For future high school freshmen, here are five questions worth answering before you start 9th grade. They may not be high on your list of concerns right now, but I promise you’ll be in front of the freshman learning curve if you visit your school’s website and find these answers now.
1. Who is your counselor?
A lot of the students I meet enter their senior year with no idea who their assigned counselor is (and it's not the counselor's fault). Why not find yours before you even start your first day as a freshman? Go to the “Faculty” section of the website and look for the counselors. They’re often assigned by the first letter of students’ last names, or by grade level. The next step will be to get to know him/her once you get there. But first things first—just get the name for now.
2. What activities are offered?
Find the “Activities” section and see if there’s a list of clubs and organizations. Many will even have links to their own websites. Pick one or two from the list that look interesting and take a look. Make a mental note to investigate them more once you get to campus.
3. What classes are available?
You know your school will have math, English and history courses. But are any of them honors, AP or IB? (If you don’t know what those are, find out while you’re on the site.) What does a student have to do to get into those courses? And most importantly, which ones would you like to take if you had the opportunity? Once you get to school, you can find out more about how to get into those courses.
4. What is your future school good at doing?
Every school has strengths and weaknesses. And it’s nice when your interest intersects with something your school excels in. What teams, clubs, organizations or events does your school seem to brag about on the website? Has the marching band won multiple competitions? Did the volleyball team go all the way to state last year? Is the physics Olympics team the reigning county champs? You don’t have to limit your interests to things your school is good at doing. But everyone likes to be a part of something great.
5. What do you wish you could find out?
After you’ve spent some time on the website, what do you wish you knew, but couldn’t find? Whatever your answer is, that's a potential opportunity. Maybe you were looking for information about the tennis team and didn’t see anything. Now you’ve got an assignment once you get to school. Find out if there’s a tennis team. If there is, why don’t they have a website or a blog like the other teams? And guess which new freshman can offer to make one for them? This guy!