Vikings Counselor Connection
Schreiber Guidance Department Newsletter May 2023
A note from the Director's Desk
Hello Vikings!
Welcome to May! In May, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) recognizes Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health Awareness Month has been observed in the U.S. since 1949. The NAMI organization joins the national movement to raise awareness about mental health. NAMI fights stigma, provides support, educates the public and advocates for policies that support the millions of people in the U.S. affected by mental illness. This year, NAMI is celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month with the More Than Enough campaign. Showing up, just as you are, for yourself and the people around you is more than enough. Visit nami.org for more information about their activities this month.
Here at Schreiber, your counseling and mental health staff including our social workers and school psychologists promote health and wellness each day. Along with faculty, staff, and Schreiber administration, we are here to support all students' mental health needs. If you ever need a safe space to talk, please visit the Guidance office at any time.
May is a busy month with AP exams and seniors making their final decisions on life beyond Schreiber. Our School Counselors are busy with senior exit conversations and preparing for our Junior College Essay Writing Workshop later this month. We are happy to bring this event back again this year in collaboration with the English Department and our Librarian, Mrs. Cohan. See below for more details.
Speaking of mental health, be sure to check out the articles at the bottom of this newsletter. Included is an article from Grown and Flown on things to say when our teens are stressed. Perhaps you already use some of these strategies, or perhaps you have other go-to tips to deal with your teens when they are under pressure. Students, maybe there are some things you want to hear from us when you're dealing with stress, or maybe you just want your space. If nothing else, this article might spark meaningful conversations in your family.
Another new initiative is the College Conversations series I'm hosting in May and June. These are intended to be informative discussions about recent trends in admissions. I'm looking forward to this exchange with parents and interested students. Finally, please remember the important District Budget Vote on May 16! Visit portnet.org for more information.
Be sure to take care of your own wellness. I wish you all a healthy and safe May!
Lorrie Director, Pre-K-12 Director of Guidance
High School Guidance Team
Counselors and email addresses
Guidance Office phone: (516) 767-5810
Office Hours: 8:00 am - 3:15 pm
Counselors:
Ms. Cerny ncerny@portnet.org
Ms. Galdamez agaldamez@portnet.org
Ms. Garcia vgarcia@portnet.org
Ms. Jacobson ljacobson@portnet.org
Ms. Hazan khazan@portnet.org
Mr. Lorge jlorge@portnet.org
Ms. Ludwig jludwig@portnet.org
Ms. Rafferty drafferty@portnet.org/Mr. Sussman csussman@portnet.org
Ms. Strell dstrell@portnet.org
Clerical staff:
Ms. Hasselberger, Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Marzec, Ms. O'Kelly
Stay in the loop! Check the website!
Have you heard? The Schreiber website is a great resource to help you stay informed during the summer. We'll be posting updates as needed.
You can also refer back to this newsletter, which is posted to the Schreiber website as well.
Students and families, you can also find information on the Schreiber Guidance and Counseling website and by reading this newsletter. The newsletters are also on our webpage for your reference.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
College Conversations: Informed Consumer Series
Dates are as follows (attendees are welcome to attend on either one or both dates):
Wednesday, May 10th, 6:30 to 7:30 pm, Schreiber Library
Monday, June 12th, 6:30 to 7:30 pm, Schreiber Library
Hope to see you there!
Monday, May 22nd Junior College Essay Writing Workshop
Join Schreiber Guidance and learn valuable tools to jump start your college essays! On Monday, May 22nd, counselors will host workshops during periods 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 in the library:
Come to Guidance to sign up for a workshop. Attendance will be taken and submitted to Mr. Miller's office.
Attention: Class of 2023!
Seniors,
- It's awards season! Invitations for the Senior Department Awards will go out by mid-May. Save the date, the Senior Department Awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 24th, 7pm in the auditorium.
- Senior Community Awards will be Wednesday, June 14th at 7pm in the Schreiber auditorium. Invitations for this event will go out in the beginning of June.
- As you receive decisions from your schools, you must update your Naviance accounts. Don't be shy! This information will help future Schreiber applicants and you will remain anonymous!
