Uniondale High School hosted the Uniondale School District Ultimate College and Career Information Night on Oct. 1.
Students and their families joined engaging workshops presented by college and career program representatives. The BOCES Adult Education program, Emory University, Hofstra University, Mitchell College, Molloy University, SUNY Farmingdale, the SUNY Welcome Center and Western Connecticut State University were in attendance.
“We have such a strong college process,” district Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil said. “We do workshops during the summer; we do workshops for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors. It’s an all-year-long process, because we want to make sure that for some of our students who might be first-generation and may not know how to navigate the process, that we are the ones who are leading them and helping them so they pick the right institution for them.”
There were a wide variety of workshops to choose from, including writing college essays, financial aid, college search processes, majors leading to successful careers, admissions, the role of AI, programs for neurodivergent students, and SUNY colleges and universities. With the option of attending up to three workshops, students left the event feeling more confident about their futures than when they entered.
“We’re able to bring in more college partners, more presenters, where they get a sense of our community,” Jessica Kane, the high school’s college and career adviser and school counselor, said, “and then our students really get to have more of a choice in what they want to learn in this process.”
On the subject of financial aid and scholarships, Gene Rogers, senior financial aid counselor at Molloy, discussed the complexities of college finances. “Financial aid isn’t just one thing, it’s many things,” he said. “All these different things make up that financial aid sort of umbrella.”
“Here at Uniondale High School, the guidance office probably has links to different opportunities for scholarships,” Rogers added. So you want to look locally, as well as all over, which is the internet.”
Hofstra admission counselor Andrea Nadler weighed in on searching for the perfect college for you. “You could be happy at a lot of places,” she said. “There’s not just one — but there are places that you will find that are not right for you, and you’ll have to figure that out. But you can’t figure that out from looking at Instagram.”
On the subject of which college majors lead to the best jobs, specifically in tech and engineering, Synthia Betances, an admissions adviser at SUNY Farmingdale, led the discussion. “We offer a career test to see what your personality matches best,” she said. “At Farmingdale we have job fairs regularly for our students, as well as grad fairs for those students that do want to go on to graduate school. Employer networking events happen throughout the year.”
Along with the workshops, a pizza fundraiser collected money to help support Uniondale’s class of 2026, and students had the opportunity to order caps and gowns for graduation.
For more information, visit District.UniondaleSchools.org.
