Helping Seniors Make the Transition to College (12th Grade)
It is the senior year, and the student talk is all about college, majors, meeting new friends, going away, starting the next phase of a person’s life. Counselors are happy and sad at the same time as they know that students, some of whom they have known for 4 years, will soon be gone. It is that time when we all hear and speak the words and language of transition. Students will make huge academic and affective leaps from high school to college. How best can counselors serve them during this last crucial time in their adolescent lives, to enable them to
arrive in college with optimal chances for success? The answer is through small group and individual counseling sessions devoted to transition. In developing an approach of optimal areas to explore in these sessions, counselors need to consider both academic and affective adjustments that students will have in completing high school and starting college. Some thinking related to both of these areas, academic (cognitive) and psychosocial (affective), follows.