June College Readiness Tips for Teachers and College Advocates 2

Summer is coming, and college readiness does not stop for your students, especially those entering their senior years and going off to college. Here are some tips for ending the school year and helping you and your students use their summers well.

1. Remember, college students are back in town. Ask current college students who are just now returning for the summer to speak at your school before school ends.

• Have them speak with different grades and share real life examples of how they prepared for college and what college life is actually like. They can bring pictures to show.
• Videotape them while they are there. Get short video clips of different kinds of advice. Post these tips on your website.
• Get them to write tips to share with your students on various topics—active engagement in high school, how to write great application essays, how to survive your first few weeks of college, etc.
• Ask them to mentor students with great potential and who could go to the same kinds of colleges.

2. Invite college admissions officers to visit your campus. It’s not too late. June is a quiet time on most college campuses, so you can ask them to visit your school as long as no one has asked them so far.

• Since most college admissions representatives are already booked for fall visits, call and see if they have any time now to come in and speak with your juniors and even interested freshmen and sophomores.
• They are very interested in speaking to first generation and other under-represented students. You can find their names on college admissions websites.
• Think of public and private colleges in your area.
• Also many out of state colleges have representatives in your area.
• If you need suggestions, email us for some colleges to contact.
• Make sure you invite students from other classes to attend

3. Build in college readiness lessons and workshops for your end of year lessons.

• Share real college admissions applications
• Have students develop a resume.
• Prepare activities for kids going off to four year colleges, attending community colleges, and preparing for senior year.—paying for college, finding scholarships, visiting colleges for free, beginning their application essays.

4.  Let kids know that many colleges will pay for them to visit during the fall. These visits are called fly-ins and are competitive. Many deadlines are in the late summer. We have attached last year’s list. We will email you the updated list later this summer. But kids who are interested in a particular college on the list, can contact them for their current dates.

5. Post information on scholarships.

• Many major scholarships are due in the early fall.
• So kids can begin working on them during the summer. Questbridge, Gates, Dell are some major scholarships.
• Help kids do some scholarship searches in your class or show them a sample application so they can see the kinds of essays they will have to write for a scholarship.
• Here is the Gates Millenium Scholarship application. https://nominations.gmsp.org/GMSP_APP/docs/NomineeForms.pdf

6. Please, please plan some summer workshops for seniors on applying to public and private campuses. Ask two of your colleagues to sponsor a boot camp with you. The Common Application comes on line August 1. Public campuses come out later but you can have students enter grades on CSU mentor and other public sites. You can include workshops on college application essays—We can provide all kinds of materials if you want.

7. Tell your students to be busy this summer. Colleges expect students to use their summers for jobs, internships, volunteer activities, and more. Tell them to contact local non-profits. If your students don’t have a plan, give them some things they can do for you over the summer. They can help you build a website or do other college or class readiness activities.

8. Remind students who are taking the ACT in the fall that the sign up is during the summer. August 12 is the deadline for September 10. If they need a fee waiver, arrange for them now. http://www.actstudent.org/regist/dates.html. They can take the ACT twice for free.