What do you want to be someday?

This past week I had a "question of the day" in my office for students asking about their memories of when they were little and what they had wanted to be someday when they grew up. I heard lots of unique answers - astronaut, professional athlete, teacher, nurse, doctor, actress and more. It's fun to dream about what you'll be some day when you are little. When you hit high school, those dreams can start to feel like pressure. And we definitely don't want that to be the case!

Yes, of course, as you hit high school, it is important to start considering your future goals and dreams. But we would encourage you to think of it more as a hypothesis... something you can test out and compare to the facts and see if it continues to hold true. And, at the same time, to know that it is ok to have an idea for now about what you think you'd like to do, but that as time continues moving forward and you learn more about yourself, the world, and careers available to you, that it is also ok to change your mind and adjust your goals. Just like from when you were little to today and your ideas about what you wanted to be when you grow up.

There are lots of opportunities and experiences that we put in front of you to help you explore options so that you can test out various ideas to find those which fit you best. This week happens to be important dates for several career related items.

1. All freshmen will complete your YouScience career aptitude assessments during your core classes at school on Tuesday. This is a great opportunity to learn more about yourself, your own personal strengths, and how you can potentially leverage your strengths into areas of interest and passion for your future careers.
2. All sophomores who are interested in attending the Delaware Area Career Center field trip have until Thursday to sign up using the link on the handout from DACC and to fill out and return your completed signed permission slip. If you have lost your copy of the permission slip handout, please stop by the counseling center as there are extra copies available on the black shelves on the left of the front lobby in the counseling center.
3. Juniors and Seniors are invited to TWHS at 6pm on Wednesday night for the Pre-Apprenticeship night presentation. This will give you and your parents information about getting involved with the various programs Worthington has partnerships with for current high school students.
4. And, finally, all 10th through 12th graders are invited to take the ASVAB which is the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. While this is a test that the military uses similar to the ACT, it is also a helpful career assessment even for those students who are not interested in a career in the military. Additionally, please know that earning a high enough score on the ASVAB can be a replacement option for one of the honors diploma categories for students who have that as a personal goal. The ASVAB will be offered at WKHS on Friday, October 23rd so students are encouraged to register to take the test this week if you are interested.

So if you are a student thinking, "I have no clue what I want to do some day" know that is totally ok and try to take advantage of some of these opportunities to start exploring ideas and see what jobs are of more or less interest to you and you can gradually start narrowing your search down to areas that appeal to you most.

Net Price Calculator

Yesterday several of the counselors were out of the building for a meeting about Financial Aid. My head is still swimming with information that they shared, but I want to remind students of every grade about the benefits of using the Net Price Calculator.

Every college features a net price calculator on their website. This requirement is in an effort to help provide students and parents with the information needed to make more informed decisions and choices about what they can expect to pay for a college education at each school. Now, I will forewarn you that not every net price calculator is the same and some are more detailed than others. Why does this matter? Well, if it is very specific and takes all of the different factors into consideration that the financial aid office will be looking at when creating your financial aid package, then you are likely to get a better picture of what your estimated aid might be, but if it is a more simplistic calculator then there could be more variance when compared to your actual aid package. Plus, of course, the accuracy of the information that you submit will determine the accuracy of the information that you receive back.

Without a doubt, college is very expensive and so trying to figure out the best ways to be able to finance your education is an important factor to consider in your college search and selection process. We hope this tool will be useful to you as you investigate schools.

Don't forget, tomorrow from 1-3pm is the Columbus Suburban College Fair at Otterbein University. It's a great opportunity to meet with a lot of college admissions professionals in a short period of time!

Schedule a Campus Visit

We have a long weekend coming up next weekend as all students have Friday October 16th off from school. And then a few weeks later, you also have Tuesday, November 3rd off of school for election day. Why am I pointing that out today? Because those are two GREAT days to consider making visits to colleges for students in every grade!

Both of the days that we are off, the colleges will be in session which means you don't have to worry about missing out on school content AND you get to visit the colleges while students are on campus. This is a win-win opportunity for students and families because making college visits while classes are in session gives you a more accurate feel for campus life, learning experiences, and how you could possibly picture yourself (or not) at that college in the future.

