College Trip, A Student’s Perspective

August 19, 2019 –

As an alum, I would like to talk about my experience going on the college tour trip with mission high the summer before my senior year, in 2016. The trip was comprised of about 45 students and several staff members including the principal Mr. Guthertz and was very organized.

We left from the front of Mission High on a charter bus and the first school we visited was Holy Names University in Oakland, where we were welcomed by a tour group. We walked around the campus all day taking notes and seeing dorm rooms and then we eventually got lunch. After this we were able to tour Cal State East Bay, a larger campus also local to our area. Eventually, we made our way down the coast to Santa Clara University where we had a tour, and then broke up into groups to explore the campus. We then stayed overnight in a hotel further down the coast, each room had about 4 students. This was a super fun time to bond with my friends and classmates because we all ate dinner together and played in the pool afterwards, even with the staff that came on the trip. The following day we toured Cal State Monterey, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Santa Barbara.

The variety of schools we got to tour gave me a really good sense of what kind of college experience I could expect depending on where I chose, whether it be a state school near home or a UC down the coast. At the end of our trip we even got the privilege of touring Hearst Castle, which tied in a lot of California History in to our trip.

Overall, this trip provided me with the opportunity to see so many more schools than I would have had the opportunity to see, and gave me a really good sense of where I wanted to be when it was time to go to college. This trip helped me and my friends envision ourselves as college students and most of us find ourselves attending schools like Cal Poly and the UC’s now that we’re older. I was really lucky to have this trip be funded by the Mission High Foundation and I think those from the class of 2016 who attended would agree that it was a huge stepping stone in our road to higher education.”