College Guidance, Preparation, and Success

Center for Student Opportunity has released in the early October a new “College Access & Opportunities Guide” designed to provide a comprehensive guide to first-generation college students. Developed in collaboration with KnowHow2GO, the guide offers financial aid assistance, college program ideas, information about the application process, and critical considerations students need to account for in their college prep. The guide also provides practical questions students should discuss with their guidance counselor and mentors. To learn more, visit http://www.guideorder.csopportunity.org/

With ThroughCollege, BrainReactions conducted a study with the purpose to identify ways to innovate the way college guidance can happen for high school students. Currently the ratio of over 400 high school students for every one school counselor leaves much opportunity for innovation of college guidance: both incremental improvements to the way it is currently done and more innovative solutions which represent significant changes. With advancements in technology and knowledge, there should be opportunities to improve college guidance for students, and this exploratory study sought those ideas.

In the spring of 2008 a second focus group and brainstorm were conducted on the topic of innovating college guidance counseling for high school students. This brainstorm included 7 different idea generators who shared their experiences, their ideas, and their own individual analysis with a survey after the session. The lead researcher and an analyst made meaning of the ideas and individual analysis to identify best ideas for future practice and themes that were important based on the perspectives of the idea generator participants.

This study was conducted as a result of findings from the first study, namely that the opportunity for innovating college guidance involved  helping students to a) discover themselves and what they wanted to do and become, b) utilize the internet (especially Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and resources for college guidance activities, and c) to better engage in the process of college planning with stronger relationships.

The topic areas this second study focused on included more specific idea generating questions. Significant focus group and brainstorming questions posed were:

1. What was your own college guidance experience like?

2. What are the problems with existing college & career guidance for High School students?

3. What could a better and amazing college guidance system feature?

4. How can you help High School students figure out who they are: what their strengths, interests, values, etc. are so that they can make better college and life choices?

5. If there were a new system for college guidance, how could you use the especially the internet to increase awareness about it and get people to use it?

6. How would you increase the amount of high school and college students using a Facebook application and get educators to use this with students?

7. What are ideas for new activities that would help students with their self learning, and preparing for a peak college experience?

This report can be downloaded from the ThroughCollege Educator Resources page.

Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D.

ThroughCollege and BrainReactions conducted a study with the purpose to identify ways to innovate college guidance for high school students. Currently the ratio of over 400 high school students for every one school counselor leaves much opportunity for innovation of college guidance. This includes both incremental improvements to the way it is currently done and more innovative solutions which represent significant changes to how one experiences college guidance in schools. With advancements in technology and knowledge, there are new opportunities to improve college guidance for students, and this exploratory study sought those ideas.

Based on preliminary research, this study focused on the following topic areas:
1. Problems with college guidance for high school students.
2. What a remarkable college guidance system could feature.
3. How school counselors can increase the quantity and quality of college guidance.
4. What college guidance that doesn’t require a counselor could be like.
5. What non-profits or non-school organizations can do to help students with college guidance.
6. How the internet can be utilized for college guidance.

Study Methodology

In late 2007 a focus group and brainstorm were conducted on the topic of innovating college guidance counseling for high school students. This brainstorm included 7 different idea generators who shared their experiences, their ideas, and their own individual analysis with a survey after the session. The lead researcher made meaning of the ideas and individual analysis to identify best ideas for future practice and themes that were important based on the perspectives of the idea generator participants. Four of the participants are undergraduate students, two graduate students, and one recent alumnus. This session was conducted through BrainReactions, an organization that conducts professional brainstorm and innovation sessions with trained idea generators. The session generated approximately 500 ideas. There were six significant topic areas for the session. Results were synthesized with a summary of the themes and most important idea cluster areas for each topic and question.

With additional research it is hoped that the results of this study can provide ideas to enhance college guidance for high school students. You can find the complete report on the ThroughCollege Educator Resources page.

Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D.