- Apply for scholarships! Fastweb and Scholarships.com are good places to start. Don't forget to apply for the Community Scholarship - due March 6th!
- Remember to check your Portnet email! Be sure your contact information is up to date in ASPEN and on Naviance.
- Have questions? Come to Guidance for more information.
College Planning Guide for the Class of 2024 is now LIVE!
Spotlight College of the Month
The University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, affectionately known as Ole Miss, is the state's flagship university. The first class was welcomed in 1848, has been ranked by many publications as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country. Its roads and walkways are lined with vibrant oak, elm, magnolia and pine trees. The students and faculty are very friendly and welcoming and the campus is absolutely beautiful. Included in the elite group of R1: Doctoral Universities - Highest Research Activity by the Carnegie Classification, it has a long history of producing leaders in public service, academics and business. Its 16 academic divisions include a major medical school, nationally recognized schools of accountancy, law and pharmacy, and an Honors College acclaimed for a blend of academic rigor, experiential learning and opportunities for community action.Big sports programs are central to Ole Miss and their men’s baseball team won the national championship in 2022. The size of the school is just right...not too big or too small. There is a lot of school pride especially at sporting events! They offer tons of majors, have a vibrant fraternity/sorority system and the school is located just one hour from Memphis, Tennessee, a musical hub for Blues and Jazz. If you are looking for a big school with great spirit, a gorgeous campus and great people, take a look at Ole Miss!
Want to learn more? Visit https://olemiss.edu/.
College Fair Information
SUNY Spring College Fairs
The State University of New York (SUNY) has announced its spring college fair schedule. Click here for information and to register.
Summer Opportunities
Job Opportunity at The Village Club of Sands Point
The Village Club of Sands Point invites you to join their team as a Summer Day Camp Counselor!
This summer we will be running camp at The Village Club of Sands Point from July 5 to August 11. For our Camp Counselor positions, salary is $16/hr, potential increase with experience. Counselors must be at least 16 years or older by the start of camp to join our summer staff team.
As a company, KE Camps strives to hire energetic and creative individuals for our summer staff. This opportunity will give your students a chance to not only make some extra income during the summer, but also allows them to work in a non-traditional and FUN! setting.
If any of your students are interested in pursuing this role, please have them visit this link to apply directly online! I have also attached a flyer that you’re welcome to distribute. Please let me know if you have any questions as you review this opportunity.
*We may have Lifeguard positions available. Please click this link to see all open opportunities!
Thank you!
North Shore University Hospital - High School Short-Term Shadowing Program
The High School Short Term Shadowing Program at North Shore University Hospital is designed to expose high school students to various careers in healthcare. Areas include Engineering, Environmental Services, Human Resources, Material Operations, Nurse/Registered Nurse/Nurse Practitioner, Nutrition & Dietary, Occupational Therapy/Physical Therapy/Speech Therapy, Patient and Family Centered Care/Patient Experience/Guest Services, Pharmacy, Physician Associate (PA), Physician/ Surgeon, Quality Management, Security & Transport (Patient/Visitor).
This program runs from August 1 - August 31st. You must review the required documents by clicking on this link.
Legislator Josh Lafazan's Summer 2023 Government Internship Program
Government Internship Program
Office of Joshua A. Lafazan
Nassau County Legislature, District 18
We are excited to welcome students to our Summer 2023 Internship Program! Students will assist Legislator Lafazan's Office to improve Nassau County for all who call it home. From communicating with constituents to facilitating county events, we have a full agenda to achieve our goals. Click here or on the link below for information and to apply.
Summer Exploration Opportunities at North Shore University Hospital
North Shore University Hospital is offering students an opportunity to explore their career interests. The Nursing Exploration Program and Dietetics and Culinary Exploration Programs are offered to high School students who are currently in their junior year, and will be seniors in Fall 2023. All completed application documents, essay & reference letter must be received by 5pm on March 31, 2023. Click the links below for more information and to apply.
Barry Tech/Hofstra Summer Camps Announcement
These summer programs are open for students going into 7th- 10th grade and it is a great way for students to spend two weeks immersed in programs that are offered during the school the year here at Barry Tech.
As you will see on the flyer, we are having a summer camp Open House here at Barry Tech on Thursday March 2nd starting at 5:30 PM for any families that may be interested.
