Freshmen Year: Preparing for College

Planning for college early can help ensure students are ready come graduation.

Freshmen year:

Freshmen year is a good time to start to work on a plan that leads them through high school into college. Course selection and performance is the main focus freshmen year.

Students should focus on improving skills, like reading. Studies have shown a direct correlation to college readiness and reading habits. Sophisticated reading habits are a necessary foundation for college-level writing, research, class participation, and many other college experiences.

As Kimberly B. Pyne points out in Reading and College Readiness; Developing strong reader identities and practicing thoughtful, transferable reading skills across the disciplines are important components of any pre-college curriculum, but they are especially crucial for low-income, first-generation students whose college completion rates are much lower than those of their middle-income peers (Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 2010; Carey, 2008). The summer after freshmen year is a good time to read as many books as possible to hone these skills.

Also, students usually start to think about what types of schools they are interested in based on schools they are exposed to, this is a great time to begin informal college tours of local colleges that don't require lots of planning or budgeting to execute. Students need to know early on not all schools are the same, nor do they all offer the same programs, areas of study, or experiences.

Freshmen year is a hard point to get students to envision themselves as college students but they should understand that everything they do should be geared towards getting them one step closer to this goal.

Come back next week to see what students can do in their sophomore year to prepare for college.