Mentor Program
“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.”
-Unknown
OEF recipients are matched with a mentor during their junior year and that’s when they build a relationship together and discuss the student’s career thoughts. This component of our programs has reaped the most success by clearing the stress for students and parents who have typically never faced the challenges of the college application process and all the requirements that must be met before the graduates start their university or technical college path. Long-lasting friendships are formed with the students and their families, and the joy and pride everyone witnesses at college graduations are overwhelming.
OEF, along with career-path counselors at high school, work continuously to improve the guidance for all OHS students and their parents to help remove the anxiety of meeting scholarship applications and multiple timeline requirements from the colleges.
The following is a list of the major services that OEF mentoring provides:
- Career path options
- Campus visits
- FAFSA application
- College application
- Housing requirements
- Summer job
- Financial aid education and budgeting
- Laptop purchase
- Orientation
- Dorm move-in
- Accountability with semester grades reporting to maintain scholarships
Excerpts from Student Applications
I have worked my hardest and pushed myself to my limits to achieve academic success as well as helping my mother raise my two sisters. I want to show everyone that no matter how your life starts out you can be successful. My goal is to be the first one to complete college in my family, and I will do it.
We didn’t have a lot of money growing up and my mom struggled to keep food in the house. College was merely a dream because we thought we could never afford it and now that I have been accepted to one, it feels so unreal.
I want to have opportunities in life and not just be stuck with what I have to do to get by. …I saw how much my mother struggled and worked four jobs just to make it by, and that is not what I want for me, my future husband, and future kids.
I just feel like I have worked so hard to be where I am and I want to become the man my mother said I would turn out to be. It’s crazy how teenagers these days don’t want to work hard for what they want but I am one person that is going to work as hard as I can to succeed in life.
