When I first started working in the college access and success field, it was hard to find someone who had worked exclusively in college access for 10 years or longer. Here I am 16 years later, as one of those seasoned practitioners.
During my tenure in college access, I have spent eight years serving students in 10 high schools in two different states. Prior to my time with high school students, I spent four years helping middle school students in five schools across Michigan learn
about college opportunities. Most recently, I finished four years working in college success for students across 18 colleges in Maryland.
College Signing Day has been a staple of college access programming during every one of those years. I have been a part of organizations that have hosted small celebrations, multipurpose ceremonies, and large daylong events; and I have learned lessons
from every one of those celebrations.
Lesson 1: Small celebrations still require big planning.
My many small-scale celebrations usually reflected my even smaller budget that year. I learned to be creative in not just obtaining the necessary materials, but also in how I promoted the event.
The smaller the event, the more attention I needed to pay to each facet to make the celebration worthwhile. I compare the effort to that of hosting a dinner party. The more intimate the event, the more attention is needed to plan how that time is to be
spent and the quality of materials used. With a small number of attendees and often a small venue, there is less for people to get distracted by. Attendees tend to increasingly rely on the host to provide entertainment.
Keeping the event in a tight time window and adding music to transitions helped me avoid much negative criticism during small events. I made sure to pick upbeat music that is commonly considered classic over what was popular with any specific group of
students. Those old computer speakers injected a little life into my events.
I learned much of the value of small events lies in picture-ready moments, communal experiences, and keeping the celebrations as brief as possible. Most of the effort from my successful small events went into the promotion and the framing of the event.
Lesson 2: Beware of blending.
Due to the lack of funding in all the school districts I served, my role and salary were shared between multiple high schools for some years. For four years I advised students in two or three high schools concurrently, and College Signing Day celebrations
were new initiatives I started in most of these schools. As you might imagine, there were a handful of years in which neither funding nor sufficient staff capacity existed to manage multiple standalone College Signing Day events.
In order to persuade the school administration to invest resources, such as space and time, I advocated to have College Signing Day celebrations added on to senior awards ceremonies, pep rallies, and pre-graduation events.
Once I even hosted a celebration during lunch! In hindsight, the celebration during lunch was a huge rookie mistake. There weren’t any interruptions during the ceremony, but a bunch of seniors getting t-shirts on stage doesn’t elicit much excitement from
underclassmen during pizza day.
A takeaway from that day was the need for buy-in from multiple staff for the event to make sense and for the seniors to feel enthusiastically celebrated. Without sufficient staff collaboration, marketing efforts for the event fall flat, underclassmen
miss the point, and the investment by the administration next year becomes less certain.
Multipurpose or multifaceted celebrations are exactly as they read: celebrations that serve many purposes. From these types of events, I learned that no matter how much emphasis is put on a student’s decision, a multipurpose event reduces the meaning
of celebrating students’ postsecondary choices. A blended event can easily turn into simple acknowledgment and not enthusiastic support. However, multipurpose celebrations can be successful with the right attention from all staff involved
as well as the focus of student decisions being highlighted through multiple forms of media.
Lesson 3: Big events require more people and more anticipation.
Big celebrations – while exciting and memorable for the seniors – can easily result in the underclassmen getting distracted and finding their own amusement if you do not directly engage them. I suggest pairing the signing day celebration with programming
intended for juniors and lower grades for that day or week. I have witnessed large-scale celebrations paired with college planning events, such as a set of visits from college admissions reps, cost-effective college access workshops given in classes,
and even a set of college tours. All these supplemental events help to manufacture anticipation for senior decisions.
Keep in mind that large events require larger teams to produce something meaningful and impactful.
The most successful College Signing Day I collaborated on had a dedicated team of four staff members, 20 student volunteers, and significant input from school administration. It included senior sendoff sessions that prepped seniors for common obstacles
on the way to college. Additionally, college reps came in to talk to underclassmen about similarities and differences between the types of colleges. The day ended with a schoolwide pep rally that only celebrated the seniors' choices.
In the month after this event, my office was hounded daily by sophomores and juniors with questions about college. The supplemental events worked, in this case, to help students connect their own decisions with the seniors' decisions they were witnessing
in the celebration. The following year’s senior class had the highest percentage of college acceptances and attendees in years. Now that’s the kind of celebrating that keeps on giving!
Lesson 4: The only metric that matters.
Lastly, I want to share what I think is the most important lesson I learned from all of these types of celebrations: The value of a College Signing Day should be measured in the momentum it creates with the younger students.
It may sound odd, but you want underclassmen to remember College Signing Day more fondly than your seniors. I found that getting younger students involved was a key to the success of a multipurpose event. Underclassmen's involvement can strengthen the
message and keep students from dismissing the celebration as another assembly. At a large event, it’s a way to keep their attention off their phone and away from their friend or crush they decided to sit next to.
One way to get younger students involved in celebrating the seniors is having the junior class plan certain aspects of the event and asking the sophomore class to help with decorations. Another way would be to target underclassmen with college access
activities after the event, building their anticipation of making their postsecondary decision.
Regardless of size, focus your College Signing Day celebrations on manufacturing the anticipation for senior decisions and engaging the entire school. Those two keys will render reliable results with your College Signing Days.
I wish everyone putting on a College Signing Day this year success, and I hope your celebration deepens your community’s commitment to training after high school.
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