Presentation of Learning: The Journey to College Decision Day

April is a big month for high school seniors applying to colleges and universities. Acceptance letters have already arrived, and denials have been mourned. Throughout the month, financial aid packages need reviewing, paperwork needs finalizing, and the top finalist schools may need one last visit. College Decision Day for most colleges and universities is May 1, and that is the deadline for seniors to have made the big decision about where to attend college in the fall.

Laura Kazan, iLEAD Exploration’s intrepid college advisor, seeks to make the journey that ends on College Decision Day a breeze for seniors by offering a junior-level course called College Explorations (no funds required). The idea of the College Exploration course, which is A-G and worth 10 credits, is to spend the 11th grade discovering aptitudes, reflecting on academic readiness, contemplating careers, researching colleges, learning about financial aid and scholarships, calculating UC/CSU GPA, drafting essays learning about application tasks, and much more.

Like most of her college advisor colleagues, Ms. Kazan is passionate about broadening learners’ ideas about what is a “good college.” Many people don’t know that there are nearly 6,000 colleges in the United States alone, well beyond the 25 or so that people brag about at cocktail parties. Ms. Kazan knows there is a school out there for nearly everyone and is on a quest to help our learners find theirs.

One of the projects in her class enlists learners to select five lesser-known colleges to research and present a slideshow for the class to view. The project also prioritizes learning how to work as a group and making use of each group member’s differing skills and aptitudes. Each group spent about a month in their live classes working on this project, which needed to include the following:

• One research university
• One small liberal arts college
• Three different specialty colleges (STEM, art, conservatory, HBCU, faith-based, single gender, military, alternative, foreign). See JAM Board below for the choices:

Please enjoy the exemplary presentations from the 2023-24 College Explorations classes. You will surely learn about several colleges you have never heard of before. As one of these presentations promises, they will “guide you through the twists and turns of picking your dream school.”

• Room 2’s Course College Research Slideshow
• College Research Tracker
• College Research Project
• College Research Group Project
• What College is Right For Me?
• What’s My Type of College?
• What’s My Type… of College?
• What’s My Type Of College?
• College Research

Attention, 10th Graders: Check out the schedule for College Explorations 2024-2025, and contact your EF to sign up!