Career Information
Mid-Island Y JCC Summer Job Opportunity
Riverhead Building Supply wants YOU to join their team!
Grow your career with a company that cares about rewarding great work ethic, leadership, and skill development that keeps you engaged and fulfilled every day. You’ll receive a competitive total compensation package that will provide you with the support you need to thrive both inside and outside of work. For more information, visit Riverhead Building Supply.
Methodize (formerly Method Test Prep)
Are you interested in getting a quick sense of where your son or daughter stands as far as the SAT and ACT? Port Washington provides all families with access to Methodize, a learning tool that includes an SAT and ACT Evaluation Test. Students take short (15 to 25 minute) sections and get an accurate sense of where they stand.
Click on the QR code to activate your son or daughter's Methodize account. Again, there is no cost to the family; the district is already providing this program to all students.
Once you activate the account, click on the SAT or ACT course and scroll down to "Evaluation Test" to begin the diagnostic.
In addition to full SAT and ACT prep courses, Methodize also provides a Financial Literacy course, an Academic Success course, vocabulary builder module, and more!
Naviance Single Sign-On Update/Login for Students
Some of you have noticed that your Naviance username has changed. A system update has completed the Naviance/Clever integration. Students must now log in using Clever to access Naviance. Click the Portnet Bookmarks folder (found in the upper left corner of your screen) and click the Clever button. You will see an image that looks like the one below. Then click the Naviance button and voila! You are in!
Parents will still use their username and passwords - Single-sign on access is only for students with Portnet accounts.
Schreiber Writing Center
Click the link below for more information.
Twilight Program at Schreiber High School
Schreiber Twilight alternative high school is our new partnership with Nassau BOCES. Twilight provides an alternative setting in the late afternoon for students who may benefit from a smaller, more structured environment. Twilight provides students the tools to either return successfully to Schreiber during the day or to complete their high school requirements through Twilight. Twilight students are prepared for post-secondary education or employment upon graduation.
Students attend this Regents-based program in the late afternoon/early evening. Students receive strong academic and social-emotional support, as classes are small and largely student-focused.
Students can enroll in Twilight at any time. of our counseling and administrative team are currently reviewing and meeting with students to discuss Twilight. If you have any questions about Twilight, or if you believe your student might be a candidate, please contact your student's counselor.
Passport for Good
Paul D. Schreiber is a Passport for Good school!
Passport For Good is a mobile-friendly web-based platform that simplifies, recognizes, and celebrates your engagement outside of the classroom. It allows you to journal and verify your community service, career development, and participation in extracurricular activities.
To make this transition a success, we need your help. You must first register for Passport For Good - Click the flyer below for the link and QR code to register. Once your account is activated, you are ready to begin using Passport For Good!
Some of Schreiber's clubs and groups have switched to using Passport For Good, logging their community service and career development hours directly within the platform.
Ask your Counselor if you have questions about Passport For Good.
Articles
Why Those Super Low College Admissions Rates Can Be Misleading
This article appeared in the New York Times on April 22, 2023
By Jessica Grose
In recent weeks, many colleges and universities across the country sent out their decisions to applicants. Top tier schools are touting their very low acceptance rates: “Record-low 5.6 percent of applicants admitted to Class of 2027,” a headline in Vanderbilt’s student newspaper proclaimed. “N.Y.U. acceptance rate drops to 8 percent for Class of 2027,” Washington Square News reported, “the most selective class in its history.” Harvard — the brand name school to end all brand names — had an acceptance rate of 3.4 percent this year, according to Harvard Magazine.
Many parents — especially the grade-grubbing graduates of Ivy League schools, like me — take a look at these numbers and feel their pulses spike, even if their children are years away from college. I’m not fixated on the idea of my kids going to a highly coveted school. And I don’t want them to be as worried as I was about getting into the “right” college, which caused me plenty of misery at the back end of high school (see: crying over a calculus pop quiz). I heartily agreed with my friend and former colleague Jay Caspian Kang when he wrote that with “its brutal competition, its winner-take-all mentality and its undue focus on a handful of elite schools,” the American university system needs a rethink, stat.
