To help ensure our graduating students find the right-fit college or university, Columbus Academy benefits tremendously from having three full-time college counselors with a collective 43 years of expertise in guiding families through the journey to college.
Darnell Heywood has been a director of college counseling for 19 years, is a CollegeBoard trustee and chairs the CollegeBoard’s Counseling and Admission Assembly Council. Associate Director Jen FitzPatrick was previously director of college guidance at Sewickley Academy, where she earned the prestigious “Counselor That Changes Lives” national distinction. Assistant Director Jon Wagshul is a former Navy JAG with 15 years of experience in education.
Year in and year out, Columbus Academy sends 100 percent of its graduates to terrific colleges and universities all over the United States and around the world. Every year, Academy graduates attend 55 to 60 different institutions.
With a couple of months left in the college admissions process for this year’s seniors, our college counselors report that all members of the Class of 2021 have been admitted to one or more colleges, and 45 percent of the class has decided on the college/university they will attend.
In that committed group, students are going to 22 different states: California, Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maine, Illinois, Florida, New York, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, New Mexico, the District of Columbia and the great state of Ohio.
Students in this class have received full-ride scholarships and been accepted at top business and music schools in addition to art and technical institutes. Also, 14 are currently planning to continue their athletic careers in college (with three to four more probable commits in May).
Our students' success comes during a time of heightened application numbers at some of the colleges with the lowest admit rates. For example, Colgate has experienced a 102% increase in applications, Columbia a 46% increase, Harvard a 42% increase, MIT a 66% increase and Ohio State a 19% increase, NYU and Cal-Berkeley have over 100,000 applications each, and the University of Michigan saw its applicant pool swell from 65,000 to 80,000.
