SAN ANTONIO — With countless high school seniors losing access to in-person meetings with their school counselors this year due to coronavirus and remote learning, a new free online class has been launched to help seniors pick colleges, apply for financial aid, and even write essays.
The Runway Course was created by admissions experts from Collegewise, including former admissions officers from Yale, Harvard, Cornell, and Stanford to name a few. The reason, so many changes forced upon students by the coronavirus pandemic.
Casey Near, the Executive Director of Counseling from Collegewise told us, "The biggest ones are one just the emotional toll obviously for teenagers and how many adjustments they've been going through."
Besides emotions, trying to figure out how to navigate an ever changing system. Near added, "The amount of students I talk to who are just trying to navigate, is it A schedule or a B schedule is it hybrid, online, in person, not to mention the actual physical things have changed, which is they have less access to their counseling offices at their schools if they've gone remote."
Colleges also have less access to students and students less access to colleges. Near told us, "This is typically the time in the fall when colleges come through and visit, and this is the first time students will hear about or interact with the college so all that connection is now online and harder to do because everybody is reinventing this and creating it on the spot."
Near says it's been a lifeline to counselors. She said, "Counselors have so many things on their desks right now. Educators, people that districts and we heard from quite a few that this just felt like a breath of fresh air on my gosh this is a gift that landed in my lap this isn't something I have to do but it's some thing I get to enjoy."
To find the course just go to Go.Collegewise.com/Runway and enroll as an educator, student, or parent, and access all the free resources.