The College Advisor Newsletter Kit for High Schools

The College Advisor Newsletter Kit provides school-based guidance counselors with everything they need to quickly and easily produce an informative monthly guidance newsletter. Because no one knows your students better than you, the College Advisor allows you to custom-fit the content to your students; you can edit or modify the existing articles and include your own original work, photos, or clip art if you choose.

The Kit consists of a cd-rom disk with a collection of 60 original newsletter articles written especially for your school-based clients, and a file of fifteen photo clips of colleges. A year-long timeline of dates and tasks, a collection of educational quotes, reviews of ten web and print resources, and two newsletter templates complete the disk. Also included is a manual with printouts of all articles, and complete, easy to follow instructions for creating your own college guidance newsletter.

No prior desktop publishing experience is needed to use this kit. You can cut and paste the Word formatted articles into the included templates, use them in your existing newsletter, or copy them to a commercial publishing program such as Microsoft Publisher. Add a masthead and title of your choice, perhaps including a photo of your school, and your newsletter is ready to go. Print for distribution at school, or mail to your students' homes. Convert to pdf format using Acrobat Writer and your newsletter is ready to be e-mailed to your students and their families.

Designed to provide necessary information to help students make informed decisions about their future, the College Advisor Newsletter articles address issues important for a college-bound population. Included are features on all phases of the college preparation, selection, and application process. Articles focus on topics that include admissions testing, choosing colleges that fit, essays and interviews, recommendations, special needs, athletes and admissions, scholarships, the financial aid process, high school preparation and long-range planning. Ten of the included articles feature in-depth looks at specific careers and another ten finance articles focus on paying for future education.

A recent study by the ACT in cooperation with the Council of Great City Schools (full report available at www.act.org/research/policy) concluded that many college-bound minority students were unfamiliar with educational opportunities, had haphazardly chosen a college, or planned to attend one they knew little about. Families were ill-informed about financial aid opportunities, and students had not received all of the information they needed. Impact your students' lives by using the College Advisor Newsletter Kit as a time and cost-effective way to communicate with and inform your students and their families throughout high school. As you know, communication and education can make all the difference!

Sample Newsletter

To the left is the first page of a four-page newsletter created entirely with materials included in the College Advisor Newsletter Kit. Click on the image to the left to download the entire sample in Adobe pdf format.