The University of Arizona has established two programs to help high school students prepare for the college experience. They are welcoming high school sophomores and seniors to a summer program that provides them with valuable information about the university and about building a foundation to help students succeed once they graduate high school and enter college.
The 2-day senior program is focused around admissions and acquainting students with the various majors available. The week-long sophomore program is focused around teaching students how to build a foundation for academic success.
According to University of Arizona academic advisors:
Minimally, families should be planning for college as early as 8th grade, when many academic decisions with long-term consequences are made. Course planning for the freshman year often begins early to mid-spring semester of the eighth grade year, and it is important that parents and school personnel help young students design a plan for college enrollment beginning then.
This program gives students a helping hand. This program was implemented after a 2007 pilot study showed that “addressing the transition barrier between high school and college was a critical point needed to help raise high school graduation levels and college enrollment”.
Hopefully other colleges will follow suit and implement these transitional programs. A student who is prepared and armed with the tools to succeed will be less likely to enter college overwhelmed and be less likely to drop out or fail.
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Let’s face it. Those students who have some sort of test prep prior to taking the SAT and/or ACT tend to do better. There are always those Type A parents that shell out hundreds and thousands of dollars to get their teens ready for test day. Those programs are available to anyone, but what about the rest of us who can’t afford that added expense because we’re scraping together all our extra pennies saving for college?