Sharing Ideas: encouraging staff participation
Here's a tip from Hillsboro High School for getting your colleagues engaged and helping to build excitement for your event:
college application week
Sharing Ideas: family awareness
Another great idea from Benson High School in Portland:
They'll be promoting their CAW event during their Back to School Night next week. Ensuring that parents know you're participating in this statewide event is critical to your success - and the earlier, the better! In addition to sharing the information at any parent ngiht events, consider also sending a Student and Family Letter home. Remember to encourage parents to volunteer at your event.
Sharing Ideas: raffle off prizes!
Last year, Newport High School used the Donation Request Letter template to ask their area businesses to support their CAW event. They had no idea they'd be overwhelmed with positive responses. So what do you do when you have more prizes than you know what to do with? Make baskets! Gather several smaller prizes together to create one (or more) super enticing raffle prize. Check these out:
Sharing Ideas: throw a party!
Great idea from Benson HS in Portland!
They'll be hosting their event through their CTE classes, and they're thinking about throwing a celebratory party for the class that has the highest attendance during their scheduled CAW event. We suggested using the Donation Request Letter template to ask local businesses to provide treats for the bash.
#whyichose
The start of the school year means it's time to begin planning College Application Week events. For Oregon CAW "headquarters," it means supporting your efforts. One of the ways we do that is by sponsoring an inspirational social media campaign each year.
This year, the theme is #whyichose. As in, "why did you choose to continue your education beyond high school" or "why did you choose the college you attended?" or "why might a student choose a particular college?"
Spring mini-CAW, anyone?
Here's a great idea from Hermiston High School:
They'll be hosting a mini-CAW event in the next few weeks with a special focus on reaching out to students whose best postsecondary match is a two-year community college or trade school.
Pacific High School’s 1st College Application Day was a big success!
The following is a guest post from Cindy Pogwizd, site coordinator at Pacific High School.
The goal was to assist all seniors as they apply to some type of post secondary education option, including certificate programs, two-year degree programs and four-year degree programs. GEARUP helped sponsor the event.
Sharing small (and large) successes
Now that the data is all in, and we've shared the numbers with the world (see the press release here), we want to be sure to put a human face on Oregon College Application Week. We're still hearing from site coordinators about the one or two moments that showed them the importance of the event for their students and communities.
In the News: "That last little nudge ... you can't go to college if you don't apply."
Oregon College Application Week was the lead story on KVAL's evening news on Friday, January 31, 2014. We're proud of Oregon's students and are thrilled to see their accomplishments being lauded.
In the News: 2013 College Application Week Results
The results are in! Oregon’s College Application Week broke previous records of high school students applying to college, with more than 1,250 students participating in the recent statewide event. With the number of sites increasing four-fold and an over 200% increase in seniors participating, students applied to different types of postsecondary educational options, including certificate programs, two-year degree programs, and four-year degree programs over the two week event in late 2013.