students uh graduates so that you can kind of compare yourself to those so you can maybe understand if you have you know a pretty good shot at getting in maybe a 50/50 shot or it's going to be a harder school to get in kind of get that um to kind of figure out like where you are in that cost breaks down how much it costs and it also provides an estimate of um how much financial aid is provided for student and pro profile just goes a little bit more into the admissions portion um if you really like that College you can add it to the colleges I'm thinking about tab in two ways um if you're on that navian profile page you were just on there's a little heart right next to the college name so you can just go ahead and click that heart or if you go on to the colleges I'm thinking about section in the college tab you can just enter the college name there's a little bar is not shown on this screen but on your student screen it'll show like add colleges I'm thinking about you can just go ahead and type that in this list is really good for when you're working with your counselor because your counselor can also see this list so we can see your list and maybe suggest um or recommend other colleges that kind of fit with what you're looking for as well um so some things that you want to be kind of start considering in this process is connecting with admissions uh especi especially selective admissions um for college they really love to see demonstrated interest so ways you can do that is um a while colleges have some type of online information request form you can fill that out um connect with social media on their various platforms a lot of colleges have Tik toks now Instagram so whatever is your social of choice there's going to be a college there um you can email the admissions representative assigned to your area so you may have to do a little digging and some research but they typically have you know um uh either by state or by County um and then you can attend an admissions event you can attend either local or our college fair um you do an oncampus tour and one of the benefits of oncampus Tours is sometimes they'll provide a a application fee waiver so you can go ahead and ask for that on your tour and they also have virtual information sessions if it's a college that might be farther away to attend just two little points I wanted to to make here I think um sometimes families and students think that you know the college is need them um but yeah I mean that that they need the colleges but the colleges need them as well so you know the more that you connect up the more they're going to consider well they they've been on our social media they've connected to us in other ways they've emailed us they've come to tours um they're going to they're going to think okay this person's serious so especially if the schools that you really are more interested in I think you know going back multiple times connecting on their social media staying on that page a little bit spending some time looking around um they track as much of this as they can so it's really I think very important um as you narrow down your choices especially to to connect up as as Miss bade said in any ways the other thing where we talking about email this is probably a good time right say if you if if you want to one of the things we would recommend and is to create an email is just for colleges because you're going to get once you start doing this you're going to start to get lots of emails um so if you create a specific email that you use for your college process um you can then develop folders you know for this college and that college and separate it all out um especially as you get into more the admissions piece of it um you're not going to miss emails um that get bogged down and you know I can only imagine what a student's email looks like um or if it gets sent to family emails um I know what ours used to look like especially when I had um two kids in high school so if you have something that's just specific for colleges when you sign up for you know college fairs and so forth when you sign up for information it's going to go to that one email and it's going to make everybody's lives a lot easier in terms of tracking that information the one thing I wanted to say too about emails is the student themselves should be the one emailing the representatives a lot of times parents will try to help and they'll jump in and email the college and the colleges don't at this point want to hear from the parents they want to hear from the student and they want to know that the student is the one that wants to go there so that's really important yeah this is kind of the first start of this um breaking away period that can be difficult for for parents um they really need to take the lead on this it should come you know again um you can you can oversee things like if they create a College email make or they have an email that they're going to use make sure it's appropriate if you know what I mean so you can check things but as Miss Bru said this is really the time where they have to take the lead with your guidance but they have to be the ones contacting they should be the ones asking questions when you go on tours um as much as possible um as you said the colleges want to hear from them not from us parents as much come on there we go awesome thank you um so we did hold a college fair on October 10th like Mr Cersei said earlier and I heard a lot of great things about our Juniors they're very engaged asking great questions I saw a lot of them coming back with a lot of pamphlets and and pens and stuff like that um but we are also going to be doing some college admissions visits and they can sign up uh through my Flex learning um during LLB um and then another great uh resource on navian is the self-discovery tab so this is kind of like almost like those quizzes you may be familiar with um to kind of help discover yourself a little bit more and it could be useful if a student isn't really sure what they want to do for a career maybe they're interested in going to college but not sure exactly for what this is a great tab to start looking into further um and we I like to suggest doing the Career Cluster finder and the career interest profilers as the top two choices um the Career Cluster finder is kind of more of a general sense where your student would take a short quiz and it kind of gives you different