Information about Pebblebrook High: cobbk12.org/pebblebrook.
This time last year, Pebblebrook High senior Jennifer Garcia had no idea what was involved in applying to college. But the Mableton student knew one thing: She wanted to go.
“Then my friends told me about this after-school program that met every Tuesday and talked about how to prepare for college and what you need to do to apply,” she said. “I went in the fall and learned something I didn’t know on the very first day: I needed to take the SAT and the ACT. I signed up for them right away.”
Garcia and about 50 of her peers unraveled some of the mysteries around higher education through the school’s “Keep Calm and Get into College” program. The concept launched two years ago when former student Viridiana Fuentes brought the idea to Pebblebrook’s counselors.
“She saw a need for a college and career readiness, workshop-style program,” said counselor Julynn Williams-Chandler. “She ran it on her lunch for other students with the counselors’ support.”
After Fuentes graduated, the program morphed into an after-school workshop with the same goals of answering students’ queries on topics from admission forms to financial aid. They’re helped in their search by Kimberly Chinn, a site coordinator for the Communities in Schools of Marietta/Cobb County, a program designed to lower drop-out rates.
“A lot of these students don’t know much about how college works,” she said. “They want to know if they’ll pick their own classes, majors and minors. They have no idea about financial aid. My job I to encourage and give them honest advice, such as avoiding loans if possible.”
One of the biggest issues Chinn has seen is that students don’t start thinking about college until too late in their high school careers.
“They do need to start keeping their grades up so when it’s time to apply, they have a choice,” she said. “Then they can start making those choices when they’re juniors.”
Chinn encourages students from all grade levels to attend the afternoon sessions or to meet with her one-on-one to figure out their next steps.
“One of the reasons we decided to keep this program going is because teenagers have a lot of questions, but sometimes they don’t have the resources or the people to answer them,” she said. “They need someone to give them a push in the right direction. Here, they can come in on a weekly basis and get answers. That keeps them focused on looking for colleges and scholarships and filling out applications. And now that some students are starting to get their acceptance letters, it’s very exciting.”
The program has paid off for Garcia, who was recently accepted to West Georgia University and is waiting on news from Kennesaw State.
“At first I didn’t even know what courses I needed to take to be accepted or how I’d pay for it if I got in,” she said. “I wasn’t informed about scholarships. But this program introduced us to really good websites that have the information we need. I also found out I qualified for scholarships and HOPE. Just the thought of college was something that scared me, but through this program, I learned a lot of information.”
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