FOCUS: Academic and Career Planning

Aligning an academic plan with post-secondary goals and interests establishes a path to success.  Career and Interest Inventories help students to discover more about their likes/dislikes and strengths/weaknesses when developing future plans.

Post-Secondary Prep Checklist

Curriculum Modules

Intro to School Links

"Under Construction"

Resume Builder

School Links offers Resume Builder to provide a framework for your resume development.  Resume Builder can be used to decide and work on different resume sections, and then the build tool can be used to export the resume as a PDF or Word file. Documenting your activities and accomplishments is an important part of preparing for the college admissions process, as some college, scholarships, and other post-secondary applications will require your achievements to be part of those processes.  Refer to this video / slide presentation or this instruction worksheet to walk you through how to utilize the Resume-Builder tool in your School Links Student account.

Job Applications and Interviewing

Depending on individual academic loads and extracurricular commitments, finding employment outside of school, whether during the school year or summer, can be a great way to build real-world experiences and responsibilities while supporting financial obligations.  Before beginning the job search process, understanding how to complete applications and handle the interview process are important components to help you meet your goals, both of which are discussed here:
Job Application Tips
Job Interview Etiquette

Creating A 4-Year Plan

This video walks through the importance of creating a 4-Year Plan, factors to consider when doing so, and an overview of the worksheet to help facilitate the process.  This credit wheel will also help you with this process.  Counselors will keep track of courses completed throughout your high school career on this graduation requirements worksheet.

Testive 

Testive is a free personalized learning platform that helps you improve your ACT/SAT scores on your schedule and at your own pace.  This video / slide presentation will explain how to access Testive in order to get started with your FREE test prep.

Career Inventories

School Links gives you the opportunity to explore career interests using assessments. The Career Interest Profiler is an online career interest assessment for students based on Holland's interest codes. It allows students to complete an inventory to discover the type of work activities and careers that match your interests. In this video / slide presentation, you will learn more about the Career Interest Profiler and how to access it.

College Search Process

There are many aspects to consider when starting to create or adding to your college list.  The following two videos discusses criteria to consider when researching colleges and as well as different steps that can be taken to learn more about colleges of interest.
Video #1
Video #2

Access more resources on our College | Search page.

Supermatch | A College Search Tool

Supermatch is a powerful Naviance Student search tool that generates college lists based on the criteria chosen.  This is an extremely useful tool to begin narrowing down colleges to a manageable list that fit certain criteria important to the student.

College Rep Visits

In addition to the college search tools in Naviance Student, students can discover more about and start to develop relationships with colleges by meeting with reps who visit West High.  Find more information about which colleges are visiting when and how to sign up to meet with our reps by accessing the College | Rep Visits page.

A+ Program

The A+ Program (video) (slide presentation) is a program sponsored by the state of Missouri that, as long as specific criteria is met by the end of high school, graduates will qualify to use A+ monies to pay full tuition at community colleges or technical schools.

Resources

Sophomore Graduation Checklist