Even if you are thinking that you want to go to colleges that are far away and can't make a trip on such short notice to visit them with these two days off, I'd suggest you spend some time at local area colleges. In central Ohio we are lucky that there are so many schools within a very short drive that you can visit. Why would you visit a college that you're not particularly interested in attending? Because it will help you to gain insight and awareness into what opportunities are available to you on campuses, it will make you a smarter consumer when you go to visit your top choice colleges, and you just might be surprised and you could even fall in love with a school you didn't think would be a fit for you.

If you want to make a college visit on October 16th or on November 3rd, we strongly encourage that students talk to your parents about what your plan would be and then the students should contact the colleges to set up the visit including the admissions office information session and the campus tour.

Juniors Planning for College Night

Next week, on Wednesday, October 14th the WKHS Counseling department will be hosting a Student and Parent College Planning Information Night. Historically, this presentation has received some of the best feedback out of all of the information nights we host. The students and parents who attended this meeting in the past have expressed how much this helped them get started and move forward with the college search process and developed a better understanding of what to expect along the way. The meeting is primarily targeted at juniors, but sophomores and freshmen are welcome to attend if interested. The meeting will take place at 7:00pm in the Auditorium.

We hope you will plan to attend! And yes, we want you to bring your parents to this meeting and no, we don't want you to just send your parents instead... this is YOUR future and you are responsible for deciding what direction you will take. Please RSVP so we know how many people to expect.

Next Week Senior Events

We have 2 events that primarily target seniors happening next week.

The first is a College Application Completion Workshop on Monday evening, October 12th from 5-6:30 in the WKHS "fishbowl" counseling center conference room. This is a great time for you to come together with your other friends and work on your own college applications with the support of the counselors. Need us to help read through your essay, no problem! Want to ask questions about your activities, we're right there. Not sure how to invite your counselor and request your transcript, we will guide you through it all step by step. If you haven't already completed and submitted your applications, this is a helpful chance to make some real progress on finishing up your application before the deadlines.

The second event will take place on Wednesday evening, October 14th at 6pm at TWHS. This night is the Pre-Apprenticeship Information Session. This is a districtwide presentation and so the meeting rotates between WKHS and TWHS each year and this year it will be held at TWHS. During this evening, each of the Worthington Pre-Apprenticeship partners will spend a little bit of time explaining to students and your parents/ guardians about their companies, what they do, what the opportunities are for participating in a pre-apprenticeship with their organization, and details about what your schedule would look like, if it is paid or not, and opportunities for careers in the future. The partners who will be presenting include: Worthington Enterprises, Worthington Steel, Independent Electrical Contractors, Hamilton Parker and Performance Columbus.

We do ask that you register so that the pre-apprenticeship partners who will be coming to present know how many people to expect and so that we can get you information on where to go when you arrive at TWHS for the presentation. The RSVP link is available on the Counselor Website. Additionally, while the pre-apprenticeship experiences are for seniors, younger students are also invited to attend the presentation to begin the process of learning more.

Parent/ Teacher Conferences

Parents, if you are interested in arranging to meet with one of your son or daughter’s teachers during conferences, the online system opened today for you to register for a meeting slot. Conferences will be scheduled as people sign up for them, so if you want to make sure you have times that work well for you, we strongly encourage you to register right away.

Conferences will be held on Monday, October 12th from 4:00 - 7:30pm and on Wednesday, October 14th from 5:00 - 8:40pm. Each conference will be scheduled in 15 minute time blocks. Conferences allow parents the chance to learn about your student’s classroom performance from the teachers, it allows the opportunity for you to ask questions and they provide an opportunity to build a dialogue with the teachers regarding any thoughts and concerns you might have.

Please follow the steps below to register for a parent/ teacher conference:

- Follow this link to take you to the conference scheduler:  http://ptcfast.com/schools/Worthington_Kilbourne_High_School 

-  Click on the teacher you would like to meet with for a conference.

-  Sign up by entering your child's last name, first name, your name and your e-mail address and then click Submit.

-  The next screen will direct you to check your e-mail inbox for a message with the subject "Select Date/ Team for Teacher Conference Now."

