College Week: Simple Activities for Small and Rural Schools

Happy October!  Since my school is on a short break, I wanted to pop in and share an event that my small college preparatory private school held about two weeks ago.  First, before you read this post, let me share a little background about my school. About three years, I was hired as the director of college admissions and counselor for a small, rural private school.  At this school, I was informed that it has a proud history of 100% college admissions and it is the expectation of the director to continue that tradition (NO PRESSURE, right?!).  I realized very early on that the students, even though they were going off to college, had a limited college focus and many of the students never left the state. So, I decided that my job was not to get them into college, but help them expand their focus. 

Since I work at a small private school, I had a lot of limitations.  First, I had no budget for this event and was told that I was on my own getting materials.  Second, I am the only counselor so I that means I was a one woman team. Third, I had to get this all together during early application time, which means working after school to put it together. So, if you are like me and have no to little resources, you are by yourself, and you are slammed during the day, you may realize that a starting a small college week event is totally okay.  Sometimes, I get really down when I look at the bigger schools that have elaborate events, but I have to remind myself that I am just one person.  So, be kind to yourself, especially if this is you right now.

Okay, here is what I did for college week... please don't judge!

During the month of September, I began my college indoctrination program. (evil laugh).  First, I coordinated a college week for our upper school.  

Step 1: The week before, I asked our senior homeroom teachers to give to each senior a pennant with instructions on how to decorate them for college week. 

Step 2: Next, I sent out a "Ask Me About My College" sign for staff members to display on their on their door (some go all out with elaborate decorations and some are just content with the sign on their door). 

Step 3: During the week, we all wore our college swag (the teachers loved this because they got to wear jeans during the week). 

Step 4: In addition to these activities, I scheduled several unknown colleges to a lunchroom visit that the students had never heard about before.  Although a lot of the seniors were disinterested, many of my sophomores and juniors stopped by to see them. 

Step 5: Then, at the end of the week, I had a college photo booth for my seniors.  According to their college choices, I created hand-held photo booth college logos for them to hold up and display and I took photos of them to share on social media. 

  My next focus was on the juniors. 

Step 6: Each year, one of our local public high schools in our county sponsors a college fair.  I contacted the high school and asked if our school could attend and I was so happy to they allowed us to come.  Our juniors know that college is on their future radar, but honestly, many of them only have list of well, just one. Therefore, I felt it was important to expose them to as many different in-state and out-of-state colleges as possible.  Here is some of the prep work before we attended the college fair:

1. I gave the students of list of attending colleges.

2. I provided the students with a list of college questions to ask.

3. At the end of the fair, I asked students for their top five colleges that they wanted to visit our school.  Some of them even asked for different schools!!

4. The day after the fair, I had a student create and put flyers on the student lockers regarding their next steps for college admissions.

So, there you have it.  A small, but somewhat effective college week.  Now, if you want to go BIG, here are some resources I think will help you pull off a bigger event.  Below are resources for conducting a college application week for your students. Also, I am sharing some of the resources I created for my college week on TPT.

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I would love for you to share what you are doing at your school as well!!

Additional Resources

Are are you thinking about hosting an event?  Here are some resources you might want to pursue to help you create your own event.

Consider becoming a college application specialist with ASCA. 

ASCA College Admissions Specialist - Syllabus

Application Week for Seniors

American College Application Campaign - Great resource with letters, forms, and resources.

10 Ways to Build Excitement for College Applications from ACT 

College App Week Coordinator Planning Guide

Need to see a counselor who has done a great job putting an event together?  Check out Counselor Clique. 

College Application Day Ideas - Counselor Clique

Advertising Colleges Coming to Your School

Slate.org College Visits

For my Georgia Counselors

GA Futures - Host an Event in Georgia