Stevie Klein ’12
News Editor
Junior year brings SATs, ACTs, AP courses and college visits.
But even with all this college-related stress, juniors are not permitted to attend college representative visits in the College and Career Center.
All seniors are allowed to attend these college visits, as long as they have a signed pass from a teacher. But juniors do not have this privilege and cannot miss class for these visits.
“We need experience and to know what’s ahead of us, it is too overwhelming to only go senior year,” Olivia Hammer ’12 said.
Caroline Perry ’12 agrees.
“It is too late to start hearing about the colleges next year because that is when we are already applying,” she said.
However, the reason that juniors are not allowed to attend college visits is because the counselors believe it is too early for them.
“We want [juniors] to focus on school, not just college. It’s a little premature,” said College and Career Center Co-Coordinator Susan Fugitt.
She said there is a college fair in the spring, which is the appropriate time for juniors to start focusing on and looking at colleges.
English 6-12 Coordinator Lisabeth Comm is of the same mind as Fugitt and believes that the importance of junior year rests with the classes.
“The most important thing junior year is to build a good transcript to get into college,” Comm said. “If you spend so much time looking at colleges, you miss out on learning.”
Since students just need a signed pass, teachers worry that students will just go to get out of class.
“Students come with a pass to sign, you have to let them go, but it’s definitely suspicious sometimes,” said Social Studies 6-12 Coordinator James D’Amico. “You get a sense of where they are applying, and are maybe even writing their letters of recommendation, so you know when they are going to a visit that is probably just to miss class.”
Math teacher Sarah White also knows when the visit is a little suspicious.
“I teach a low level class, so when the student asks me to sign a pass to go to Harvard, that is a little weird. But you never know, they might be superstars across the board besides math,” White said.
Although White says that the face-to-face time with the college admissions officers is important, she also thinks that a limit on how many visits each student can attend would be a good compromise.
“It would make sense to put a limit on the amount of presentations a student can go to. Definitely not more than ten; they are not applying to 60 schools,” White said.
However, nothing is changing about this process as of right now. In springtime, juniors can visit the college fair and begin their college process.