Lesson:
Engage (5-10 minutes):
Students will start the lesson by writing a response to the following prompt in their decision journal:
- Think back to our college and career planning from previous activities. What matters to you, and what do you want for college and career options? Think about the values you identified previously.
Students should be prepared to share their thoughts with a small group or their class. This will give students an opportunity to hear more about the values of their classmates.
Apply (30–40 minutes):
Make sure that students have access to the colleges that they reviewed during previous lessons on rating and ranking the colleges from the decision-making process set of lessons.
Students will select up to five of the schools that they were most interested in based on the ratings tools. Students will identify these five schools and conduct the review of the schools based on the acceptance rate, GPA, major, etc. for the college or university they are looking into.
This will require a little more time for students to explore the websites of each of the colleges / universities they are most interested in. A great website for students to search with is Free College Search Engine which will take them to direct information about the college or university they are looking into.
Reflect (10–15 minutes):
When students have completed the search for the up to five colleges or universities, they should reflect on the process on the handout or in their decision journal with the following question:
- Overall, are you on track to reach your college and career goals and options? Why or why not?
- What do you need to do to improve your odds of succeeding on your college and career path?
