On Saturday, March 28, I attended NHHEAF's 10th annual college convention called Destination College. It was hosted at Southern New Hampshire University and is designed for high school juniors and their parents to learn about planning and paying for college. It was a day filled with great speakers, workshops, and a mini college fair. The best part…it was all FREE!

When I registered for this event, I signed up for three workshops throughout the day. There were so many helpful workshops, selecting the ones that were the best fit for me was very hard. I wanted to know about EVERYTHING!  The three sessions I attended were:  Information for the Student Athlete, First in The Family: Advice for First-Generation College Students, and College Costs & Funding Strategies.

Information for the Student Athlete: In this session we had a panel of two college coaches from SNHU (Men's Soccer and Women's Basketball), two student athletes, Jay from the Center for College Planning Center at NHHEAF, and a lady that was a member of the athletic department at SNHU who talked about eligibility requirements for NCAA sports. The college coaches discussed recruitment strategies that were helpful - such as sending in videos of you playing in a game, contacting the coach personally, etc. They also talked about official/unofficial visits, going and watching the school practice or play, and not being afraid to contact them in any way. They love when you come to them, YOU as in the student, not Mom or Dad. As far as the student athletes, they talked briefly about their experiences. They discussed the team being your second family, time management with your school work, and the process of how they were recruited.

First in the Family: Advice for First-Generation College Students: This was my favorite session. In this session we talked about and touched upon pretty much all the questions that you had. What was great about this was that you could tell that everyone was in the same boat as you, and many people had the same questions. I know that a couple times I had some questions that I was too afraid to ask because I thought that they were dumb or didn't make sense; but it ended up that a lot of people were wondering the same thing. No questions were considered dumb here. I have to say, that for this session Angela (another College Outreach Counselor in the Center for College Planning) did an especially good job of selecting a panel of college students that could answer any questions that you could think of. The panel consisted of a high school senior who just applied to college and is living with her grandparents, a girl who was in her second year of college and was paying for school on her own, and lastly a man who had recently graduated from Plymouth State University. What really made this session worth while was the story behind each member of the panel. They proved that IT IS POSSIBLE TO GO TO COLLEGE! No matter your situation, you just need to use and take advantage of your FREE resources; like NHHEAF.

College Costs & Funding: This session I recommend mostly to parents. Sitting through this was hard for me. Financial aid + me = confusing. However, it was very useful and helpful in terms of where, when and how to apply for financial aid. This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT session to attend for parents and it also had financial aid professionals from SNHU and Plymouth State University that were willing to answer any questions you had.

Overall, I thought that this was definitely a worthwhile event to attend and I recommend it to any upcoming juniors next year. I found it to be the most helpful college event that I have ever been to. Did anyone attend this event as well? What did you like or dislike about it? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Destined for College,
Lauryn