Hello Sibley/Campbell Family,
This Year Is Quickly Coming To An End. But it's NEVER TOO LATE to learn something new or aspire towards your dreams. Andrea "KiKi" McPhail is our Blog Contributor for November. Become inspired with her life-changing comments and references for you and your children on "Promoting Education Within The Family"... Please sign-up to join our blog community and feel free to post your comments or thoughts to our monthly blogs. They're truly wonderful and encouraging to read. Enjoy, sib "wallace, jr."
Did you know that colleges in the United States have and continue to struggle to retain and graduate black students? According to the (UNCF) United Negro College Fund black students lack the preparedness needed that sets them up for college. Our students do not receive the appropriate math and science courses that are required for college; in fact they are more likely to take remedial college courses. So how can we as parents and a family improve this? College preparedness should not start in high school but as early as possible at the middle school level. Research has shown that the earlier we talk to our kids about careers the more they will envision themselves going to college and working in that field.
Today, I am going to be focusing on our high school level students and a couple of things we can do to help prepare them for college. Service learning also known as volunteerism is the policy or practice of volunteering one’s time or talents for charitable, educational, or worthwhile activities, in one’s community. Service learning is usually completed early in a student’s high school career preferably the summer prior to their sophomore year and maintains those relationships through their senior year. Your student should be completing (40) forty hours of service in a 12 month period for a non-profit
organization.
It’s important that your student keeps track of their service hours this can be done with a service letter or service learning program agreement. The guidance counselor at your students school should provide your student with this letter, if not then ask the non-profit if this is something they can provide, or write a letter. Please ensure that the service packet includes an evaluation page that discusses your student’s performance. Colleges regard community service highly during the admission process and many college scholarships include community service as a requirement. While an athletic scholarship is nice but let’s be honest how many of our students are going to get an athletic scholarship. You and your student should be researching and applying for scholarships early and often. One recommendation I will provide for those family members that have 9th grade freshman start researching now there are scholarships for the class of 2023 that they can apply for now. Students do not have to wait until their senior year. However, encourage your student to take the PSAT in 10th grade. The PSAT has two purposes: first is to prepare your student for the SAT and second it is used to select students seeking national merit scholarships. Also, start a scholarship binder this will help you and your student keep track of scholarship due dates, ones applied for, pending responses etc.
Family there is so much information I could go on and on. I have included some educational resources; I hope you and your student(s) find it helpful.
Please remember google is our friend and utilize your state pages to find out about scholarships and career preparedness programs such as STEM (Science, technology, Engineering and Math or business programs.
Resources:
Scholarships.com
Fastweb.com
Tomjoynerfoundation.org
1. Below is the link from college of distinction for The Mega List of Scholarships you should apply for in 2019-2020 https://collegesofdistinction.com/advice/the-mega-list-of-scholarships-you-should-apply-for-class-of-2019-2020/
2. Please check out Apple's HBCU Initiative Program and Thurgood Marshall's College Fund Scholarship below.
Andrea, Your Blog Is "A Pot Of Gold".... Truly Valuable!!!