But what I do worry about is the stress, sometimes even despair, that these admissions numbers seem to generate. Even if you consistently give your teenagers the message that they’ll find a good next step for themselves after high school, no matter what, if they’re inundated with TikToks about kids with 4.18 G.P.A.s and strong extracurriculars getting wait-listed or rejected all over the place, you might not be able to ease their anxiety.
So, first, I wanted to determine whether these numbers were an accurate reflection of how difficult it was to get into these schools. As Jeffrey Selingo, the author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions,” wrote last month for Times Opinion, the adoption of the Common App, “the single online application now used by more than a thousand institutions,” has led teens to apply to many more schools than they did previously. “Application inflation is most acute at the nation’s brand-name and top-ranked public and private colleges, whose application numbers have ticked up 32 percent since 2020, according to the Common App.”
Since applying is easier (or at least involves fewer postage stamps than it did back in the day), does this mean more students who have relatively little chance of getting into these selective institutions, based on their grades and résumés, are applying? Connie Livingston — who was an admissions officer at Brown for 14 years and is now the head of college counselors at Empowerly, a private counseling company — told me that before the pandemic, qualified applicants made up around 75 to 85 percent of the applicant pool.
Now she thinks there are some students who are “throwing their hat in the game just to see what happens” and that “the number’s probably down to about 60 percent, 65 percent of applicants,” who meet the recommended standardized test scores and grades of the schools they apply to. Livingston cited the common app as a reason for the influx of applications, but she also noted that the loosening of standardized testing requirements played a potential role as well.
I also called Selingo, who said that while these schools are indeed more difficult to get into than they were when today’s parents were applying to colleges, a more reliable measure of a school’s popularity is reached by considering not just a college’s acceptance rate but also its yield rate — how many accepted students actually end up attending that school.
Still, even yield can be somewhat deceiving. In “Who Gets In and Why,” Selingo explains how colleges that are just outside the small group of tippy top schools have manipulated their yield rates. After realizing that strong students were applying to more schools, some colleges started pressuring students to make binding early decision choices. Some parents suspect that schools time their outreach around early decision to when students are at their most vulnerable, implying that switching to early decision will boost their chances of being accepted and save them the stress of waiting a few more months to hear from other schools.
Reading Selingo’s book made me realize the extent to which colleges can game their applicants. It also made me realize how deliberately opaque their decision making is. Selingo takes you behind the scenes in admissions offices at the University of Washington, Emory and Davidson, and shows you that the choices schools make about whom they admit are often about a school’s desire to round out a class in a particular year — a point guard, a cellist, more prospective chemistry majors, more students from Wyoming — than about any individual kid or her achievements.
More and more parents’ eyes have been opened to the absurdity of a system that convinces us it’s worth going into significant debt for top-tier college degrees that can wind up having a questionable return on investment. In his book, first published in 2020, Selingo compared the University of Virginia to Virginia Tech: The University of Virginia, he wrote, admits just “27 percent of applicants and spends about 6 percent of its own aid dollars on merit scholarships.” Virginia Tech, on the other hand, “accepts around 70 percent of students who apply and spends 75 percent of its aid without regard to financial need.” Ten years after graduation, “graduates earn nearly identical average salaries.”
Applying to the University of Virginia has become even more daunting — in March, The Cavalier Daily reported that the admissions rate was 16 percent. And Selingo suggests that American families have pretty much had it with all of this. He has been reporting on education for over two decades, and “If you look at all the polling around college now,” he told me, “Republicans, Democrats, rich, poor, everybody thinks higher education is going in the wrong direction.” Per Pew Research in 2018, Americans “cite inadequate work force preparation and tuition costs as major reasons” they’re disaffected.
As long as they’re getting what they want from the process, colleges aren’t going to change. But the number of high school graduates will likely decline over the next several years, because of the baby bust after the Great Recession. We may see those eye-popping admission rates at many schools go in the other direction and realize that they were always a bit of a mirage anyway.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Search for Prospective Students is About to Change
Ever wonder how colleges/universities obtain students' information? Even if you know, you'll want to read this article by Eric Hoover for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The process is demystified, however; upcoming changes may create some confusion. Your counselors are here to guide you through the process!