How to Host a College Application Day [Episode 144]

Lauren 0:00
Hello. I hope this podcast episode finds you well. I hope it finds you as you are acquainting yourself with the rhythms of a newer school year, maybe schedule changes have settled down and you’re starting to think about what sorts of programs you’re going to be involving in your high school counseling program this year.

0:18
Now in South Carolina, we do have some initiative from the state level to have a college application day. Now, of course, is everyone going to college? No, but are we going to make it accessible to everyone who wants to or who’s interested in filling out an application? Yes.

0:35
This can be a college application day event for two year college, four year college, or just students interested in dipping their toe in the water and seeing what this is all about. Now, I know some people host a an entire week of events for college applications or college readiness and college awareness, but I’m going to talk about my experience, which has been hosting just one day for college applications.

1:01
Of course, your students can fill out applications at any point. I know that it’s like kind of funny to say that out loud, but students would get really concerned about that if we were not communicating that like this is not the only day you can fill out college applications, but this is a day at our school where we’re going to offer a lot of help around college applications.

1:21
So let’s get into this week’s episode where I’m going to share how to host a college application day from beginning to end. I’m going to give you kind of a stream of consciousness of a checklist or a timeline of what your day could look like, including what you need to prep before and what you need to follow up with after. So let’s get into this week’s episode.

1:47
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students’ lives, but you’re spread thin by all the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor clique, where you’ll finally catch your breath.

2:01
Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

2:20
I’m guessing that if you’re listening to this episode, I don’t have to convince you why you need to host a college application day. Like I said, maybe you have an initiative from higher up that’s saying you have to host one of these. So go ahead and get it on your calendar, but maybe you’re just curious what it could look like to host a college application day and help your students with their applications and help increase awareness around being able to go to college and giving them that opportunity and that vision for what applying to college could mean for them.

2:50
So I will link a couple of blog posts in the show notes that kind of tell you about how I think that you hosting an event like this can give students some confidence. And kind of a really old blog post about how I did it. That’s kind of where I got the inspiration for this podcast episode.

3:06
I figured it needed a little bit of an update, and you can kind of hear in my voice just how we’re going to work through this whole thing. If you have questions as you’re listening, feel free to send me a DM. I’d be happy to elaborate on anything else that I kind of missed in this episode, but I think we’ll cover it all.

3:23
So let’s go big picture. Let’s go logistics. We’ll talk about where we’re going to do this, who’s going to be involved when, and like, what the layout and the schedule for the day is going to look like, what sorts of communication that we’re going to need to involve to make this a success, what the day of is going to look like, and then how to extend it, and maybe some ideas for turning this into a college application week. Because I know some of you are going to want to do that, and some of you have done that in the past.

3:50
If you have a system in your school for reserving rooms, conference rooms, real estate in your school to make an event happen, I want you to go ahead and fill out that form or jot it on that calendar to reserve the space where you’re gonna host your college application day in your school.

4:06
Now, for me, this was the library at our school, and I definitely had to reserve this ahead of time and talk with our librarian, because that’s her space. She had to give it up for the day, and that’s why, for me, hosting just one day of this, I was trying not to inconvenience too many people in the school to make this happen, so I checked with her. We reserved it for the day because, you know, there are kids bopping in all day. That’s fine if they still want to come in and get a library book, but we want to make sure we have it reserved so that whole English classes aren’t coming in to do a lesson in the library or something like that.

4:39
So go ahead and put that date on the calendar. It’s gonna be really important that you talk to that librarian, but this is also important so that administrators know this is going on. Teachers know this is going on. A lot of people need to know this is going on ahead of time, so that their schedules are not rocked at a last minute edition that’s gonna shake up the whole school.

5:00
Now, of course, you want to put it on the calendar early enough to get people excited about it. We’re going to talk about all the logistics, but there’s a lot that goes into getting the right people in the right places, including students, during this time. So the earlier we can let people know that this is happening, the better.

5:16
Now, who is going to be involved in your college application day? Obviously, you and if you have a counseling team, it’s going to be all hands on deck. Maybe you trade out some people are staying in your office to handle any walk ins or emergencies.

5:30
But you’d need as many counselors on hand as possible to help you in this endeavor, because it’s not just for one person. If you are a solo counselor, I’d encourage you to grab somebody else in the school, grab an administrator who could help with check in, or that librarian who’s in there. Is there something that they can help you with during the day? Do not go about this by yourself.

