This piece is the first in a News series with college and career advisor Raven Hollins-Crowder regarding seniors’ college application period. Read the rest here.
To ease seniors through the college application process, college and career advisor Raven Hollins-Crowder will be speaking to the English IV classes starting Tuesday and ending Friday. Tuesday, she will be with Regina Castillo-Eagleton’s classes; Wednesday with Sarah Tielke; Thursday, split between Erum Asif and Sean-Patrick Woodward; and Friday with Brian Russow.
Content she will cover includes steering students through the SchooLinks application process, the difference in ApplyTexas and CommonApp, what test optional really means, federal student aid guidelines, but most importantly, the basic building blocks of the application process. Hollins-Crowder’s main hope is to bring the resources to the seniors and to alleviate any college-application-related confusion.
“Knowing how to request their transcript [is an] area where students kind of get confused,” Hollins-Crowder said. “[But also] understanding whether they will share their class rank or not…the importance of putting things correctly into SchooLinks, the process for a CommonApp application, how their counselors are a part of that process, and setting up their alumni access account.”
Another gray area Hollins-Crowder plans to discuss are letter of recommendations, which she noticed students are overfocused on.
“I’d like to put that in context for them so they understand what role it plays,” Hollins-Crowder said. “[I also want to] let them know that I am here to help them go through all of that and just answer any questions they may have.”
Hollins-Crowder, who has worked in higher education for 16 years with 11 of those years being spent at The University of Houston as an academic advisor, said her previous experiences have allowed her to be better informed about the college application process.
“Knowing admission practices, knowing what an admissions counselor looks for when they’re reading an admissions essay, that helps me so much in helping students write their college essays,” Hollins-Crowder said.
For her, moving into a college advisor role at the high school level felt like a “natural progression”, Hollins-Crowder said. It was the same story with her gradual take over of the college-application-related classroom sessions, a tradition she started during her time at Clements.
“I can’t remember when I started exactly going into those classrooms,” Hollins-Crowder said. “It may have happened maybe around 2018. We started off really small, because generally the counselors were the ones that would go in and do the classroom sessions and afterwards students were still having questions for me.”
Then, one of the counselors had suggested that they bring the students to the college center—where Hollins-Crowder’s office was located at the time—to tag team the sessions. After noticing a dip in the questions asked by that specific alpha split, the collective decision was that Hollins-Crowder would now take over the entirety of the sessions.
“Back then we had Naviance and now we have SchoolLink,” Hollins-Crowder said. “So now towards the very, very beginning of the year, I try to get in those senior English classes to make sure that I’m answering questions for students before they get too deep into that application process.”
Outside of the classroom sessions, Hollins-Crowder said that students are welcome to come to her office—located in the back of the library, past librarian Marion Brennan’s desk in the office with a ‘staff-only’ signpost—anytime for anything college-related.
“Sometimes a student may come in and they may say, ‘Well, this is what I want to do, but I don’t know how to get there,’” Hollins-Crowder said. “So we do you know major exploration ,but also they may come in and say, ‘Well, I’m really interested in this, but I don’t know if that will lead to a career.’ And so we discuss those options as well. A lot of times it’s not that we can’t do something we just don’t know what the possibilities are or how to get there, and so I help students with that.”
Essay writing is one of the most requested areas that Hollins-Crowder helps students with, but there are also times where students don’t know which colleges to apply to, so Hollins-Crowder sits down and goes through exercises with those students to truly visualize their ideal college experience.
“That gives me a good idea to start making suggestions, [to] figure out, ‘Well, do you want to be in school with 60,000 other people or is maybe 5,000 more your range?’” Hollins-Crowder said. “Because all of that plays into how their college experience will be for them.”
October marks 11 years at Clements for Hollins-Crowder. From the time she gets on campus at 6:50 in the morning up until when she leaves right before band practice, Hollins-Crowder is open to visiting students. Whether it’s during lunch or any other period, anytime she’s in her office and available with the door open, she loves to talk to students.
“Don’t stress,” Hollins-Crowder said. “There’s so many other things in the world that are going to cause you stress, strain and strife, but don’t let your college application be one of them. Come see me, let’s talk about it, so that way I can kind of smooth those ruffled feathers, and we’ll get through this process together.”