-  Open the e-mail and click on the link to select a conference time.  If you do not receive an e-mail, please check your junk/ spam folder.  Please note, you MUST follow the link in the e-mail in order to complete the sign-up process.

-  The link will take you to a Time Picker.  Available time slots will appear on this page.  If there are no available appointments that suit your schedule, please e-mail the teacher directly to set up an alternate meeting time.

-  After submitting your time slot, you will be prompted to finish, schedule another appointment for the same student or register another student.  Once you have completed your reservations, you will receive an e-mail confirming the date and time of your conferences and a link by which you can make changes to your date or time if you need to do so.

If you have any problems using the online conference registration system, please contact Caitlin Stead at WKHS. She can be reached by e-mail at cstead@wscloud.org or by phone at 614-450-6400.

Columbus Suburban College Fair

The Columbus Suburban College Fair is coming up on Sunday, October 11th from 1:00 - 3:00pm at Otterbein University in the Clements Center (180 Center St., Westerville, OH 43081). This is the largest local fall college fair and a great opportunity for all of our students - grades 9-12.

College fairs give you a chance to meet with admissions representatives in person. They are all gathered together in one place in order to meet you and to answer your questions. Many schools also keep track of the number of interactions/ meetings you have with their admissions representatives during your search and application process so that they can gauge your interest level in their school.
Be prepared before you get to the college fair. Know that there will be far more schools than you are interested in or can even truly take in during one afternoon, so it is useful to come up with a list of colleges that you would be interested in learning more about by doing a search that looks for different criteria that seems to be a good fit for you. With that list in hand you now have a starting point for the colleges that you would like to talk to during the fair.

All students are asked to register with Strive Scan by visiting www.strivefair.com because this will allow for you to have a bar code specific to you. Then, when you are at the college fair next weekend and you talk to a college that interests you, they can simply scan your barcode and that will allow the college to know of your interest. I promise you, this is a MAJOR improvement over the days when students had to hand write out interest cards at each college table.

I encourage you to check out the Columbus Suburban College Fair information on the front page of the WKHS Counselor website for more information about this year's event.

A few other hints:

It can be useful to ask the same questions of each college so that you can compare them and their responses appropriately and we encourage you to consider thinking about the questions you most want to know about the school and can’t find in a brochure or on their website. Everyone is different so your questions are going to be different depending upon your interests, but if you are really interested in playing a club sport in college, you might want to ask about their club/ intramural program and the numbers of students that participate. You may want to ask what the top 2 or 3 majors are on campus as that will give you an idea of what most of the students are interested in studying. If you are undecided about what you would like to study, it would be a great idea to ask them what support and services are available to help students in exploring different majors.

Take something with you to be able to jot some notes on - I suggest a pen or pencil over a phone because even though your phones are amazing for the notes app, the impression it may give to colleges is that you're not engaged in what is happening and are side tracked and paying attention to your phone instead. It is a crazy event with so much happening, so if you don’t write it down as you go you won’t remember much after the fact. The admissions representatives are giving you a small look of the college – what do you think following each glimpse?

When you are walking through the college fair with the list of schools that you want to talk to, don’t forget to leave some time for browsing – you may realize that a school you had not previously considered has just what you are looking for in a college. It can be easy for us to get caught in the cycle of only looking at specific schools because that is what “everyone” else is considering.

Ideally, you will be able to avoid getting caught up in the crowds and confusion so that you don’t walk away from the college fair with a lot of brochures, but no real ideas or impressions about which colleges most interest you. At the end of the college fair you will likely have a bag filled with information about colleges. One of the best college fair articles suggested, “Don’t succumb to the temptation of just piling all those brochures in some obscure corner of your bedroom. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a day or two away from the college search. Then get out all of those brochures, along with the notes you took at the fair, and read through them. You may find that some colleges aren’t as interesting as you first thought. Others only look better the more you research them.”

If you have never been to a college fair before, I admit that it often feels like mass chaos. But it is also the opportunity for you to gain a lot of useful information from a large number of schools in a short period of time. Good luck and happy college searching… we can’t wait to hear about the schools that spark your interest!