While students are freshmen and sophomores, they get early exposure to college advising with their school counselor and advisory teacher via Family Connection/Naviance. Naviance is college planning software that we have used at Justin-Siena for the last ten years. It offers students career interest surveys, college search tools, and a place to record students' extracurricular activities, awards, and achievements throughout high school. Naviance also offers an amazing database of information on college admissions from Justin-Siena students who have come before them - admissions, denials, and waitlist data. Having access to this data early on is very helpful in getting students to understand how competitive college admissions is but also how successful our students are in being admitted to a broad range of schools.
One-on-one meetings between students and their school counselor draw out conversations about student academic interests and activities in order to begin to make connections between who they are, what they value, and what they might look for in a college experience. Justin-Siena’s college counselors offer an annual college fair that is open to freshmen through seniors in the Spring. Approximately 100 colleges come to campus from around the world each Spring. College counseling also posts local and national opportunities and competitions that students should be aware of - writing contests, internships, college fairs, information sessions, scholarship opportunities, etc.