Planning for college should not begin in January of the junior year of high school. Students should meet with their guidance counselors as freshmen to begin to discuss college preparatory courses, the timing of standardized exams, and opportunities for extracurricular involvement. As educational consultants, we often meet with high school juniors and seniors who could have put themselves in a more advantageous position by beginning to really plan for college a few years early.
Take a look at this timeline overview so that your student can begin NOW to access the multitude of opportunities available to make him/herself a more competitive college applicant: Overview of College Planning for grades 9-12
Our consultants can best help students by beginning to work with them at some point in the junior year. We will help them critically examine what they have done (their achievements) and what they like to do or want to do (their interests) in the context of planning for and researching appropriate colleges for them.
We can, of course, also help the "late bloomer" who may be coming to the college process a little later than his/her peers. And we have even successfully helped students who decided after their high school graduation that they wanted to explore college options.
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