um clusters of careers that may work best with your interests in your skill set whereas the career interest profiler will kind of give more individual careers um and more specific information um last year as 10th graders they should have completed their career interest profiler through a lesson um with other guidance counselors um but it's a good idea to maybe even take it again see if their answers have changed um and then if you can go into each career and see what type of education is needed um if it's a growing field if it's a declining field um and a little bit more about the skills needed to succeed and what they do dayto day and I'll give it send it over to miss PR all right so school to Career Services uh this is Miss K she is down in the bubble in the guidance office uh kind of the Glass Room uh that we call the bubbles so everybody can see her but she is is there and she welcomes students to come in all the time uh she will help also with career exploration so students that are having um concerns about I don't know what I want to do after high school I don't know what I'm interested in um she has some other career interest surveys and other things that they can take outside of what Naviance has to offer she also helps students get jobs um so she'll help them figure out uh good positions for them uh interview skills resume writing cover letter writing um just getting prepared for that interview internship placements she works a lot with that um helping students find internships getting connected with different businesses and organizations in the area and um job shadows and different interviews so she helps a lot she also helps students who are interested in maybe going into the military and getting you connected um with that and getting information and also she's brought in a lot of um people with careers that we don't necessarily think about so um like uh she running uh somebody from dispatch uh last year and she has a connection with that um the court reporting typing things like that careers that are out there for students and they may not be aware of them so she's a great advocate for them and she's super helpful I think it's important at this point to really point out that we recognize that not all of our students are necessarily going to go to college or be interested in college right away or might want to do community college especially given it's you know the status of being free um but that that you know there are other uh very lucrative careers out there the trades and so forth so you know obviously this is about the college process um but we felt it was important to say that we we recognize especially nowadays that you know um there's a there's a large cost to this and it's not for everybody so we work really hard I I want to give um the gods Council especially Miss PRK credit for really going out in um making connections with some of the unions we have shop Fridays and and other um you know uh opportunities for for students to see the trades and and other jobs and again um Miss K has brought in electric boat for example and um you know they have opportunities from everything from machinists to Engineers to welders to Pipe Fitters I mean anything you could think of um they're that large of a corporation with that many different that that many different opportunities so um we really try to think through that I know you know sometimes there's a lot of pressure on kids to go to college or to look into college and there's other opportunities as well so we want to make sure we open as many doors as as possible for them so taking the SAT or act um all the Juniors took the pacat on 1012 in school and it's just the practice test to see how they do um and to gauge what areas that they might need to improve on in the future most Juniors will take if they choose to the uh sat or act in the of their junior year and then a lot of them take it a couple times um so maybe twice in the spring and maybe once in the fall um a lot of schools are test optional but there are some schools that still require the sat there are some schools that are test optional but a specific program in the school requires you to take the test so um as you're searching and doing the super match and going through everything that miss be talked about one of the things to really pay attention to is it a test optional school is it required is the program I'm interested in actually require me to take the SAT so if you do need to take it or you're opting to you're going to go to college board for the SAT or the act.org for the ACT um and there are some people that qualify for Fe wavers so if you do need that we have the codes for that so we can help and here are just some testing dates that are coming up um there are specific registration deadlines then there are late registration deadlines the price goes up a little bit um so you definitely you know want to stay ahead of it and try to register as soon as you know that you're kind of choosing to take it and again thaning about going test optional so what is a college looking for if you're not sending in those test scores really they're looking at a lot of different things now your academic performance from freshman to junior year a lot of students don't really understand that they start looking from freshman year and they do they look from freshman to the end of year junior year that's the first transcript that we send any leadership rule so that can be in a club in a sport at your job so it's a wide variety of things but that you have that leadership um personality and can take on those different roles the type of academics that you are taking are you challenging yourself um you don't have to take all AP courses but has your trajectory gone up a little bit from freshman year up to your junior year the rigor gone up a little bit uh extracurricular involvement again if you can do Sports and clubs that's great if you're only doing certain clubs if you're highly involved you hold um a specific role in that Club that's great and then they're your personal essay so the end of junior year I believe it's around May they're going to start working on their personal essay and that way they can have it written before the end of this year and they have their first part of the application done and uh students course selections are based on school offerings so really they're not going to look at something that a student