College & Careers
College Planning Guide
College & Career Searches
Pathfinder - State of Michigan's free online career exploration tool
Career One Stop - a source for career exploration, training & jobs.
Occupational Outlook Handbook - Use this website to access information on careers, career training, job outlook and much more.
The College Board’s Big Future - Explore careers, majors, and colleges.
Vocational Infomation Center - This website contains information on hundreds of vocational careers.
O*NET - This is an outstanding website for occupational information, and for determining what jobs fit your skills.
My Next Move – Great source for career exploration and career information
Colleges
The National Center for Education Statistics provides an excellent site to search for colleges. In addition, this site provides information on each college’s graduation rate, average cost of attendance after Financial Aid and Scholarships, and other important information.
The College Board’s Big Future - Explore careers, majors, and colleges.
Michigan CAP - The Michigan College Access Portal (MichiganCAP) is a statewide initiative which provides free support for all students and families in Michigan to simplify the process of transitioning from high school to college and career. MichiganCAP will offer students, parents, counselors and adult learners easy-to-use web-based, personalized tools to insure that each step in the process of choosing and applying for college is completed successfully.
Michigan’s Post-Secondary Handbook - Use this website to explore all post-secondary options within the state of Michigan.
NextStepU - This site offers a $10,000 scholarship twice a year, helpful videos, a scholarship search tool, a college matching tool, a career searching tool, a digital and mobile edition, plus tons more. And…it’s all free!
College Toolkit - Use this website to find colleges, search for scholarships and explore careers.
FastWEB - Use this website to search a database of over 1.5 million scholarships.
MyMajors.com - Use this website to complete an education interest inventory and to find out which majors best suit your interests.
College Visits to ZHS
Each fall, representatives from universities, colleges, and the military will visit both Zeeland East and West High Schools. As institutions schedule visits with us, we will communicate this information through the school announcements, weekly parent newsletter, and Google Classroom. Students interested in learning more about these colleges and universities are highly encouraged to sign up! Most meetings will take place during Advisory.
Financial Aid
The federal government provides valuable information about the college financial aid process through their website.
We recommend that families with seniors who plan on attending college complete a FAFSA application. FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This is a government form that helps colleges determine if a student qualifies for Federal and State Aid. Even if you feel that you will not qualify, it is a good idea to fill out this form. For those that do not qualify for grants (money that does not need to be repaid), there are federal loan programs available that offer very competitive interest rates. The FAFSA form is available online and is able to be submitted starting October 1 of the student's senior year. To get started, visit the FAFSA website to learn more.
Additional information on the financial aid process can be found in the helpful videos below.
English - https://youtu.be/_QlpAb40_2A
Spanish - https://youtu.be/xXRhD3i_jO4
College Athletic Eligibility
Students interested in Division 1 or Division 2 athletics will need to register with the NCAA Eligibility Center. This is the first step in becoming eligible for college athletics and should be done at the end of the junior year or the beginning of the senior year. Going through this process will help students determine if they are on track to be academically eligible for college athletics. In general, a student must take at least 16 core courses (English, math, science, social studies, world language) and earn at least a 2.3 core GPA. A core GPA is calculated using only the core classes. It is not a student's cumulative GPA.
For students interested in playing college athletics for an NAIA school, they will need to register with the NAIA Eligibility Center.
It is imperative that students interested in playing sports in college communicate with their counselor early in their high school career to ensure the proper steps are being taken towards eligibility.
Letter of Recommendation Outline Form
If you are looking to have someone write a letter of recommendation for you, you will want to give that person some information about you that will help them write a great letter. Click on the link below to print a “letter of recommendation outline form”. You can fill out this form and give it to anybody who has agreed to write a letter for you. This will give them great information to write a better letter. The recommender will also very much appreciate it.