5:51
I want you to reach out to college reps. If you have college reps that will travel or that are in your area, go ahead and reach out to them and get this date on the calendar. It is so valuable to have college representatives or admissions representatives here at your college application day.

6:08
They will love it because they’ll get to talk about their schools, but you will love it because it will be extra hands who understand how an application works. The questions that you’re going to answer are going to be the same over and over again all day, but there’s just something that builds a student’s confidence, like getting to talk to the representative from a college that they’re potentially interested in, or just knowing that this person is, quote, an expert in college applications, it really builds their confidence and gets them excited to apply to college.

6:36
In order to make this a really easy thing for you, I’d encourage you to open up a Google Doc and make a template of the emails that you’re going to send to these college reps. Use the same ones year after year when you put in some work on the front end. Now you’re going to make future years for yourself a lot easier.

6:53
So these are the emails that I want you to write out. I want you to draft an invitation to them. You can send the same one to everyone, or insert their school’s name here. Send them an invitation and see if they’re available and if they would confirm with you to come to your college application day. Send them a reminder email one day before the event, and then follow up with a thank you email.

7:15
You can schedule all these emails out ahead of time on the dates and times that you want them to go out. So get this. You could write the thank you email right now and schedule it out to go out the evening of your college application day and tell them thank you for being here. I’ll tell you if you can use all your brain space for this all at one time, and then you don’t have to think about it again, man, that is a good feeling.

7:37
And then next year, when you don’t have to think about it, because you already have that email template made perfect. So go ahead and draft those up. Maybe keep them in a Google Doc, and maybe just go ahead and create a Google folder like in your Google Drive right now, of everything that you’re going to use for this day, then you come back to it next year, you can either duplicate the folder and add the new year on there, or just go back and use the same things again.

8:01
When those college reps are coming for your college application day, I would give them a paper, like a half sheet of paper, that gives them the details for the day. I found that over communicating my expectations leaves me in a much better place than if I just assumed that these college reps would know what my expectations were.

8:20
So let me give you an example. I would have on there, what the schedule was for the day, what sessions students are coming to, maybe approximately how many students are coming to each one. I would give them ideas of things that they can do and things that they could talk to students about.

8:36
I know, I know. I would assume that people know how to do that, like in this role, that that would be something that they would be already really skilled at, or it would come naturally to them, or they would know. But I found that when those college reps kind of gathered together, they would be catching up because, you know, they know each other from the traveling college application scene, and they’re just catching up with each other.

8:59
And honestly, those adults would go talk to other adults instead of talking to the students in the room. And my expectation, I guess I don’t know if this is too much of an expectation would be that they would be on their feet, walking around and visiting tables and talking to students, and not sitting down on their phones.

9:15
And it took me to have that happen, and for me to be disappointed in the reps who came for me to realize, Okay, I just need to be better about communicating that on the front end. So learn from my mistake and over communicate your expectations for these college reps.

9:32
Now you are going to be so thankful that they’re there. So if you can, I would encourage you to order lunch for the day. If you need to do a purchase order with your school ahead of time to make sure this happens, do it. This can be an assignment for someone, either on your team or someone else in the school, to either go pick up the lunch or be at the front office when it’s delivered.

9:52
Think about this. You get a sweet treat too. If you can get that purchase order for the college reps, you probably can get some lunch for you. And I know that’s always a treat, because you. School counselors do not get to leave the building most days to go get lunch. That’s not like a perk of our job. We’re usually busy during that time. Soo go ahead and order lunch for your college reps and order some lunch for you while you’re at it.

10:13
Now I want you to make sure that those college reps are scheduled throughout the day. If they can give you their availability ahead of time, if it’s not for the full day, you want to be able to map that out, because you don’t want to end up with 20 of them first thing in the morning and one of them in the afternoon. That just doesn’t really seem fair to those students who are coming.

10:32
And it’s also not fair to you. You are planning out the adults who are going to be in the room, who are going to be helping, and it would be really hard to have a packed house in the afternoon and not have the adults there to be helping with that.

10:44
So if your college reps can’t stay all day, I would ask them to communicate that to you on the front end, so that you know what to expect.

10:52
Now let’s continue talking about laying out that schedule for the day. Are all of your counselors there? Or are you taking shifts? Who is assigned to what kind of look at what your counselors are good at what they like to do. Maybe they don’t want to be stuck doing the same thing all day. So you might have one or two counselors at a check in table. You might have counselors walking around.

