The Junior Class began its college application process this week with its first College Counseling class in the Learning Commons.

The class began with introductions from College Counseling Director Cesar Guerrero and College Counseling Associate Kelly Whalen before delving into the framework for the class, handing out scored PSAT booklets and explaining how to use Khan Academy to students’ benefit in preparing for the SAT.

“I’m excited to move on the next chapter of my life, and I think that the college counseling program will provide me with the best tools to make that transition smoothly,” Nicholas Watts ʼ18 said.

Guerrero and Whalen provided juniors with access to college planning website Naviance last week and gave a formal introduction to the website and its uses in their first session.

Juniors will meet once a week during their free periods or Collaboration Lab period. The ColLab period met on Tuesday, C period meets today, and the F period class meets tomorrow.

“I think that this class will allow those people who don’t have the free periods and have lots of homework to focus on the college application process,” Michael Liu ʼ18 said.

Counselors sent out a survey to students and their parents last week concerning each student’s college preferences and academic history. Guerrero plans to meet one-on-one with each family starting on Jan. 23.

“The goals are to deconstruct our notions of what college is,” Guerrero said. “There is so much pressure implicitly, or even explicitly, about what college is going to be. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that we identify what [the students’] demands are for the next phase of their lives.”