Highland Prep West (HPW) starts preparing students for college from as early as freshman year. In their first and second year of high school, students will complete a project, known as the college research assignment.
The assignment starts by having students complete a career interest survey. The career interest survey is given to have students learn about what different types of careers would most align with their interests. The results from the assessment will help students to narrow down to specific career fields such as business, engineering, architecture, etc. After students get an understanding of what career areas might interest them, the next step is to complete a career evaluation. In this phase, students will explore some of the careers that fall in the categories they were interested in. For example, if a student was given architecture, this would encompass careers such as an architect, civil engineer, and construction manager.
Students get a chance to look over all of the different careers and choose which ones they would want to know more about. Students then follow by doing an in-depth research on these careers as future occupations. To help guide the college application process, HPW has students register an account on a website called College Raptor. Through this website, students fill out what college majors align with the careers they have researched and are interested in. Along with asking what majors they are interested in, students answer questions like what is their preferred size for a college, preferred location, etc.
After having finished answering the questionnaire, the website will sort through different colleges from around the country and offer 10 schools that best match their responses. Each school lists 4 categories to learn more about the school including: academic, admission, financial, and acceptance. Students scroll through each of the categories and view tons of information about topics such as a school's acceptance rate, estimated median SAT/ACT score, and cost of tuition. From there, the last step of the college research assignment is for students to find 3 schools that best represent what they are looking for in a college. This assignment is done ahead of time so that when it comes to junior and senior year, students will know for certain what colleges they will prioritize in applying to.