This past week, Lions Roar Now conducted a survey asking Littleton students what their thoughts were on the amount of support students at Littleton receive when it comes to post-grad options and the college application process. The survey asked 5 questions: Do you feel like LHS spends enough time providing resources and guidance surrounding college? Do you think that more college information nights would be helpful to LHS students? Do you wish LHS offered more support for studying for the SAT and/or ACT? Do you feel lost or stressed about applying to college or when considering post-grad options? Should seminar be a time when information is shared about financial aid and the application process? The survey received 40 responses, 90% of them being seniors and 10% being juniors
The overall consensus of the survey is that Littleton High School needs to provide more support when it comes to post-grad and the college application process. Littleton students have received very minimal support in deciding what their future looks like and mixed messages when it comes to Scoir and the Common App. Seniors at LHS already have a tremendous amount of stress on their plates when it comes to academic workload, clubs, sports, and post-grad. It would be highly beneficial to students to have reliable support and guidance to help relieve some of this workload and stress.
Out of the respondents in the survey, the majority of them feel that LHS does not spend enough time providing resources and guidance regarding college. This is unfortunate because students work toward college for all four years of high school, so the process of moving on to the next steps after high school should not be so confusing. 87.2% of students who responded thought that more college information nights would be helpful. Last spring, LHS hosted one college information night with people from colleges that were well-versed in certain topics, which was very helpful for many families who do not have access to private college counselors or are very unfamiliar with the application process and looking for schools in general. However, there should be more opportunities to access this information, not just one night out of the whole year.
The SAT and ACT are also big factors of college for some students. Not all students submit their scores of go to schools that require them, but a lot of people do, and 87.5% of respondents thought that it would be helpful if LHS did more to prepare students for those tests. More preparation would increase people’s chances of getting into certain schools, and everyone should have equal opportunity to score high, without having to pay additional money for outside of school resources and programs.
Not all students of LHS feel equally stressed about what their plans are after high school, but there is a large percentage of them who do and feel uncertain about what the future entails or how they might get there.
With LHS’s new schedule this year, all grades have seminar four days a week, and most of the time it is responsive, or we don’t do anything productive. This could truly be a time when teachers and counselors could start helping and preparing us better for post-grad. The survey asked if seminar should be a time when information is shared about financial aid and the application process. 97.5% thought that yes, it should be a time for this, so I think that this is something that LHS should consider for the future.
In conclusion, I think that more steps should be taken to help students, especially upperclassmen, to help with post-grad to ensure that everyone feels confident in their decisions and is able to be successful after high school, without having to do hours of research on their own to figure out what is happening and what to do. LHS should also be giving clear information to both teachers and students so there is less confusion in general.
