Starting the college and career search during junior year is crucial for some Eagles aiming to be ready for the application process in their senior year. At Osbourn High School, Mr. Stansbery plays a key role in guiding Eagles through this important phase. Here’s why starting early is so important:

First, junior year is the perfect time for Eagles to explore their interests and potential career paths. Mr. Stansbery can provide resources and assessments to help them identify their strengths and passions. By figuring out what they like early on, Eagles can make better decisions about the types of colleges and programs that will best fit their goals.

Second, the college application process is complicated and takes a lot of time. Starting the search in junior year allows Eagles to research different colleges, understand admission requirements, and prepare for standardized tests like SAT or ACT. Mr. Stansbery can help Eagles create a timeline for these tasks, making sure they meet all necessary deadlines without feeling stressed.

Lastly, early preparation gives Eagles the chance to build a strong application. This includes joining extracurricular activities, volunteering, and taking on leadership roles, all of which can make their college applications stand out. Mr. Stansbery can guide Eagles in choosing activities that match their interests and goals, helping them to present a well-rounded and impressive application.

In conclusion, having Mr. Stansbery support Eagles starting in their junior year at Osbourn High School is vital. This guidance ensures that Eagles are well-prepared, confident, and ready to apply to colleges in their senior year, setting them on the path to success in their future careers.

Here are some questions that were answered by Mr. Stansbery:

Teysi: What are the most important steps to take or consider when choosing a college?

Mr.Stansbery: You need to think about what you want to study because not every school has every program, so you want to consider what kind of career you’re interested in and then make sure that college has a program that will help you get to that career. Everybody is going to consider things a little differently, but you might want to think about how far away from home you want to be. A big one, of course, is how much it costs and what your family can afford to pay for. Do you want to go to a public in-state school, which tends to be cheaper than a private college or an out-of-state college? Do you want to go to a big school, like if you’re really into college sports, you might want to go to a big school with a big sports program, or if you don’t care about that, some students feel more comfortable on a smaller campus. There’s just a lot of different kinds of colleges. The first step you could take is to do some research in NAVIANCE, which has a search engine where you can input different things you want your college to have, and it will generate a list of colleges that meet those criteria. Once you have a reasonable list, it’s really important to visit those colleges. I always tell people, “You wouldn’t buy a car without test-driving it first.” A college is way more expensive than a car, so it’s really important to go there and make sure it’s what you want before you apply.

Teysi: How can students identify the right career path for themselves?

Mr. Stansbery: You should consider lots of things, you want to consider what skills you have what things you’re naturally good at and how does that fit in with things that you like to do so you want to consider your interests and your skills, NAVIANCE has some good things for that too you can go in there in there’s like have a dozen different career inventories you can take so you can answer different questions about yourself in these inventories and then it will tell you what kind of careers match up with the answers that you gave so that’s a good way to do research. We have career fairs here a couple of times a year- there was one in the fall and we’re going to have another one in April so those are good, you’ll see advertisements for those in our newsletters and around the school when those are coming up so those are good ways to talk to employers and find out more about what kind of jobs they have and if those are something that you might be interested in.

Teysi: What Resources does Osbourn offer to help students with their college and career selection process?

Mr. Stansbery: Well I’m a resource so students can always come and talk to me and their counselors can be helpful as well, we already mentioned some of the things in NAVIANCE but like I said NAVIANCE is a great resource with information

Teysi: What advice do you have for students who are still indecisive with what they want to study or what college they want to go to?

Mr. Stansbery: My advice would be to come to talk to me, use some of the tools in NAVIANCE or go to career fairs, Nova has a lot of different options some of their educational options are even paid for by the city of Manassas so come and take a look at some of those things to see if you’d be interested in any of those type of careers, but there’s help available come down to the college and career center we’ll figure out steps that can take to help you make those decisions

Teysi: How can students maximize their chances of being accepted into their college of choice?

Mr. Stansbery: I would say the best thing to do is earn the best grades you can, you could take good classes, and if you’re capable of taking advanced classes that’s important as well. Colleges look at your grades but also just as closely they look at what kind of classes you took so that is something to think about.

Teysi: What role do letters of recommendation play? And how can students secure strong recommendations?

Mr. Stansbery: Some schools look at them some schools don’t, normally your counselor would write a recommendation letter and there’s a form we have that you can give your counselor to help with that letter but also if there’s a particular field that you wanna study in college it’s good to ask a teacher that teaches something related to that you’ve had here so like if you want to study biology in college then you might want to have one of your teachers to write you a recommendation letter.

Teysi: How can students prepare themselves for admission interviews?

Mr. Stansbery: A lot of schools don’t do admission interviews, but for others that do you can certainly prepare by having somebody ask you questions that you might get in an interview like that so you can practice, if you don’t have somebody to pair up with you could think of the questions you might be asked you can write down your answers, even practice in front of a mirror so you just get used to giving those answers because when you get in front of another person sometimes that can make you a little nervous so the more practice you do the better off you’ll be.