HISD juniors will be sharpening their No. 2 pencils to take the SAT college admission test during SAT School Day on their own campuses April 16, with the district picking up the registration cost. Students registered for the test with their high school counselors, who provided a voucher to waive the $51 fee.
If you are registered to take the test at your high school, here are some tips to prepare for test day:
Worthing HS senior Erica Lee proudly displays her preliminary acceptance card from Alabama A&M University.
When Erica Lee arrived at the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s College Expo on March 13, she had no firm plans about where she planned to pursue higher education.
Now, the Worthing High School senior has at least one preliminary offer of acceptance, thanks to the care she took in preparing for the event.
A new online application process and computer-generated lottery have been completed and nearly 50,000 notifications of the Houston Independent School District magnet programs including Vanguard placements for 2014-2015 will be sent to families by email (after 5 p.m.) and postal service Friday.
All HISD juniors are being enrolled for free to take the SAT college entrance exam during the school day on their campuses on April 16 – and they also qualify for two prep courses at no cost. But time is tight to take advantage of the chance to take practice tests and customized instruction to help boost their scores.
Counselors and registrars will be on hand to answer questions about new graduation requirements shaped by House Bill 5
The Houston Independent School District is continuing a series of community meetings this week that will connect middle school parents with high school counselors and other experts on House Bill 5, which is changing high school in a big way for next year’s ninth-graders. Continue reading
It’s never too soon to start preparing for life after graduation. Energy Institute High School Dean of Students Noelle MacGregor held a workshop during lunch recently to help freshmen create and build resumes in Naviance.
“It’s essential for students to start tracking their activities, community service, and awards now,” said MacGregor. “If they wait until senior year when they start applying for colleges and scholarships, they may forget some of them.”
All HISD high school and middle school students and their parents have access to Naviance on their school website. Students are encouraged to become familiar with Naviance as soon as possible (for information on Naviance, see this page).
Don’t think that financial issues make college out of reach. That was the message sounded repeatedly to several hundred parents and students, who attended College Camp Houston at Chavez High School on March 1 to find out more about the financial aspects of preparing for higher education.
The workshop, hosted by the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and Wells Fargo Bank, provided students and parents with advice for paying for college, researching financial aid, and obtaining scholarships. Bankers and education finance specialists guided families through the application process.
Did you know that high-school seniors who complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) are 90 percent more likely to attend college than those who don’t?
FAFSA gives students access to $150 billion in grants, loans, and work-study funds made available by the federal government—and to get the word out, HISD is taking part in Houston FAFSA Day, a communitywide effort to help high school seniors and their families complete the application with confidence and ease.
Last October, thousands of HISD freshmen, sophomores, and juniors took the PSAT/NMSQT college-readiness test, and campus staff began distributing the results this month.
Parents are strongly encouraged to discuss these scores with their children, as they can not only help gauge a student’s readiness for college but also identify good candidates for Advanced Placement (AP) classes next semester and, in some cases, determine a student’s eligibility for scholarships.
To familiarize them with life on the campus of a select school, HISD’s EMERGE program took a group of rising seniors on a tour of northeast campuses over the summer. Here, they’re at Harvard University.
The acceptance letters for select colleges and universities are rolling in for HISD seniors working with the district’s EMERGE program – 22 letters so far, as of Dec. 18. On Dec. 16 alone, three HISD seniors were notified they had been accepted to Yale University.
All students are either receiving full rides or are having 100 percent of their financial need met by the school accepting them, according to Rick Cruz, assistant superintendent of college readiness and co-founder of EMERGE.