New club will provide college app mentoring

In hopes of heightening college attendance numbers and improving academic readiness, college counselor Ernesto Flores has started a new club called Project Reaching Bigger Goals (PRBG).“We understand that the college center can be an intimidating room on campus, easily causing anxiety or nervousness towards planning for our futures,” Reynoso said. “But the goal of PRBG is to reduce that anxiety affiliated with the college application process, or even high school itself.”Meetings will be held on Tuesdays at lunch in the College Center and any questions can be answered by Ernesto Flores in the College Center.“I'm hoping that by the end of this year I will have learned all there is to know about college apps and senior year,” Di Franco said. “Being around a college counselor and so many successful seniors will certainly make that happen. I also hope to absorb as many mentoring skills as I can so that I can be a great mentor to underclassmen and juniors that need help next year.”Currently, the club is trying to pair up current juniors and seniors so that when the 2015-16 school year begins, current juniors will have a base of mentors that can help them navigate the many nuances of senior year. PRBG hopes to put senior mentors in the college center during each period of the school day.“We want students to be comfortable and confident going through high school but also to prepare them for the demands of college life,” Flores said.For club member Maria Di Franco (‘16), PRBG is different than many Samo clubs in that it directly helps students and forges new friendships between people who might not have met in other circumstances.“It's always great to receive handouts and whatnot with information about how to succeed in high school and college,” Di Franco said. “However, I find it much more useful to be able to actually have a reliable person that you can turn to for advice.”Jennifer Reynoso (‘15)  started the club with Flores while applying to college earlier in the year. Flores explained to her that many of the schools he had previously worked at had student-run college centers, and after noticing the incredible benefits of such a system, he saw the necessity for Samo student-involvement as well. They then brainstormed different ways to increase student-involvement, leading to the formation of PRBG.cwaldron@thesamohi.com