Naviance - college navigation and statistics

Tenth-grade parents should now be able to access Naviance (ask your child or Mr. McBrien for a password) at connection.naviance.com/csny and click on links such as "Colleges our students are attending" and "Top 20 most popular colleges where our students apply" to get an idea about where Churchill alumni attend school and where they have been accepted. The number of students at each school is still low due to Churchill HS's brief history, but the data gives an idea about required GPA and school selections.

The Churchill College Office is currently working with 10th graders who are getting familiar with Naviance and how to use it to help navigate the college process. A first step is to identify colleges and adding them to the list "colleges I am thinking about". Naviance offers research tools including "college match" and "college compare" to aid with picking colleges.

During 10th and 11th grades student utilize Naviance to help find and keep track of colleges of interest in "colleges I am thinking about". This section contains application deadlines, links to the chosen colleges' websites and a box where students can mark level of interest for each college. It is easy to add and drop colleges to and from "colleges I am thinking about". Once the application process starts, students move selected colleges to the list "colleges I am applying to" and use this list to follow up and make sure the colleges receive required material in a timely fashion.

High college retention rate for Churchill alumni

Churchill students prove again and again that they are prepared for higher education. While 21 % of college students at full-time private non-profit four-year colleges drop out after freshmen year (40% at full-time public 2-year-colleges), Churchill students tend to return after their freshmen year. According to a recent survey of the 2010 graduating class, 90 % returned to college after their freshmen year.

Sources:
http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/freshman-sophomore-retention
Churchill internal data

Scholarships for LD students

A learning disability may create an advantage with the admissions officer looking for diversity, and there are special college scholarships for LD kids. Most I have found so far are between $1,000 - $6,000.

The RICE Foundation (Rewarding Individual Success in Education) offers a scholarship and information benefiting LD students: http://risescholarshipfoundation.org/

Marion Huber Learning Through Listening offers a $6,000 to a students with dyslexia, http://www.learningally.org/About-Us/National-and-Local-Award-Opportunities/108/#ltl

The Novotni Scholarship Fund offers special scholarships up to $5,000 for students with ADD and ADHD:http://031df74.netsolhost.com/Documents/Novotni_Scholarship_Application.pdf

The Anne Ford and Allegra Ford Scholarships offer financial assistance to two graduating seniors with documented learning disabilities (LD) who are pursuing post-secondary education and have the ability to act as role models.

The Smart Student Guide to Financial Aid lists the Anne Ford scholarship and a few others on its website: http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/ld.phtml

The Edge Foundation repeats some of the previously mentioned scholarships: http://www.edgefoundation.org/blog/2011/04/06/college-scholarships-for-adhd-students/