College Counseling
July letter to Juniors and Families about college counseling
Dear Juniors and Families,
Junior year is an exciting time. It is a time of taking on leadership roles, making the most of all of your resources and opportunities, as well as looking ahead to college options.
Built into the academic year are several steps that help students to be appropriately prepared for the college search and application process. In October, all juniors will take the PSAT test (this is a practice SAT test and only the student, the families and the college counselor will see these scores). I will register everyone for this test.
Putney School does not offer test prep in general, however there are test preparation books and software available from Amazon.com and Collegeboard.com. In the fall of the senior year and often in the spring of junior year, Kaplan comes to campus to offer a test prep course. The Kaplan course involves as many as six hours of class a week plus homework, and is very hard in the already intense Putney schedule. While for some this option does help increase test scores, I recommend that students do any test preparation during summer and vacations if at all possible. Juniors will also receive the practice PSAT test published by the College Board as part of its fall outreach program.
Preliminary visits to colleges are recommended as early as the first semester break (October 25-29) that follows the fall Parent Weekend. More focused visits in the spring and summer of 2009 are helped by having already been on some college campuses and learning what can be gleaned from a few hours of imagining oneself there as a student. As a general guide, think of visiting a large campus and a small one, a city campus and a rural or suburban one – and for some, an art school or conservatory and a liberal arts college with a strong program in art/music, or an engineering school and a liberal arts college with strong math/science/engineering.
Beginning in January, all juniors meet with the College Counselor in groups for a mini-course called College Planning. The spring portion of the mini-course covers the application process in general and its constituent parts; we register for the ACT and the SAT tests that take place in April and May respectively, we practice interviewing, we discuss how to most effectively use the many resources, we assuage fears and build excitement about the opportunities ahead. Juniors will also be required to meet with me individually to discuss their own specific college search. The notes from some of our group meetings can be found on the Putney website (start at The Putney School’s homepage and select College Counseling on the “Quick Links” menu). There will also be an email update to parents of the class of 2010 in February with additional material (please keep our office posted regarding any email changes). The second half of this course (which covers the logistics of the college application process) meets during the fall of senior year.
While the College Office works almost exclusively with seniors during the fall because of the demanding application schedules, we are glad to answer urgent questions from younger students and their families. Please contact us at 802-387-6227 or via email at jdesmaisons@putneyschool.org.
Sincerely,
Jennifer DesMaisons
Director of College Counseling
