Our Fall college campus trip began bright and early Thursday morning, November 3rd. On the agenda for the trip was Doane University, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and University of Nebraska at Kearney. A three day trip with 11 students and 2 advisors, Heather and Brad. Our first stop of the day (after 7 hours of driving) – Doane University. Doane is a private liberal arts college, located in Crete, NE – just about 30 miles away from Lincoln. We were met at Doane by some very friendly student ambassadors, who proceeded to give us a tour of the cam-pus. Doane’s campus was absolutely beautiful. It was surrounded by trees, greenery, and had an

Open Air Theatre which serves as a hangout spot, a location for classes, and graduation ceremonies. The campus also is home to three buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Doane enrolls around 1,000 undergraduates with almost every one of those students receiving some sort of aca-demic scholarship. Doane offers a $4,000 scholarship to seniors who visit Doane and apply for admission, a $1,000 travel scholarship for students who wish to travel abroad, and a four year guarantee – meaning they guaran-tee you will graduate in four years or any additional classes are paid for by the school itself.

After our tour we spoke with an admissions rep regarding the application and acceptance process. After her presentation, we enjoyed a nice dinner at the university’s cafeteria. The cafeteria was of course the students’ favorite part, and featured an all you can eat buffet. After our tour of Doane University, we were back on the road to Lincoln, where we stayed the night. But first, the students had to hit up the mall!

Friday morning, we were back at it bright and early, for UNL’s RED LETTER DAY. UNL had a whole day planned of tours, breakout sessions, and an information fair. Our students first met with a large group of other students and parents from all across the United States for their “Welcome to Nebraska”. Students were then split up into groups for the campus tour. After the tour of the cam-pus, students chose breakout sessions to attend based on their career interests.

UNL enrolls approximately 5,000 freshmen students each year. UNL is probably most known for the Cornhuskers Football team. However, UNL has 21 varsity athletic teams that compete in 14 different sports. UNL also offers over 400 student organizations, including sorority life which many of our students were interested in. At the end of the day, “Additional Student Engagement Tours” were offered. MiaKayla, Dadi, Vada, and Heather had the opportunity to tour the Chi Omega Sorority House, while Jodi, Fay, and Megan toured another sorority house. Audreanna and Alyssa had the op-portunity to tour the Arts building, while Gabe got to tour the performing arts building, including the Lied Center for Per-forming Arts. MiaKayla and Vada were proud to say they wanted to make UNL their future home!

The next morning we began our tour of UNK where students got to see residence hall CTE – a seven story tall dor-mitory, Antelope Hall – which houses 160 students in a mix of two and four person suites, Bruner Hall – home of the phys-ics, biology, and chemistry departments, and the Fine Arts Building. UNK enrolls approximately 1,500 students each fall. They offer over 200 student organizations, including Greek life, athletics, and travel abroad opportunities. After our tour we visited the Student Union which contains the dining hall, the bookstore, fast food shops, pool tables, and hangout areas. We had the opportunity to eat lunch at the UNK cafeteria, which was again an all you can eat buffet with various types of foods. Allen had been keeping track of all the perks of each college visit and Kearney’s Mac & Cheese pizza had pushed UNK into the lead for him!

After filling our bellies it was back home to Chadron, Crawford, and Alliance. Our students were thankful for the opportunity to visit three great colleges, but were exhausted and ready to be home.

2015

Upward

Bound 2016

Happy

Holidays

College Campus Tour 2016

Academic Advisor Update

Heather Barry-Chadron H.S.

November was a busy month filled with activities, family, and Thanksgiving feasts.

The Chadron High One Act Team pre-sented “Journey to the World’s Edge – A Folk Tale in the Irish Tradition”. The sto-ry told of a little girl trying to fit into a world where she is different. Friday night’s performance included a dinner of lasagna, a side salad, bread, and des-sert. The cast and crew did a special per-formance for the primary and intermedi-ate schools right before Thanksgiving break. Next, the crew will travel to Sid-ney, December 3rd, to compete at Dis-tricts!

Students at CHS attended Art Day at CSC on November 7th, where they partic-ipated in graphic design, ceramics, mixed media, drawing and more!

