Sadly, as the school year comes to an end at Cal High, we’ll have to say goodbye to our class of 2016.

The pressing question is: Did Cal High and its faculty properly provide its students with the information and tools for college applications and college life itself?

In our opinion, academically, yes. Students are given the tools to succeed but it is up to the students to utilize the useful tools that the counseling department provides.

But for many of this year’s seniors, college admissions proved to be a confusing and inconvenient task.

The school does an excellent job of introducing useful programs, such as Naviance for freshman and sophomores. But when application dates approach, many are still clueless about how the process actually works.

The first step in applying for a college or university is to make sure that the academic, social, and cultural environment will suit a student’s needs.

For most, it’s important to apply to many colleges, about 10 in total, to ensure you will have a school to attend the next fall for college.

It is recommended that three of those 10 schools that seniors applied for are schools with high admission rates, schools that counselors usually call ‘safety schools’.This is common advice given by counselors. But this advice is forgotten because of students’ distant relationships with counselors.

Though college admissions vary from college to college, most college applications require three things: three letters of recommendation (two teacher, and one counselor), one or two essays, a transcript, and a list of extracurricular activities.

Although the process doesn’t necessarily sound easy, there must be a more efficient way to complete applications when the time approaches.

Our counselors do their very best to accommodate every student’s needs, but the amount of students a counselor is in charge of is absolutely ridiculous.

Currently, Cal has only six counselors for its entire school population, a total of 2,671 students. That’s approximately 445 students per counselor.  It’s no wonder that some of this year’s seniors were in a scramble with college applications.

The district stresses how important building a relationship with your counselor is, but how is it possible to build a relationship when each counselor is responsible for nearly 450 students? By comparison, most teachers don’t have more than 200 students a year.

As the school population increases in the future, it’s absolutely necessary for Cal to expand its counseling, while continuing to educate incoming students about college through Naviance. If these changes aren’t implemented quickly, college applications will become more challenging for future seniors.