Welcome to our College Planning Cohort. Whether you are working independently or with students at one of our community-based partners, you are now part of our College Planning Cohort Program. Our online classroom shares the same college planning guidance, no matter where students are participating. Before you take the Welcome to the Cohort Survey, we would like to share two videos of a parent and 3 students discussing the impact of their participation in our program on their college trajectories.

Viewing the two videos shared in this unit is not a prerequisite for completing the Welcome to the Cohort Survey, however, we believe that the comments made by the parent and students provide important insight into the types of possible outcomes that any student may achieve by engaging in the activities and incorporating the strategies into their college planning.

In the first video, Kristen Starks, a 2018 participant in the Guilford County Schools First Generation Ambassadors Cohort and first-year student (on full scholarship) at the University of Richmond, and her mother, Pastor Shandi Starks of the World Victory International Christian Center in Greensboro, North Carolina, provide insight into the process and the collaborative nature of our program.

We believe that collaboration between students, parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, and community-based partners can have a significant impact on students’ college admissions and scholarship outcomes. Kristen’s journey to being offered admission to 18 colleges, including the University of Richmond, Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst, Duke, Wake Forest, Baylor, Tuskegee, and Davidson; and being offered full merit-based scholarships to Tuskegee, the University of Richmond, and Wake Forest, represents the outcomes that are possible when everyone is pulling for, and vested in student success.

In the second video, Sam Patterson, second-year University of Maryland-Baltimore County student and Meyerhoff Scholar, and Loren Tsang, 2018 cohort and first-year Williams College student, talk about how their parents enrolled them in our program and the impact on their college admissions journey into two distinctively different, but great colleges.

Take your time and carefully read, and answer, each of the survey questions. Click here to begin the survey…  so that we may know who you are as as we begin our collaboration for the important work ahead.