Chadron High hosted their first ever game night on November 18th. Students participated in mat ball, dodgeball, spike ball and more. Students also enjoyed piz-za and a guest presentation from All American Football Player, Treylan Tay-lor.

Basketball season is underway, with Chadron girls and boys Varsity teams hosting Bridgeport, on Nov. 28th, for the NSAA Hall of Fame game. Chadron hosts Gordon-Rushville, December 9th, for their first true home game of the sea-son. Good luck Cardinal athletes!

Brad Gaston-Crawford H.S.

Busy, busy,busy, here at Crawford High School. We have boys and girls basketball underway, wrestling, choir, one act play, and the start of the holiday sea-son. What a great active time of year.

Girls and boys basketball play De-cember 1st and have a tournament on De-cember 2nd and 3rd, and a home game on December 8th against Hay Springs.

Wrestlers start the season with their own tournament right here at Craw-ford High School on Friday December 2nd.

Choir just got back back from Pan-handle Festival and have Christmas Con-certs on December 12th.

One act play got 1st in conference and went to districts and did very well with high honors for top actor and actress.

I'm looking for-ward to singing and playing games with some seniors in the Chadron community — it is one of my favorite things to do.

Tearza Mashburn-Alliance H.S.

All right seniors, its crunch time!! You should have your college list narrowed down to your top three and applications mailed in. Once you have received your acceptance letter the next step is applying for that specific colleges scholarships. Many schools offer full, ½ and ¼ scholarships towards tuition, based off of GPA and ACT scores. Do not miss this opportunity to possible cut your bill in HALF!!

Now if you don’t get a scholarship through your school of choice, it is not the end of the world. Mrs. Dunn has a long list of local schol-arships available in her office and posted on the school website, for you to apply for. Also, the school gives you access to the Naviance Pro-gram. This program allows you to do state and national scholarship searches. If you are not familiar with this program please come see Mrs. Garwood or me for help.

FASFA opened in October this year, so many of you should already have this done. If you have not applied for the FASFA please come see me or set up an appointment with Edu-cation Quest. Education Quest is a FREE re-source to help you correctly file the FASFA. This is money that is given out by the federal government to those who qualify. What if your parents make too much? Well you may still have the ability to qualify for government loan. These loans, such as the Stafford Loan, are of-fered at much lower interest rate with deferred payments.

Don’t let money be the reason you don’t go to college!!!

Now onto my juniors who will want to take dual credit courses next semester or next year. The ACE scholarship is available for those who qualify and should be taken advantage of. If your family receives any of the following; re-duced lunches, SANP, WIC, SSI, TANF or ex-perienced a hardship, you will qualify for this scholarship. It must be applied for each semes-ter and will pay for up to 2 classes per semester. Please come see me for help.

AHS Activities District One Acts – 3rd 1st Grade Music Program @ PAC – 8th State One Acts – 9th ACT testing – 10th Choir Concert – 12th @ 7pm Band Concert – 13th @ 7pm Early Childhood X-mas Program – 15th @5:30pm MS Band Concert – 16th @ 6pm MS Choir Concert – 19th @ 7pm End of 1st Semester – 21st NO SCHOOL – Dec 22 – Jan 3rd

High school students appear to be responding well to recent changes in the federal student financial aid application process, an early analysis shows.

Completion of the important federal aid form, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid commonly known as Fafsa, was strong in the first four weeks after it became available in October, according to an analysis of federal data by the Na-tional College Access Network. The network advocates for higher education for low-income students.

“On the whole,” said Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy for the network, “it is going very well.”

This year, for the first time, the Fafsa was made available on Oct. 1 — three months earlier than usual — for the next academic year. Previously, the form was available annually on Jan. 1. The move was made to encourage students to apply early, to make sure they are considered for as many sources of aid as possible and to better align the aid cycle with the col-lege application calendar. Also, the form uses information from earlier federal income tax returns — in this case, 2015 re-turns. When the form was filed beginning in January, students and their families had to estimate their income for the most recent tax year, then update it when they filed their taxes.

The Fafsa is used to calculate how much money students and their families must contribute to the cost of college, and to allocate federal grants, loans and work-study aid. Many states and colleges also use the form to decide who gets nonfederal assistance, like grants and scholarships. Students seeking financial aid file the form each year.

