College Counseling & Preparation in Baton Rouge, LA

College Counseling

At Episcopal, the college selection process is a journey that officially begins in eighth grade. As a college preparatory school in curriculum and philosophy, students of all ages are engaged with rigorous academics that push them to think critically and dive deeper. As students progress to Upper School, they are ready to take that next step toward their long-term education goals. Episcopal’s three, full-time college counselors are ready to assist with a comprehensive college counseling curriculum that is designed to guide students with age-appropriate topics to discover personal strengths, values, and interests.

The College Counseling Team

With three full-time college counselors, each Episcopal graduating class benefits from a 1 to 35 student-to-college counselor ratio. (The National Association for College Admission Counseling recommends that schools maintain a 250 to 1 student-to-counselor ratio. This means that students receive individualized college guidance from counselors who get to know them and truly understand their career goals and aspirations for the future. Such individual guidance is critical for a students’ success. For example, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, high school seniors who met individually with a counselor are 3.2 times more likely to attend college and twice as likely to attend a bachelor’s program.

The Episcopal college counseling team, including Director Justin Fenske, Dr. Alan Newton and Julia Spaht, goes beyond a simple college selection process. The team seeks to help students determine the right school for their goals. The team helps students understand how different aspects of their lives shape the college search process and inform their final college decision.

Tools for the Journey

The College Counseling team provides hands-on support to Episcopal students ranging from assistance with the admission application to guidance in making the right match. The counselors know how important the college selection process is for the entire family, so the team also provides opportunities for families to be involved. Parent seminars are conducted in person and online to keep families informed about the steps in the admission process.

Episcopal College Counselors use many tools to guide students including:

Personality inventories
Career surveys
Online search tools
One-on-one counseling
Small group sessions
Workshops for students
Regular presentations for families including topics such as:
- Financial Aid and Scholarships
- Standardized Testing, the SAT and the ACT
- The College Visit
SCOIR: a comprehensive online college and career exploration tool

Standardized Testing

Given the importance of standardized testing to the college admissions journey, the college counseling team provides a range of support for students beginning in Middle School.

Experience helping students navigate the expanding test-optional admissions practices of colleges and universities nationwide
Yearly SAT standardized testing leading up to the PSAT/National Merit Qualifying Test in October of the junior year.
Comprehensive test preparation program delivered by MasteryPrep in 10th and 11th grade in preparation for official testing in the junior year.

8th grade - 10th grade:

Assigned individual College Counselor
Yearly check-ins around scheduling
Small group college counseling “classes” throughout the year in 9th and 10th
Availability for one-on-one student and/or parent meetings with students’ College Counselor
SCOIR: a comprehensive online college and career exploration tool

11th grade - 12th grade:

Regular one-on-one meetings to meet individual family goals
Success in helping students find colleges both locally and nationally
Help navigating financial aid, grants, and scholarships including TOPS, FAFSA, CSS profile
Help completing the Common Application
Yearly essay workshop and other opportunities for help in all stages of the essay writing process
SCOIR: a comprehensive online college and career exploration tool
Opportunities to meet with college representatives
College fair and case studies
College panels including a Historically Black College and University panel
Over 80 colleges from around the state and around the country visit annually to meet with our students

Test Prep Partnership - Less Stress/More Learning

To help students perform their best on college entrance exams, Episcopal partners with Baton Rouge-based MasteryPrep to boost the school’s test prep offerings. The goal of this partnership is to foster more test awareness among the students and boost students’ overall scores. In addition, the partnership eliminates the need for families to spend money and time on test preparations outside of the school day.

MasteryPrep reports that they have helped more than 250,000 students in 600 schools improve their ACT score, with more than 50 percent of the students seeing a three point increase or more. The program was created by Craig Gehring, who earned a perfect score on both the ACT and the SAT 14 years ago.

Connections to College Admission Representatives

The college admissions process is an ever-evolving experience as schools adjust criteria and entrance requirements. Episcopal’s college counseling team maintains relationships with admissions officers from universities across the state and country in order to stay up to date on the latest developments and their impact on high school students. The team visits institutions in order to garner firsthand knowledge of what they can offer Episcopal students. In addition, the counseling team hosts 60 to 80 college admissions representatives for on-campus visits with Episcopal students throughout the school year. To provide students the opportunity to learn more about a variety of schools at once, the college counselors also organize an annual College Fair that is attended by university representatives from across the country.