Welcome to College Success Club.

We want education to be simple, intuitive, and approachable for everyone. That’s why we started our new flagship program CSC, which is designed to bring our content down to a level where it is immediately actionable. We’re not saying it won’t require your own commitment, brainstorming, and teamwork, but we will provide a roadmap that we hope is strong enough for every student to create their own success story. If you haven’t read our first intro post on what CSC actually is, go back and check it out. 

Our CSC annual plan is designed to be led by rising juniors, but it can be started by younger students as well. It will guide you through a year of how to start a club, what activities you can engage in, how to plan for your college application essay, and much more. 

With this club, we would love for students to give themselves enough time to build out a solid application package, discovering along the way what they love doing, what they are good at, and what matters to them. This can all be achieved with time, and the experience can be utilized to bring more character and competitiveness to what could have been a non-standout application. 

We’ll come to you each month with a four-week plan, dedicated to a specific topic. The schedule can be repeated, expanding on the previous year’s accomplishments. We kick start the program with “Month 1: Getting started” and will take you all the way through to “Month 12: Reviewing your accomplishments.” College Success Club will give you the momentum you need daily to plan, build activities, do research, and have some fun with others while mapping out your future. 

Month 1-3 will be rolled out over the summer, giving you a chance to start over the break or to plan ahead and hit the ground running in the fall.

If you like how this sounds, act on it. There is no point in thinking about it unless you take the first step. Have faith in yourself and give it a go. 

Month 1: Starting the club

Week 1: Create your group, gather initial members, define your purpose

The point of the first month is to get started. Talk with the core members of your group and figure out what kind of club you want to be. What are your individual goals and what do you want to accomplish as a group? What strengths do you each have? How often do you want to meet? This first week is when you get to know each other, come up with some ideas, and set the tone for your club. Check out extracurricular activities on our website to see if any of these sound fun to your team.

Week 2: Create a plan for future activities, outreach, and recruitment

Now you want to make sure the ideas you came up with during the first week fit into a timetable that works for everyone. You should also discuss in more detail how you want to run the club. You can keep meeting minutes on Google Docs and assign follow-up items to each member. Do you want to start a digital platform like a social media channel or a website to log your activities and use it to reach more people? Create a master list of all the things you think you will need and set timelines for them. 

Week 3: Develop a budget for future activities

With a good list of activities, the next step is to figure out how much it will cost to get things done. Do you want to enter a group contest together? How much will that cost? Maybe you want to support a local charity and are thinking of running a fundraiser. What would that look like and what would you need? 

Another thing to think about is how you will fund the club. Do you want to start a fundraiser for the entire sum? You might want members to pool together a part of it and fundraise the rest. There is no one way to do any of this. Every group can have a different approach. Just make sure it works for all members in the group. 

Week 4: Plan your fundraiser 

If you have figured what you want to do and how much it will cost, next on the list is planning a fundraiser. Make sure that you have defined the purpose of it, the cost, and the details of how you will use the money. How many people do you think you need to reach to hit your goal? This will help you decide what kind of shape the fundraiser will take. Remember that everything you do with CSC can be used later for your application. Make sure to take notes, document your activities, and review not only your accomplishments but also the failures. 

These four activities should give you a solid start. It will help establish the core of the group so you can begin to work out what kinds of activities you can take part in. There is no hard deadline on the items above so it is better to give yourself enough time to build a solid foundation than rush into implementation. 

We’ll come back with our Month 2 program next month, but in the meantime, get creative and make this a fun experience for everyone. If you get stuck along the way, you can always schedule a session with us to move things along. Otherwise, if you find this helpful, remember to share with a friend and follow us for regular updates.