The analysis found that the number of graduating seniors who completed the Fafsa in October for the 2017-18 academic year increased by 21 percent over a comparable period in January — the first month of the 2016-17 aid cycle. (A complet-ed Fafsa is one that has been filed and accepted by the Department of Education. The number of forms submitted but not accepted, often because of a missing signature, rose in October as well.)

Ms. Warick said the increase is “early evidence” that recent changes, like making the form available earlier and having students use older tax return information on it, are encouraging more students to apply early for financial aid.

The network’s analysis used data drawn from a federal tool that tracks the number of Fafsa forms completed by high school. Ms. Warick described the data as a “first glimpse” and noted some limitations. For instance, it only includes high schools that have submitted at least five Fafsa forms, and counts only students 18 and under.

Also, a factor for the overall increase in completed forms may be that students are becoming more comfortable with the switch to a new federal student aid ID, used to file the Fafsa online, Ms. Warick said.

Not everyone is entirely pleased with the move to an earlier filing date. The shift to an Oct. 1 start for the aid applica-tion process, while well-intentioned, caused confusion for some families, said Kalman Chany, a financial aid consultant, and could mean students in some states may get less help, if they were caught off guard by the change.

Some states allocate grants on a first-come, first-served basis, he noted, so students in those states who were not aware of the earlier filing period may be at a disadvantage. “Some states run out rather quickly,” he said.

“Generally, it makes sense to file as soon as you can,” said Frank Ballmann, director of federal relations with the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.

Here are some questions and answers about the Fafsa:

What is the best way to file the Fafsa?

While not required, it’s generally easiest to complete the form online. That way, you can have your tax information auto-matically transferred into the form using the I.R.S. Data Retrieval Tool. Because you’ll use tax data from 2015, you won’t have to wait to file your 2016 taxes to complete the form.

Can I use my tax information from 2016, instead of 2015, if it would benefit me?

No. All Fafsa forms for the 2017-18 academic year must use 2015 tax data, according to the Department of Education. But if your financial circumstances have changed, you can discuss an adjustment with your school’s financial aid office.

When is the Fafsa filing deadline for the 2017-18 school year?

You can file the form as late as June 30, 2018.

How Students Are Responding to the

Changes in Federal Financial Aid

Allen Murray is a junior at Chadron High School. He lives with his mom, Melissa, and his younger sister, Josslyn. They have four pets – one dog and four cats - Doc, Mustache, Mittens, and Mon-atoo.

Allen’s favorite class at CHS is Drafting with Mr. Budler, where he is working on “freestyling a car”. Allen also enjoys target practice with a bow and arrow, playing video games, and texting his friends. Allen is undecided on what he wants to do for a future career but is excited for the opportunity to be in Upward Bound and visit various college campuses.

Allen is also currently working on writing a novel titled, “The Run of Octavius”, a story set in the Greek-Roman mythology era.

“I have enjoyed having Allen in the Upward Bound program and watching him grow. He is a hard worker and has a great personality. I enjoy his witty jokes and his writ-ings.” – Heather Barry, Advisor

TIP OF THE HAT

Crawford H.S. basketball players for their hard work- Joclyn, Will, Brady, Dom, London, Lewie, and Natalee. Alyssa and Kris-tyna for their help!

Miakayla Koerber – earned a white ribbon at the FFA Leadership Skills Speaking Contest

Dadi Serres (& her Ag Demo Team) – earned a blue ribbon at the FFA Leadership Skills Speaking Contest!

True Thorne – invited to attend NSAA Sportsmanship Sum-mit

Tia Love-Received an acceptance letter to attend the Univer-sity of Nebraska-Kearney Fall 2017!

Tanner Holten and the Alliance H.S. Bowling Team won district!

Heather Barry-successfully prepared Thanksgiving dinner for the first time!

Stephanie Stroup recovered from her CSC email being hacked!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Allen Murray—December Student of the Month

Happy

Birthday

12/1– Gabe Ramos

12/4—Joclyn Staman

12/6—Marcus Espinoza

12/13—London Gillam

12/25—Will Ackerman