“Tuesday nights in the college office are one of the best things offered at HPA! The counselors are here for us, and we help each other, doing peer reviews of each other’s essays.”—Angela Cipriano ’20
“The counselors are so helpful; they give one hundred percent focus to the students. And they always have great snacks.”—Kahele Walsh ’20
“Even though the counselors can be really busy in the fall, when you come on Tuesday nights, you get personalized attention.” —Zane Willman ’20
“These Tuesday sessions help me stay on task. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t understand what I’m doing, but it’s fun being here with everybody, figuring out what we have to do and how to do it.” —Chloe Hughes ’20
A quiet hum of voices. Faces reflected in the glow of laptops. A table spread with a feast of snacks. In the weekly evening workshops in the college office, work gets done. On any given Tuesday night, the workroom is filled with seniors, sitting on couches, at the worktable, while HPA’s three college counselors—Andrew Kelsey, Cindy Montgomery, and Jane Quayle—move through the room.
“This is our first year of doing College Nights every week, building off the success of the monthly events we had last year,” Andrew Kelsey, director of college counseling, explains. “Students can work on whatever they want, whatever they need. Our goal is to meet them where they are.”
While some students pop in once or twice to get help, others come every week. Jane Quayle notes that these Tuesday evenings are “a great way for seniors to connect with each other as they’re going through such a significant moment in their lives. It gives them a community experience. Sometimes, being surrounded by other students doing the same thing gets them to open up, ask the questions they need to ask without worrying about being judged for not getting it right.”
In addition to offering weekly open houses, the college office goes the extra mile as deadlines loom. On Halloween, the workroom was filled with seniors meeting their November 1 early application deadlines. While most students were finished with the hard work of their applications, they came to support each other for a final check or for a bit of moral support as they hit the “submit” button. HPA’s spirit of ‘ohana is behind every student as they send those college hopes into cyberspace.