College Bound Planner : A Roadmap to Take You from High School to Your First Day of College

Complete Guide to Academic & College Planning for Teens
A must for every high school student." ―Christie Barnes, author of What Every Parent Needs to Know About College Admissions

The College Bound Planner is your step-by-step comprehensive college planning guide to organize every step of your high school education while preparing smart goals for college.

Get your teens ready now! College may seem far away but thinking ahead and understanding how things work will help your teen prepare. In these uncertain times, parents and students are feeling even more anxious about how to approach college readiness. This book provides advice and guidance starting at freshman year of high school up through senior year. This step-by-step guidance empowers students to take control of their academic futures and thrive, no matter what the future brings.

Develop skills for a lifetime of success. The College Bound Planner helps teens master skills including note taking, studying, test taking, and writing essays and research papers. Being college ready is also about having life skills such as time management, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and communication, as well as the discipline and drive needed to succeed. This college planner is the best college planner to get a teen ready for college.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Academic direction and academic planning tips
• Good study skills and life habits to set yourself up to succeed
• Ways to stay organized and how to do proper goal setting
• Guides to prioritizing your personal goals while participating in extracurriculars
• How and when to apply for college using proper college planning
• What to do to get ready for your first day as an undergraduate college student

If you liked What Color Is Your Parachute?, Fiske Guide to Colleges 2021, or Teens' Guide to College & Career Planning, you’ll love The College Bound Planner.

From the book:

Welcome to High School! Freshman year kicks off your high school experience and is also the start of your college bound journey. Although college may seem like a long way off and you may not have any idea which college you want to attend, it’s never too early to get ready. So, what does it mean to be college ready? College ready means being successful in high school. Success includes enrolling in a challenging curriculum, working hard, staying focused and earning strong grades. However, high school is about more than attending class and doing homework.

Ninth grade is the perfect time to try new things, explore new ideas and see what you enjoy doing. Get involved in your community, both in and out of school. It’s important to find activities which you are genuinely interested in pursuing. Volunteer, join a club, try a new sport, run for student government, sign up for science research, audition for the school theatre group, try mathletes. Once you know what excites you, you can focus on those things that mean the most to you and which you find rewarding later in high school. This is the time to learn and take responsibility for yourself, both academically and personally, and it’s on you to find what motivates and excites you.

Your guidance counselor is one of your most important allies. Start by meeting with your counselor to become informed and understand what is required of you to get the most out of high school and be college bound. Learn about your high school’s course offerings and requirements for graduation. Does your school offer honors, Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) classes? What are the prerequisites? Is this a path that is right for you? Let your guidance counselor help you decide. Talk to them about your goals so they can help you plan your curriculum and choose the classes most appropriate to meet your needs. Give your guidance counselor the opportunity to get to know you; the better they know you, the more fitting their advice will be.

Talk often with your family; they know you best. Keep them in the loop and let them know what’s going on at school, academically and socially. Share your goals and let them help you come up with a plan to find your way to college. Keep your parents up to date with what you learn in any meetings with your guidance counselor. Let them help you navigate any big decisions because everything you do starting in freshman year will impact your college options in senior year. For example, your curriculum, your grades, how hard you pushed yourself academically and your involvement in activities, are all part of who you are and what you'll present to colleges.