As I sit in class, waiting for the bell to dismiss me from a long series of lectures that makes it a challenge to keep your eyes open, all I can think about is to go home and take a nap. The nap is a lie, you feel “tired” at school, but as soon as you get home, it’s like you drank a gallon of coffee mixed with Redbull. But now as a junior in High School, I worry about my grades, sports and colleges. I worried about these things before just not nearly as much as this year, but the main focus is college. Where will I go? What will I major in?

These questions have run through my head since I started high school and they just were not answered by my monthly “college” searches in Google. When I was a freshman and sophomore, I didn’t seek answers to my questions, being the oblivious underclassmen I was, I was not aware of the Career Center, College Partnership Program (CPP) or the College Board visits.

I have personally been on one of the college trips that the CPP offers and I have to say that they are actually quite helpful. The trip to the college itself is interesting due to the time spent in the bus; you could use that time to talk about academics, GPA’s and what other colleges’ people are visiting. These topics are not as popular during school or when you’re hanging out with your friends, so it provides a variety of opinions on that subject. Once you get to the college, you learn more than you arrived. Not in terms of statistics, but about how the student life is and what goes on around campus and the overall atmosphere. The visits just provide more information about the college which, you visit, and could be the major factor of whether or not you go to that college.

Even though you can visit colleges outside of school, having the opportunity to visit the college in a school environment is a very helpful alternative. Especially for underclassmen who have more time in choosing their college. Having school sponsored college visits are convenient and provide a little push to start exploring colleges for underclassmen who would of otherwise probably procrastinated on doing so.