From the desk of Celia Tucker, Academic Counselor:

Next week is College Emphasis Week at Brook Hill. We will have early morning  informal “Coffee and College” meetings with 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grade parents, a College Kick Off evening with 11^th grade students and parents, a Mini College Fair in the Library on Tuesday during Campus Life with many representatives on campus, host Dr. Mark Jones as a guest speaker during Senior Seminar, and shed a tear as seniors attend a Jostens’s cap and gown presentation at the end of the week. The East Texas Area College Fair will also be on the Tyler Junior College campus next Tuesday evening from 6:00-8:00 and we encourage students and parents to go and ask questions and collect information from colleges they are interested in pursuing.

I think that the word aware is a perfect word when we think about  the college application process. Being aware early, early, early on  that colleges will require an application, SAT or ACT scores, an official transcript with coursework, semester grades and overall GPA, essays, letters of recommendation, and a listing of your extracurricular activities, job experience, and volunteer work  will allow you to plan ahead so as to make the application process enjoyable instead of stressful. Wonderful practical advice from seniors would be to challenge yourself in the classroom and make good grades in those challenging courses; visit college campuses because being on the campus can be very different from a virtual tour;  read, read, read, and write, write, write, so that taking standardized tests and writing essays will not be new to you; and keep a list of your extracurricular activities each year because it is hard to go back and remember in 12^th grade what you did in 9^th grade.

Seniors are wise…

…and very aware.