does not have and that's going to reflect negatively on the school doesn't offer it right so we give them a um we send a form that shows how many classes we have and what type of classes and all of that and so that's going to be balanced with their transcript and uh their whole application so there is a lot of um different practice tests out there that are free there's ones that you can pay for there are classes but um there's navian and Kaplan and then college board and kapn they have the practice sat um that you can just go on and take some tests there are certain um like mini tests like some questions that you can do automatically there's a whole big test um I think was it BCC that had the um the pay class where you could go and pay if you opted to do that so again there's a lot of different options the way to get a better score is to just keep taking it so the more times you take it the better you're going to get so the better score we used to have um actually a gentleman who it was a parent who volunteered who had the students come in on Saturdays to take the test but it's now gone uh digital so um you know anybody can take the the practice test the versions of the practice test anytime they want so um once it it all went viit digital and you could you could go on anytime he said well they can practice and test anytime they want there's plenty of tips out there if you Google tips for taking the satad for example so you know getting teenagers up to come on a Saturday morning was not an easy task so um for the parents out there getting them maybe to do it during Christmas break or you know February break when they don't have a done of homework might be the best plan um and again they don't have to do it all at once it's not to sit down for three hours but it might be worth the practice at least once to be a it's like to sit there and do the exam for three hours so or two and a half whatever it is so yes that's what that's what we're doing now so really what have we done now and what are the next steps so in the fall and winter um really just looking at researching colleges and different careers different opportunities that they would be interested in if you can start to go on campus tours that's great there are virtual tours out there since covid a lot of schools have virtual tours on YouTube and other um platforms so definitely take advantage of those if you want to go see a school in California about hopping on a plane is an option um think about when you plan on taking the SAT or act um really trying to map that out you don't want to take one maybe right after another you want to give yourself a little break see how you did really look at when um the tests are happening so you can make that plan and then community service hours are huge so you really need to have your community service hours completed um your junior year the 30 hours to be able to do all the things at the end of your junior year and really so that you only have your 10 left but I will say if you can get more than the 40 that's always better for scholarships and everything else moving forward um not just the scholarships for Norton High School but just scholarships out there complet if the more community service hours you have and a variety of them the better so if you can do that by all means I would say do that and then going into spring into summer definitely add schools to colleges I'm thinking about Tab and navian so that's really helpful it helps you kind of reflect back it helps the guidance counselor and it just really helps organize things I've had students come to me this year with like things on their phones some sheets of paper um oh I wrote it but I left it at home if you just keep everything right in Naviance we can see it on our end and then it keeps everything together so you don't lose anything um also by the end of this year we always tell students try thinking about who you're going to ask for letters of recommendation and it's always good to maybe ask them before you leave for summer break some teachers might actually start writing them over the summer some teachers only write a certain amount so if you ask by the end of this year you've kind of gotten a head start and you can remind them in September when we come back and you're one of the few that they would are able to do and you're just ahead of the game and it makes things that much easier uh college essay should be done some schools do want a resume so if you have that um that's great if you need help with it Miss K uh we can help but trying to formulate that would be hugely beneficial the brag sheet which is on the Google classroom that is something that if you can work on over the summer and have prepared for the beginning of your senior year it will be huge weight off your shoulders that the brag sheet is information for the guidance counselor to help us make the best letter of recommendation that we can for you it's really the time for the student to brag about themselves and tell us all the great things that you've done all the things in school out of school things that we know but things that we may not have known um the more information you put in there the better so really it's about the student and then really talking to the family about plans College budget what are you looking for um sometimes students and families are on the same page sometimes they're not sometimes you know a student really wants to go to a school but it's not in the budget or it's not in the area of the country that the family really prefers so really just being on the same page so that way everything kind of goes smoothly and um there's really no tension it's just kind of a happier kind of time so um I'm going to talk a little bit about the uh student athletes but before we do that I just wanted to go back and say you know we're really lucky in New England because we have a variety of schools um different kinds of campuses City campuses um you know rural campuses Suburban campuses um Business Schools art schools like there's there's so many out there that um is within driving distance that we really have an opportunity um even if you're at the beginning and you're at the stage where you're like I really don't have a clue my my son or daughter doesn't have a clue um just go and see the different kinds of campuses if you even just start there um they may say you know I want I want to be in the city then