Jackson Reed - Guidance in college planning process?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having put 2 kids through the J-R process and with a rising Sr now, my best advice is the process must be self driven. There is no hand-holding and no one who can spend significant time helping your child identify schools. DCPS limited approved absent days for college visits to 2 per year, so if you want to make a number of visits, plan accordingly.

Many schools do visit the school, but again, getting excused absences to attend those sessions takes some planning, and often kids don't want to miss too many classes to go to all of the sessions.

Naviance is a good resource. Learn how to use it early on. Also, the common app is open the summer before senior year, so the more you can fill out before classes start, the better off your kid will be.

Good luck.

Naviance is just OK; much better for a family to talk to a competent humans about college counseling. JR only has one college counselor for the entire junior class and two for the seniors. This is why so many parents pay for counseling, or become their kid's counselor themselves if they have the savvy or can build it through research.

[Anonymous]

Transplant_1 wrote:I was wondering, what / how Jackson Reed does in terms of working with studens in the college planning process? Are there college fairs, do colleges visit for information sessions? Are there parent events? student events? Information sessions? Etc.

I see a lot in DCUMs about curriculum, grading, assessment scores, etc. But not about the college planning process. - Thank you in advance.

Three years ago, my DS was invited to a 2-day college planing workshop at JR where they brought in people to coach them on interviewing, picking colleges, writing resumes and identifying their interests. He came home with a completed common application (minus the essays) and a lot more confidence in the process. It set him up really well to get everything in on time and decide where to apply. Unfortunately it was a one-off program. I never heard of them doing it again. I think the PTA funded it.

[Transplant_1]

Thank you -- this is helpful. I know that there are extremely large counselor to student ratios, across all schools nationwide. So wasn't expecting too much personal touch. But was wondering if at least there were strong informational processes in place. It is good to know the extent to which there is or isn't. To those interested, I posted this same question in the MCPS forum. You may be interested in reading there as well: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1138369.page