Oak Hill School offers college counseling to all of our high school students. Since we opened, all of our graduates have been eligible, and nearly 100% have been accepted and gone on to attend four year colleges and universities. Many have been awarded substantial scholarships. Colleges that our students have chosen to attend include Harvey Mudd, Purdue, Pitzer, University of Puget Sound, Reed, Carleton, Colorado College, University of Washington, The Pratt Institute, Middlebury, Case Western, Willamette, University of Oregon, University of Colorado, University of California, University of Seattle, University of San Diego, and the list goes on.
The Process at a Glance
Beginning this year, all high school students, even the freshmen, will meet with me, the college counselor, so I can begin to discover their strengths and interests, and encourage them to begin to think about where they might like to apply. We will be offering trips to visit colleges, and encourage all high school students to join these journeys. While most other schools focus their college counseling on juniors and seniors, I have found that by including the younger students in the process many become super motivated academically because they have set their sights on a particular college. In the past I have taken Oak Hill students to schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California. On these trips we try to visit a variety of schools; schools that are very large, very small, and somewhere in between. We will go to urban schools, and suburban schools, liberal arts colleges and engineering schools. My goal is to help students learn to assess what is important to them about their future college experience, as well as to expose them to colleges, and parts of the country, with which they may not be familiar.
Everyone knows that part of college applications are SAT exams. We start preparing Oak Hill students for these exams by having the freshmen and sophomores, as well as the juniors, take the yearly PSAT exam. We feel that this allows our students to enter the PSAT exam in their junior year confident and comfortable with the exam. The scores for the junior year PSAT are used to determine National Merit Scholars, a program that not only offers students money for college, but also gives these scholars an advantage in their college applications. We would like to give our students the best chance possible of achieving National Merit status. The first round of the SAT exams takes place during the spring months of a student’s junior year, and may continue through the autumn of their senior year, depending on the scores they achieve.
Junior year is the time for students to develop the list of schools to which they will apply. Usually this list should include a few schools that they would be thrilled to attend, but which they think they may not strong enough to gain admission. The list should also include several schools that they feel pretty confident they could get in, and a few that are “safety” schools – colleges that they know absolutely would be thrilled to get them.
Summer between junior and senior year the students spend researching colleges and writing drafts of their application essays. Thankfully, more and more colleges are using the Common Application, which streamlines the process. Financial Aid (FAFSA) applications need to be completed in the Winter of senior year. Applications for those students who wish to consider Early Decision or Early Action at a particular college are due in the late fall. Most other applications are due around the first week in January. Early Decision/Early Action candidates generally hear back from their colleges in mid December, allowing them time to get in their other applications if they find they were not chosen. By the first week in April, almost every college has contacted their applicants, and our students know where they have been accepted. Many times our students find they have been accepted to more than one college, and spend time in April visiting those and making their decision. And then, it’s time to celebrate, and perhaps to order a t-shirt from their new college and wear it proudly!