11:14
You might trade off who is doing kind of the intro pitch when the session starts, and you can say they can give a welcome they can explain to students what this day is going to look like, or what their session for applying to college is going to look like.

11:29
Answer some of those front end questions right from the beginning that you know you’re getting all the time. And then I like to turn the floor over to the college reps to just be able to say something about their school, I think that this is a really kind gesture to do, like they came and traveled here, they get their space in front of students to kind of share what their school is all about, maybe some really popular majors, if there arehere any sorts of scholarship opportunities that would be enticing to students.

11:57
And a lot of times they will come with some sort of free code that waives the college application fee on this day. So letting them talk about these things is really valuable for everyone involved.

12:09
Then we just go right on into applying to colleges. Just like the little half sheet of paper that I would give to a college rep to kind of give them expectations for the day I would give the same thing to students, so when they check in, they’re probably gonna need to give their name, that they’re here, what class they’re coming from, and you could give them a little half sheet of paper, or leave those at the computers or at the table where they’re gonna sit down.

12:32
On those little half sheets of paper. I say half sheet just because I don’t know that you need a full on sheet. But give them some examples of what you’re going to do. Just walk them through, like step one, step two, step three. Give them websites that they’re going to go to. If you have a website that you need them to go to, they can scan a QR code.

12:50
Give them all the codes that they’ll need for any free applications, whatever information they’re going to need. Go ahead and give that to them up front. Or have something for them to scan or look at. They’re going to have a lot of questions. Many of them are going to sit down and say, I don’t even know where to start.

13:05
So if you can just get them moving in the right direction and get them working, they’re going to be really efficient with their time, versus if they sit down and they’re clueless and don’t know what to do, which they’ve never done this before, they’re allowed to be clueless, but you get to guide them through the process.

13:24
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14:24
Before we get too far into what we’re doing when they sit down, I want you to think about that schedule for the day. How many sessions are you having for your students? Do you have block schedule where maybe you can divide that block into two different sessions?

14:37
So like, are you doing a 50 minute time slot. I think 20 or 30 minutes is not going to be enough, but look at your schedule for the day and establish which are going to be the blocks of time that students are going to come. Let students sign up for the time block that they want.

14:55
If I were you, I would set a certain amount of spots, maybe with a sign up genius, let them sign up with their name, their email address, and I would say their teacher during that time. Now are you going to have to go through and filter that? Yes, people are going to get it wrong. They’re going to spell their teacher’s name wrong, but this will take some trial and error how it works in your school.

15:14
I don’t know if you’re pulling the information from PowerSchool or what, but you will figure out how to organize this information in a really succinct and organized way. But go ahead and let your student sign up. Tell them. I mean, my hope is that they wouldn’t sign up for the time slot where they’re having an exam in that class.

15:15
You know, I I hope that they’re being smart about it, but you cannot always plan for that. So there might be some reorganizing on your end, or if they come in, they realize that and they need to change it. So be prepared for that, that that will always be a moving target.

15:50
I will say, once you have downloaded that, Sign Up Genius, you know you’re putting it on a schedule, I would take that and put it in a Google sheet so it could be a live document. Of course, don’t let people edit it. But if you’re going to share that out with teachers as a reference for when their students are going and what times are going to be out of their classes, go ahead and share that as like a live document, knowing that it can be changing at all times, and you’re going to email that link to them.

16:17
If they bookmark that link, great. I have also found that a lot of teachers will just print out the sheet. They’ll filter by their name, and they’ll print it out with the time slots and just let them know that that can change all the way down to the last minute.

16:30
Now, since we’re talking about communicating with teachers, let’s talk about communication ahead of time. Because, like I said, I went into talking about the event, but we’re backtracking a little bit, because it takes a lot to make this event happen.

16:42
Once you’ve decided on your date and you’ve reserved your place, I want you to announce in all the places that it’s happening. Put it on your school counseling website. Put it on the main website for your school, put on social media all your channels that your school does. Put it on the announcements that they’re hearing in the morning or the afternoon.

17:00
If you have a teacher newsletter, put it in that. If you have a parent newsletter, make sure you link it there. I also like to over communicate that this is not an event for parents. I have had parents show up and it feels so awkward. I’m like, your student can apply for college on their own. You do not have to be there. Now, will I turn parents away? No, but I will communicate with them that this is a student event.

