Financial Aid and Scholarship Presentations for Sophomores in Health Classes

This week I am visiting sophomores in their health classes to talk about financial aid and scholarships in planning for college as a follow up discussion to the presentation that the counselors had with sophomores on college and career planning in World History classes a couple of weeks ago.

My presentation is a brief 30 minute introduction on scholarships and financial aid, including; institutional scholarships, financial aid, and private scholarships.  Many students do not know that about 39% of college aid comes from the institution, 40% of college aid come from federal aid, 13% comes from private scholarships and 8% comes from the state.

We used Naviance Family Connections to complete a scholarship search based on the colleges they were interested in when meeting with their counselors.  (The sophomores learned how to navigate Naviance Family Connections with their counselors, so I hope this was more good practice.)

We briefly discussed financial aid and the different types of aid a student can receive, including grants, loans and work study.

Naviance Family Connections also has a great scholarships search engine, Sallie Mae, where the students started searching for private scholarships based on their interests.

Last but not least, Family Connections has a wonderful resume template tool.  We all started building resumes that they can continue to build throughout their high school career.  The resume tool will help them track their student involvement actives and accomplishments throughout high school.  It will help them when applying to college and scholarships down the road.

It is never to early to start applying for scholarships or planning for the costs of college.  Please feel free to make a 1:1 appointment with me to learn about these opportunities.

Happy Holidays!

Thank you,
Heather Briley
Scholarship Advisor, PCHS
hbriley@pcschools.us
435-645-5650 ext. 2085

Sophomore College and Career Readiness and ACT Plan scores distributed

Last week, counselors visited sophomores in World History classes to start the process of 10th grade college and career planning as well as to distribute and explain the ACT Plan test results.

This was a two day event where students explored possible career pathways on day one using career assessments and on day two students discovered colleges that would help them prepare for the careers they researched by learning to use the new Family Connections program by Naviance.  Stay tuned for more info on our new Naviance program and please ask your student to show you what they did in class!

Counselors will be meeting with every sophomore student individually this winter for their College and Career Readiness meetings.

Sophomores who took the ACT Plan test have been given their score results which will give them a projected ACT score, help them to start thinking about studying for the ACT, discover what classes they should be taking to get ready for college, and investigate possible career interests.

Students were given a booklet "Using your PLAN results".  Please use this guide to go through their answer folder.  This is a very important piece of information that can help students prepare for future ACT exams.  You may also visit: www.planstudent.org for more information.

We look forward to working more with the sophomores in the coming months!  

Happy Holidays!