they actually get to the city and they are on a campus and they're like no this is this isn't for me or I really want a small school um but then they get on a bigger campus and because they come from Norton a little tiny school in a little tiny town they're like oh this is really exciting I like the idea now of a of a City Campus so I think you know getting out um over the Christmas break or over on a weekend visiting some schools that were there're in the driving distance is a great way to start the process and get them thinking um about what they what they might want to do so um this is really again why we kind of did this in part one and part two is to think about um how to do the search so you know talk to your your students about what are they looking for in terms of um size location um social life get on campus C are the are the kids interacting is this something that I want to be a part of um virtual tours are great but you know remember they're they're in charge of of what pictures go up on the virtual tour what angles they take um being on campus gives you a whole different feel of um again not just what it looks like but what it kind of feels like how the kids interacting are they friendly when they're walking around those kinds of those are the kinds of things you you you want to see what's the community around it look like you know are you looking for a more traditional college town feel or again are you looking for more City rural giving um your students that opportunity to get get that understanding of what's out there I think really help them as they move through the process and work with us so that being said uh for student athletes um you if you're especially if you're looking at division one or division two you do have to go through the NCAA um you have to go to their eligibility center and you have to um create an account and what that does um is it registers with them uh they will then usually I get a notification not always that I have students that have um done that um but either way I check it quite frequently and what will happen is at the end of junior year some students want me to do it sooner than that I usually won't do it till at at the very earliest the first semester of junior year I will send this transcript or I upload a transcript to that to that student's um eligibility profile um and then I send another one at the end of senior year after they graduate uh this is used by coaches ad Min missions folks um to sort of make sure that the student is meeting their criteria there's somebody that they want um that they have the the appropriate courses and and so forth um the other thing that they'll ask for is SATs or a scores if you do take those um we cannot send those just like we can't send it through navian you have to do that yourself so when you go in and you you know um select your colleges to have your SAT score sent to you also need to scroll down on the same same drop- down menu and find the NCAA eligibility center um again you do not have to do this if it's division three but if you're not sure you might be going division two um or certain and some of the division three coaches will look for that um I just think it's a good thing to um to complete but definitely as I said if you look in division one or division two you're being recruited um definitely uh do that and you can do that as as soon as now um it has lots of other questions um that they ask you as part of your profile so make sure you get that done um the other big thing that we didn't talk about um I just wanted to really stress was that if you are a student with an IEP or a 504 if you want your accommodations for the uh standardized test sat AP or act um you need to let me know um so that I can send you a consent form first of all that uh the par your parent will need to sign or you as a parent will need to sign saying that um you give me permission to reach out to to um I say college border act in order to um basically list out the accommodations that are already being used either the IEP or the 504 um it does go into details around disability categories and and those kinds of things um and then they determine if they're going to approve the accommodations so this is a process for approval um they make the determination it can take up to six to eight weeks um once I put in the um once I upload all of the information um so I really stress if you're if you're looking to take the SAT you're you're looking to take it in December and you haven't given me that information you're probably in all honesty not going to be able to use your accommodations um so if you do want to do that the only way I'm going to know that is for you to reach out to me either as a parent or a student saying hey I would like to have my accommodations for uh sat act or AP um and then I will you know take a look at your IP and your 504 and uh begin that process okay U one thing I did want to stress that if you um get approval from college board you can use that for SATs or AP it doesn't it doesn't go away so if you get it as a junior and you decide to take an SAT or an AP class as a senior um it will it will cover cover all of that um if you have major updates again I'm not going to know that to your 504 um let's say senior year at the end of junior year you make some adjustments and you have an uh different kind of accommodations please let me know and I can um do a kind of a renewal or addition so um those are really important things to to keep keep in mind um all of those exams I believe um are now or most of the exams not all of them are um digital um so things like uh extended time and all that are just built right into the virtual um platforms so all right uh all right um anything that we missed Miss Brew or Miss Bates again this is um will be available we'll have it up on um look to see if we have any questions we do not have any questions um so this will be up on the website uh usually takes about 48 hours and um again if you have questions about the search process as a family please reach out to your guidance counselor or um to any of us we'd be happy to help you you know with any questions you have any suggestions um and as we go through the process we want to we want to partner with you so that being said I'm going to stop my share I want to thank miss breu and miss Bates for taking time out of their evenings and um I hope everybody has has a good night