With students scheduling for the next year of high school, the College and Career Resource Center (CCRC) continues to aid students with their future plans. According to CCRC coordinator Melinda Stephan, many juniors are starting to make appointments with college and career advisers.

Stephan said, “I think a lot of juniors (are) having their scheduling meeting with their counselor and they’re having conversations about what (they are) going to do when (they) leave Carmel High School. That prompts the conversation to maybe make an appointment with one of our college and career advisers.”

 As students of all grade levels are currently considering their future years of high school as well as college plans, the CCRC plans to provide a resource to aid them. Stephan said she is preparing a virtual resource to replace College and Career Planning Night for current freshmen and sophomores.

“We’re going to have recorded breakout sessions that parents and students can watch. We will have a couple of live events during that week (of) March 1,” Stephan said.

Sophomore Lucca Mo said he will utilise this resource as he is starting to consider plans for after high school.

“I’m going to start using more college resources that are provided this year because I realize college is coming sooner than I thought,” Mo said. “I also definitely have more of an idea of what I want to do in the future, so I think college readiness resources are more useful (to me) now.”

According to Stephan, one of the topics covered in this resource will be financial plans for college.

Stephan said, “Our partners at INvestEd Indiana, their financial experts (will) do a live zoom presentation about paying for college and it’ll be appropriate for our younger students who are freshmen and sophomores and their parents.”

Although the CCRC is preparing resources for younger students, Stephan said she and the other college and career advisors continue to assist seniors with scholarships.

“Scholarships are sort of the big topic right now for our seniors. A lot of them have already turned in their college applications and some of them know where they’re going and some are still waiting for decisions to come back, but a lot of seniors are looking for scholarships and scholarship opportunities,” Stephan said

Among many other scholarships, Stephan said she highly encourages seniors to apply for the Carmel Education Foundation (CEF) scholarship.

“The (scholarship) that we like to highlight is the CEF scholarship. So a lot of our seniors are completing that CEF application right now,” Stephan said. “That’s an awesome opportunity to get a local scholarship that you’re only competing with other Carmel students for.”