UC Counselor Conference 2017

          Addie Honeycutt   SDSU Masters Candidate in School Counseling, 2018

The University of California Counselors Conference was held this fall at the University of California, San Diego campus.  I was encouraged by my fieldwork supervisor, Ms. Elvia Estrella, to attend this conference to increase my knowledge of supporting high school students in their college applications. The conference was broken up into sessions for new and veteran high school counselors to learn about advising students on the newest iteration of the University of California application.  I was able to attend three sessions throughout the day, all of which were incredibly helpful for an inexperienced counselor!  The sessions are described below, with important takeaways listed for each.

Session 1: Financial Aid the UC Way

Gold and Blue Opportunity Plan: Any family making less than 80,000 will not pay tuition and fees out of pocket at any UC campus

Comparison of costs between UC/CSU:

Total costs to attend a UC campus are only $300 more than a CSU campus.  This is because the UC gives, on average, more grant aid!


Comparison of average years to graduation, between UC/CSU:

Only 57% of students graduate from a CSU within 6 years, whereas 85% of students attending a UC graduate within 6 years.  This means at a CSU, students may end up spending MORE MONEY than anticipated on their extra years.

AB540: This bill provides nonresident tuition exemption for undocumented students (i.e., undocumented students qualify for in-state tuition!)  They also qualify for:

CalGrants, UC Grants and scholarships, and Dream Loans

Session 2: Personal Insight Questions

A few tips I found helpful (and surprising!) are:

PIQ's are NOT creative writing prompts: you do not need to set the scene or use figurative language

“Flesh out” the skeleton of yourself that you created in your application

Show the readers multiple, different pieces of yourself that might not have been seen reading the application

Session 3: Freshman Admission 101: The Basics for New Counselors

Most of us are already familiar with the A-G requirements, but it's always nice to have a refresher!

Validation matrices: these are incredibly helpful tools as you work with student's transcripts and create schedules.  These matrices are found in the Quick Reference For Counselors, along with a lot of other helpful tips.  Below are a couple of slides from this session which explain in greater detail what validation is, and an example of where it is used:

The UC Counselor Conference was a fantastic opportunity to learn about advising students who are applying to the UC System, and creating schedules equitably so that all students have the opportunity to be competitive applicants to a low-cost, high-quality system. 

Below are links to the decks for each of the sessions, for more information!

Freshman Admission Basics

Financial Aid the UC Way

Personal Insight Questions: Case Studies

And for the decks for the presentations I did not attend, as well as presentations about transferring to a UC from a community college, visit this page.