The First Annual Counselor Training Academy

If you are a Hungarian high school student and you want to go to college in the United States, the odds are stacked against you. The American college admissions process is unnecessarily complicated, and few people in Hungary know how to navigate it; furthermore, Hungarian high schools don't have "College Counselors" like American ones do, because they are generally not needed. If you want to study law in Hungary, you go to one of the handfuls of universities that offer law, if you can get the right scores on your high school leaving exams. Hungarian students and teachers are rightfully confused by our American process of personal statements, standardized tests, different application types and deadlines, etc. etc. etc. Often times, the students just give up and go to school in Hungary.

To fix this, my colleague Nelly and I decided to host a new event last week: the first ever Counselor Training Academy. This idea has been brewing in Nelly's head for some time, and with both of us invested in this effort, we made it a reality! Last Thursday, we brought seven high school teachers and counselors from all over Budapest together in our office, and we trained them to navigate this process better.

Nelly handled most of the logistics -- finding participants, issuing invitations, ordering supplies -- and I created the program, putting together a 90 minute presentation from scratch that covered higher education basics, the American college admissions process, common application components, and how to write a good letter of recommendation, school profile, and official transcript for a student.

Although we "only" had seven participants, the program was a huge success. All seven teachers were very interested and participated actively. Several of them had students they were currently working with, so they could directly use the knowledge and skills they were learning. All of them had positive reactions to the event, and two of them even invited me to come and talk to their classes in the spring!

Considering this was the first program of its kind in Budapest, I consider this a win! Nelly and I work really well together, so that definitely helped. Hopefully, next year's English Teaching Assistant can use the materials we created this year to take it a step further -- each year, we can train more people and reach more students -- and just like that, bit by bit, we make a difference.