17:27
I learned that the hard way. You know, I let someone stay a time or two because I thought, Okay, this is awkward. But then I learned next year to be a better communicator about that on the front end. If you have a senior Google Classroom, put it in there, send them an email, send them a remind, get the word out in all the places, and make it easy to access and sign up.

17:48
You’re going to explain what you’re hosting. Give them a link to sign up and check it off the box. You will be able to see those signups rolling in once you get the word out there, students and teachers are going to be excited about it. Once you’ve downloaded that list and you have it nice and organized of who is doing what. Session of a college application day session, I want you to create some passes to be sent to their teachers.

18:12
Now, if you have an Excel document, you can do a mail merge to put in their name, the teacher, the time block. If you’re not familiar with mail merges. I’m not going to go into it on here, because I’d have to visually show you, but just look it up on YouTube. Just Google it. There is a mail merge wizard that will walk you through in Excel how to make that happen.

18:32
But you can put that information on some passes and send them out to their teachers ahead of time, if teachers want, like a tangible, visible pass to hand their students or to be reminded who’s going at what time, and I already mentioned, but I’ll say it again. Send that schedule out, the master schedule out to teachers ahead of time and let it live, live on Google Sheets, so you can make changes if needed, and let them know they could need to be referencing that and not just the paper passes.

18:58
But I know sometimes teachers like to have paper passes to hand to a student or your school mix them, have a pass in the hallway.

19:05
Okay, now it’s time for the actual event. I already talked about having those half sheets when students check in, I would also give them an information sheet on the front end, so maybe either after they have signed up, you are sending something to all the seniors ahead of time to say, this is the information you need to bring with you.

19:23
You know that common information that they’re going to ask for on a lot of applications, their social security number, their driver’s license number, their address, you’d be surprised at how many students don’t know their address or their zip code.

19:37
Tell students to have that information ready to go, tell them to bring that with them, because it is hard to fill out a college application and have to be calling your mom, asking what your zip code is, or asking what your driver’s license number is, because you left it at home. You want your students to be prepared with those little things that they can be prepared for.

19:56
So your students are coming in prepared you are ready for. Day. Here’s what the event could look like. These are just some thoughts that I have for you to have the space prepared for them when they get there. I think something really fun to do is to have a photo booth. And I will link in the show notes. I call it college application day photo booth props.

20:16
I have these little printouts. I think there’s like 32 different ones in color, 28 in black and white, that you can print out and just glue on some popsicle sticks. Bam, you have some photo booth props. Now, if this is an event that you find yourself hosting year after year, you could make a backdrop.

20:34
I ordered a backdrop one time, I want to say from Shutterfly, or one of those, and it’s a banner, like a poster that you could roll up and put in a tube, and it was awesome. We put our school logo on it and just gave us something to put behind.

20:49
But maybe if you don’t want to order that, you could get a balloon arch, or you could just do it up against a white background. If you have those Photo Booth props, that’s just going to add some fun to it. Some of them are kind of funny, and they can take pictures and ask them to post and tag you and spread the word about all the fun things that they were doing.

21:07
You get to be proud of them for applying to college, and then you get to broadcast that. So if I were you, I would also be popping over there taking pictures as they’re taking pictures too. Do you have a lot of college swag that you just don’t know what to do with it. You know the water bottles that you get, pens, I mean, everything, right? Flashlights, fly swatters, pennants, just folders of information.

21:32
When you get that physical college swag and you don’t know what to do with it, college application day, baby! This is the perfect place to put that stuff out there for students to take for free. They don’t have to win a raffle. They don’t have to ask you to take it. You make a giant table and you just spread that stuff out on there.

21:51
They’re gonna be walking out with drawstring backpacks and water bottles, and they’re just gonna be so excited about it. And then you’re gonna clear out your closet, so they’re gonna love that you put all of that college swag out there and let them take it on their way out.

22:03
I also want you to have this as an exit ticket. I have some different bulletin boards that you can have students like fill in a pennant or a football for college application day. They write where they applied, and then you get to hang up a bulletin board.

22:21
This is like your ready made bulletin board, and it’s also serving as an exit ticket to see where people applied, what they’re excited about. You hang that up in the hallway the next day, and students are so excited to come back and see and they’re proud to see their name in the college up on the bulletin board. It’s really cool.

22:40
Next I want you to have some slides to put up on a projector, and you can just set a slideshow to keep filtering through those, I would say any of the information that you’re giving them on that half sheet of paper, like what they’re going to do when they sit down, maybe any QR codes or any sort of waivers for free college applications. Put all of that info on slides and just run it through, like your Promethean board, or wherever you’re projecting things up front.

