Many students use the College Information Center (CIC), during the closing months of their time at WHHS. However, not many students realize that the CIC can be of help to them well before their SENIOR year.
“We mostly work with juniors and SENIORS,” Page Lee, CIC Director, said. “We’ve, especially this year, had some sophomores that have come in to ask questions.”
The CIC primarily works to help students with the college application process. For those who do not plan on attending college, it is a helpful resource for various things, such as helping students during optioning season choose the classes that align best with their prospective career path.
“There is someone this year who’s graduating who’s going to go to an auto mechanic apprenticeship training program instead of college,” Lee said. “Everyone has a goal or trajectory when they leave [whether] they’re enlisting, they have a job or they’re enrolling in college.”
Unlike many other schools, WHHS has a dedicated CIC to assist with the college application process. In most schools, this responsibility typically falls on school counselors, who must balance this task with many other duties.
“Other CPS schools don’t have this type of resource,” Lee said. “They don’t necessarily have a college information center; it’s kind of special to Walnut, like an additional resource because so many of our students do apply and go to college.”
The CIC strongly recommends preparing for college before SENIOR year. One thing that can be particularly helpful to have done is a college essay draft.
“We recommend that people get as much of their essay done the summer before their SENIOR year as possible,” Lee said. “Then they can focus more on their classwork when the school year starts.”
The CIC provides two documents containing checklists for SENIORS and juniors, which can be found under the counseling tab on the WHHS website.
“We would love for students to use our resources,” Lee said. “We’re here and with such a big school, I feel like there [are] more students that could be accessing us than are currently accessing us, so we would love to encourage everyone to come in [and] talk to us or come to our programs. We have regular test prep sessions and different presentations [we] give on different college admissions topics. We [also] have evening programs for parents and students, so we would… love to see more people taking advantage of those.”