Article by Phoenix writer Grace Garcia ’23:
On Wednesday, September 29th, Kellenberg hosted a Virtual College Night for junior students and their parents. The online webinar from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM provided juniors with information about college admissions. This event was presented by Miss Ronan, Mrs. Marconi, Ms. Gulmi, Mr. Dugal, Mrs. Strauss, and Mr. Tahany.
“College night was very informative, and it was comforting to feel the support from the teachers presenting,” Junior Lianne Chu shared. “I think it was very good at guiding the juniors.”
The night started with a greeting from Miss. Ronan. She then transitioned into explaining what was in the blue folder that the juniors received in homeroom that morning. There were invaluable tools in the folder, ranging from guides to reference sheets, but Miss Ronan drew the students’ attention towards a card with a registration code for Naviance, directions for how to log onto the site, and information about the Reserve Officers Training Course, otherwise known as ROTC.
Next, Mrs. Marconi featured a few books which describe the college application process, notably “Excellent Sheep” by William Deresiewicz, “Who Gets In And Why” by Jeffrey Selingo, and “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” by Frank Bruni.
Miss Ronan followed with a presentation about what juniors should be doing right now to prepare for college, for example, keeping their grades as high as possible, forming relationships with teachers who might write letters of recommendation, preparing for standardized tests, and researching colleges of interest.
Miss Ronan elaborated on the SAT and ACT exams, mentioning some important dates and explaining the test-optional, test-mandatory, or test-blind scenarios. If a college is test-optional, the college doesn’t look into your SAT and ACT scores unless you would like. On the contrary, some test-mandatory schools require your scores submitted to them and other test-blind schools pass up on that idea.
Ms. Gulmi talked about what to do when visiting colleges, such as taking pictures, and asking questions. Ms. Gulmi also covered Demonstrated Interest, which is how colleges assess how interested a student is in attending their school. Even simply opening emails from colleges can show them a student’s interest. Finally Ms. Gulmi recommended that students take advantage of interest and request an interview with a college.
Miss Ronan returned to discuss military academies, ROTC, and when to start applying for those. In addition, she spoke about the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and what to do if interested in participating in college sports.
Miss Ronan concluded by suggesting students ask themselves, “Do you want to go to a local college, or do you want to go out of state?” and, “Do you want to go to a big school or a small school?”
The Virtual College Night was an excellent presentation to help orient students and their parents through what can be a very intimidating and confusing process when choosing a college.
