Students who haven't kept up their grades, and those who don't have a direction that they want to pursue post-high school will be behind going into their senior year of high school.

Grades

Grades open up a lot of opportunities, but many Freshman have a difficult time adjusting to high school.

Junior year, many students start to improve their class performance, but by this time, it is hard for them to affect a large change in their GPA.

A 2.5 GPA is the minimum for a public, 4-year university in North Carolina, and is close to the minimum for decent college options in general. A 3.0 GPA will open up more college options, but obviously, the higher the better.

Having experiences that provide direction

The other major goal for the first 3 years of high school is to have experiences that provide direction for after high school. One of the biggest impediments for students being proactive in making their own post-secondary plans is simply uncertainty about what they want to do.

Class selection: The first way to have those experiences, is for students to select classes that they are interested in. Every student has an area of interest that they can develop in school. Scheduling is a difficult area to give students individual attention, but it can really pay off.

Class rigor: There’s no question that the most selective colleges put an emphasis on class rigor. However, for 90% of other colleges, taking AP Calculus is not so life-or-death. We encourage students to select the most rigorous classes in the areas that interest them, but not necessarily every subject. However the most important reason for selecting rigorous classes to prepare them academically for college. Building those reading, writing, and math skills for the college transition will make students more likely to be successful whatever college they end up at.

Summer enrichment programs: Have a database of summer enrichment programs in your state (and a few national ones). Advertising and encouraging underclassmen to apply to summer enrichment programs is a great way to build connections with underclassmen prior to their senior year. It’s also a great way to get high achieving underclassmen exposed to and believing in college as their post-high school plan!

Students who haven't done any testing or college visits will be behind going into their senior year of high school.

Testing: Senior Fall is a very busy time so we recommend starting the testing process in the spring of the junior year. It’s one less thing to worry about in the fall. I always recommend that they take one of each in the spring of their junior year, and then retake the one that they like better during the summer or the early fall of their senior year. Getting all testing done before senior year is even better!

College Visits: College Visits are also a great way to make college tangible for students. Exposure + support leads to belief. The earlier the better!

Again, Senior Fall is a busy time! Students who don’t start their testing process, start their college essays, and have at least some idea about where they will apply will be scrambling in the fall. Students don’t need to make a Common App account yet, essay prompts are available here: https://www.commonapp.org/apply/essay-prompts.

Ideally, students will use their final high school summer to work, do extracurriculars/sports, or attend a summer enrichment program. However, students can also begin to use the college search to develop a list of potential colleges to apply to and learn about how to make a college list.

Even motivated seniors often change their mind, and then change it again about applying to 4-year colleges, or which colleges to apply to.

Often something goes wrong either at home, financially, or academically, and they start second-guessing their plans.

Seniors are often getting incomplete advice about what to do after high school from a lot of sources, which can influence their plan. The two pieces of advice I dislike the most are:

-Students should know what they want to study before applying to college & should start at community college if they don’t know what they want to study

-College is expensive. Know what you want to do before you start!

Click here for more complete reasons why this is bad advice, but what I always tell students is that, it’s hard to predict what you will be thinking in 6 months. Community college will always be an option in the spring, but by applying to 4-year colleges now, you are going to leave yourself the option of 4-year college open.

Being Overwhelmed

Doing everything at once: Seniors who haven’t done the prep work, still need to write their essays, register for and take the SAT/ACT, figure out where to apply, get recommendations, and actually apply by fall deadlines, that seem to come earlier and earlier each year-- Oct 15 and Nov 1 are two big early deadlines.

Highly selective colleges: Similarly seniors applying to many colleges or to highly selective colleges will have a lot of work to do on top of challenging classes. We don’t recommend that any students apply to more than 10-12 colleges, but some will choose to.

The spring is when financial aid rears its ugly head.

Some students will still need to do FAFSA.

Many low-income students will be selected for verification, and they won’t know what to do. Usually this is handled by logging-in to their college portal and submitting the required documents. Repeat for each college where they have been accepted!

As financial aid letters come back in March & April, some students may be left without affordable college options. Some may need to file financial aid appeals.

Many community-college bound students will just start thinking about college in the spring, and will need help to apply, send transcripts, complete FAFSA, and attend orientation/register for classes.

There is a lot of research on summer melt, but in short, it describes the phenomenon where students who have plans to attend college in the fall, change their minds or simply don’t show up. In other words, they seemingly melt away.

Thinking they are good: Sometimes students think that they have a good plan, but they don’t realize that the financial aid doesn’t work. It’s very important to have financial aid award letters in hand before committing to a 4-year college!

Unexpected events: Situations change and unexpected events can cause students to change their plan. The tough part in the summer is that there are no school personnel around to help.