23:05
They’re going to get their questions answered by seeing those just cycling through. I also love to add a little bit of fun and have a playlist playing that can either play through the Promethean board or you can have a speaker. I’m sure your school has some sort of portable speaker system where if you needed a mic, I don’t know if you’re in a really big setting. I hate when people don’t use mics and they need one.

23:27
Everyone needs to be able to hear what’s going on, so make sure that either you’re projecting or you have something for your students to hear you. But a playlist can add a lot of fun to the day. I also think that there is so much music out there that is not explicative that we can have that is school appropriate. And if you let a student make a playlist, they might not do that in the same way.

23:49
So I have a free college application day Spotify playlist. If you want to add it to your Spotify lineup, I’ll link that in the show notes as well. I just think there’s a lot of fun to be had when you keep up the energy. Even for yourselves as counselors, it’s fun to hear music throughout the day.

24:08
Now I think that covers it all from beginning to end of all the logistics of who’s going to be involved; when are you going to do it, where are you going to do it, how are you going to do it. So hopefully that gave you some ideas, a better visual for how you can make this all come together.

24:24
Now, here are some of my thoughts. If you wanted to extend this into a full on college application week or just college awareness week, here are some things that you can do. You could make another bulletin board that involves staff. So I will link a college awareness bulletin board where your staff can fill in what they majored in, or how many times they changed their major, what school they went to, and I think that gives us another opportunity to have a conversation with a staff person.

24:52
It gives your faculty that heads up that, hey, we are doing something fun this week, and we’re celebrating. You can have your staff wear their college shirts on College Application day. I know that’s always fun, especially if you have a strict dress code at your school, they get to wear their college shirt, and it’s just something that they look forward to.

25:08
I know that’s something like so small, but it gets to start conversations, you know, especially if, like me, I went to a school that is not near where I was working, and so that was a huge conversation starter as students got to see what I was wearing, what my shirt was, and I was proud to tell them about that.

25:26
If you are moving this into a college application week, you could do a huge social media campaign about this. So keep posting all the pictures that you were taking from the photo booth, from your students at college application day, or use a dry erase board take pictures during lunch or outside your office of places that students are applying what they want to major in, like, you can use a dry erase board for a lot of different things.

25:49
You could take pictures of how they’re feeling as they’re applying or right after they apply. Like, are they feeling proud? Are they feeling excited, hopeful? Have them write on a dry erase board and turn that into a social media campaign. You could go live on Instagram as this is happening, as your college application day is happening.

26:07
You could record YouTube videos. You could edit them on your phone. If you’re being real fancy, use capcut and edit some videos on your phone and then link them in your Google classroom so that students can see all the fun that was happening on college application day, or throughout the week. If you’re doing this more than one day, incorporate announcements into your week.

26:26
If you are doing college application week, you could do different facts about different schools. You could tell them about the college application process. This way, you’d be involving more students in the school to get underclassmen excited for this event that will happen when they are seniors.

26:42
I think it would be really neat if you hosted an alumni panel, if you stayed in contact with some of your students who went off to school last year, and maybe this was organized around their fall break or something when they came back to the school, you could have some students prepped ahead of time on some questions that you would ask them, and maybe at your college application day.

26:59
Or maybe it’s a separate event altogether, but you host some sort of alumni panel where you get to ask them questions, and maybe the audience gets to ask them questions too, or submit their questions ahead of time, so that you can screen them.

27:10
Throughout the week, you could raffle off prizes. So pennants, T shirts, water bottles. If you had that college swag and you didn’t want to put it out at the college application day, you could use it in a big raffle, or you can do bigger raffles than that. Go out and get some gift cards or something. I don’t know, I always tried to find things that I could get donated to the school, and I got a lot by just asking. I’m just gonna say that.

27:36
Okay, I hope that this episode gave you a lot of ideas of things to think about if you wanted to host a college application day or a college application week. I’m going to link everything that I referenced in the show notes from some of those bulletin board resources to past episodes that I think would be helpful for you around post secondary plans and college access.

27:57
And then I’m going to link those old blog posts as well about way long ago when I wrote about college application day. I hope this serves as an updated version of that and gives you some things to think about. I cannot wait to hear how you put a college application day into play, put it on your calendar, send me a DM and let me know how it goes for you.

28:19
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of High School Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C, l, I, Q, U, E. I’ll see you next week.