AVID 5-6 teacher David Ramos traveled with junior AVID students from his class to the University of California Riverside and the University of Redlands, Feb. 2.
“We had guided tours from actual students on the campuses and an orientation presentation from counselors on the campuses,” Ramos said. “It put the students firsthand into the college environment [and they could] see it for themselves. We looked at some of the dorms, we looked at the cafeteria, we looked at the classrooms, the different buildings, and academic halls.”
In addition to college visits, the AVID curriculum prepares students for college admissions senior year, including writing drafts of college essays, researching scholarships, building their academic resumes, researching the FAFSA, and learning how to ask for letters of recommendation. One of the most important parts of the junior year AVID curriculum is narrowing down which schools a student will apply to.
“It’s like the big, final prep before the real thing senior year,” Ramos said.
AVID students start researching colleges their freshman year, and by the time they finish in Ramos’s class, they will have selected a variety of reach, safety, and match schools.
“By the time they get towards the end of my class, they [will] have 10 colleges picked out that they thoroughly researched and that fall into those categories of reach, safety, and match,” Ramos said. “They understand the financial cost of it, the requirements to get in, the GPA cut-offs, and we look at Scoir scattergrams.”
Part of this college research includes visiting schools. According to Ramos, junior AVID students typically go on an overnight field trip to LA to visit seven different colleges. However, due to this year’s small class size, they couldn’t afford to go on that longer trip, instead doing a shortened version and only visiting UCR and the University of Redlands.
Nicole Nguyen (11) said that one of the most valuable aspects of the trip was the ability to compare the two schools, especially in terms of size. While Nguyen isn’t planning on applying to either of the two schools she visited, she said that being able to compare a small and a large school helped her establish her preferences.
“A lot of people don’t have the chance to go with their families [to visit colleges] out of the county, so it was great to compare [the two schools] and know what it’d be like to live on campus there,” Nguyen said. “I’m definitely going to stick with a bigger school. I like having a lot of people around me and having my own little world in a way. I was able to see that at Riverside.”
In addition to helping her establish her preferences, Nguyen also said that visiting colleges with AVID helps her get a feel for what the college experience will be like, and she anticipates that seeing the campuses will ease her nerves on her first day.
“When I get onto a campus, I can be less overwhelmed with the amount of people there,” Nguyen said. “A lot of people talk about how it’s such a big change because, while we’re a big high school, [college] could be 10 times larger. [When you take a tour,] you get to know the different departments and how they work, they explain the different schools within the college, what classes go into the different schools, and how they can mix, so it’s not as confusing when you’re first entering into it.”
Ramos said that this ability to see campuses in person is an important part of college research.
“It helps students envision what college life is going to be like and empowers them and motivates them to want to experience that,” Ramos said. “It immerses them into it and gets them in the mindset that this will be a real-life event for them. I talked to some of the students during and after the field trip to ask them what they thought about it, and I could see the inspiration in their eyes, the motivation in their eyes, and the excitement in their eyes as we left some of the campuses.”
