Some San Dimas High School students have had the opportunity to visit their dream colleges and experience how it feels to be in that environment. It’s not the same as visiting and seeing everything in person; than just listening about it and looking at campus pictures.
“It’s unreal,” said Nickolas Izam, a senior, standing in the middle quad at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “You can’t really understand what it’s like until you walk around campus, see everything, talk to students and sit in classrooms. “It makes everything more real.”
The opportunity to visit these big and beautiful institutions came through counselors wanting high schoolers to see what a real college campus is. Visiting campus not only offers a different perspective on academic life but also allows having an idea of how it feels to be part of these communities.
These college visits are significant for students who may not have the financial resources or the time to travel to different campuses independently. With funding from food frenzies and Chick-fil-A, the Avid program arranges trips to some of the most renowned universities in California, like UCLA, Stanford, and the University of Southern California (USC). The students not only tour the campuses but also attend informational sessions about admissions, financial aid, and student life.
Mrs. Valencia, the Avid teacher said “The visits have had a profound impact on students, helping to clarify their paths and motivate them to pursue higher education with more confidence. For many, this hands-on experience offers them a clearer sense of what they need to do to make their dream a reality.”
In conclusion, having students visit their dream college can have a big impact on the debate if they want to attend to the school or if they thought they wanted to go because of how good it sounded and how beautiful it looked on the images shown in the slides that they have access to.