May 18, 2021
Dear Upper School Families,
The end of the year is nearly here! I wanted to use this last College Counseling Newsletter of the year to talk about summer activities for students.
I often get questions about what students should do during their summers. The answer is surprisingly simple: students should do things that are meaningful to them. Examples include getting a part-time job, attending a summer program, doing community service, or helping out at home. These experiences will provide them not only with a restful and meaningful summer, but they will also provide content for their college application essays.
I also wanted to highlight the two college-focused Summer Programs that I will be hosting at Oakcrest this summer.
The College Essays Workshop is a great opportunity for
rising 11th & 12th grade students to work on their personal essay writing skills. Writing about yourself can feel a bit awkward. I will take this time to introduce some tips and tricks of writing personal statements and essays.
This is a great workshop for rising seniors as it is a chance to finish your Common Application personal statement, while also getting ahead on how to answer each college's supplemental essay questions. I encourage our rising seniors who have not yet finished their Common App essays to look into this workshop!
Rising juniors will also gain valuable skills for how to write these personal essays, preparing themselves for college applications and scholarship essays in the future.
The SAT Prep Course is a class focused on the skills of standardized test taking. Learning practical test-taking skills will yield results for the SAT as well as other standardized tests you may take in the future. This course is a great way for
rising 10th, 11th and 12th grade students
to prepare themselves to take the SAT in the coming year.
Even if you do not have a test scheduled, these are skills that you will gain for a later testing date. This course will be taught by an
experienced test prep educator from
Educational Connections, a premier provider of SAT and ACT prep. Their highly-credentialed tutors specialize in research-based strategies that help students build and strengthen their test-taking skills and tackle the SAT with confidence. Daily homework will be assigned to strengthen skills and two mock SAT tests will be administered online; one before and one after the course to track results.
Thank you for a fantastic first year at Oakcrest and I look forward to the 2021-2022 School Year!
All the best,
Miranda Johnson
Director of College Counseling