Spring break is a high school milestone. For juniors and seniors, life-altering changes loom. The person tasked with helping students manage those changes by shaping college and career dreams knows the holiday is a green light for juniors to start the application process in earnest and seniors to finish strong. It’s all about positioning, and our top spring break tips for college counselors are designed to help them position students for success.
The College Board’s Advocacy & Policy Center defines eight components of college and career readiness counseling. They are the basics of the profession, and they are:
Adding or perfecting tactics in your strategy for being the best possible counselor will enhance your program. Here are some ideas you can work on during spring break.
Help your juniors hone the skills they’ll need to ace the application process, from college essay writing to compiling a résumé or researching colleges.
Set up workshops you can run, or find professionals to hold them. Recruit:
Your seniors could benefit from sessions designed to help them overcome application anxiety or make the best use of the last summer before college.
Keep the application process in the limelight by scheduling a College Decision Day event. Celebrating the generic May 1 deadline for picking a school once had proponents in the White House, which launched College Signing Day, a celebration designed to “rally around students who have committed to higher education.”
Keep it simple and cheap – snacks, inexpensive prizes, and camaraderie – or look for community sponsors who can underwrite something more formal and elaborate.
College fairs are great ways to advance your students’ research on prospective schools. You can organize your own, or you can connect students to online resources used to locate college fairs.
Be sure they know how to make the most of the fairs they do attend.
Are you social-media savvy?
Imagine being able to reach out to seniors once school ends and before college starts. Imagine being able to discuss obstacles in the enrollment process before those obstacles make your seniors victims of summer melt.
A handbook distributed before the school year ends and/or a newsletter to connect with students and their families before and after school ends are great communication tools to keep seniors on track and focus juniors on the college hunt.
Your school website likely could accommodate that blog you’ve been meaning to start and digital versions of a handbook and newsletter.
A 2018 report on high school counselor-student ratios in the U.S. put the average ratio at 479-to-1. The odds are good that someone at the elementary or middle school level in your school district could use a little help inspiring college dreams.
Arrange a visit so you can tell students what they can expect in high school and how college can be part of their future. Those same children could be coming to you as high school students.
As College Board puts it: “Lead a systemwide effort to create a college-going culture in every part of your students’ lives.”
Spring break is the pause before the push to the end of the school year. It’s a good time to evaluate and plan, particularly for juniors and seniors. Knowing what to do and when to do it is critical.
The application process timeline for juniors rolling into spring break looks like this:
The application process timeline for seniors rolling into spring break looks like this:
If USF is a target for your students, the school’s Counselor Toolkit can help you help them. If you need additional help, the Office of Admissions is ready to engage. Contact us online, or reach us by phone at 813-974-3350.