Mrs. Long from Osceola’s College & Career Center visited Mrs. Deatley’s journalism classes to inform students about being prepared for college and college application. College is a popular option for students after high school, but there are so many things that go into applying. This process is thought to start in junior year, but Mrs. Long says, “Start [looking into colleges] now and get curious so you have a base on what you want to do senior year.”

There are many websites and other resources that help you find out more. One of these websites recommended by Mrs. Long is Florida Shines. She says, “It has information on everything about college you need to know like college information, salaries, and FAFSA information.”  This website’s tools are useful to succeed in college. Another resource is Xello. Mrs. Long says it “will be used instead of the Clever app ‘Naviance’ to help look into colleges.” This resource is available on Clever, which makes using it much easier to use. Freshman Lexi Bergland said, “Knowing about these websites will definitely help me figure out what I want to do in college and help me figure things out easily.” Another resource to help with college and what you may do after is Big Futures. Mrs. Long highly recommends “Big Futures on college board because it allows you to look into different careers so you can figure out what may suit you.” There are several websites to help students in any grade level to start looking into college, or what they might be able to do as an alternative. Not only this, but these websites give information about scholarships, which to many students is important because college can be costly. Isabella Zuzek says, “If I do decide to go to college, being able to get scholarships will be super helpful, and being able to find scholarships from these websites will take a lot of the stress off.” For more information on any aspect of college, there is a college fair on Tuesday, February 27th at Pinellas Technical College from 6:00 to 8:00p.m.