Joven Aquino

Mrs. Thomas

UWRT 1104

12 Feb. 2019

Word Count: 780

A descriptive narrative: What story or event drives your inquiry? This could be personal,

global, or hypothetical. Be creative!

The story that drives my inquiry question, which is “Why High School doesn’t prepare you for

college and how we can fix it.”. Is that I struggled academically in my first semester. I didn’t

really enjoy the major I picked (Business), I didn’t really know how to take notes and study

effectively, and how to not procrastinate. The reason I didn’t really enjoy my major was that I

didn’t really know what to pick in the first place. I kind just picked one that I thought was

interesting but I had no advice coming from a counselor because they were so busy. The reason

why I didn’t have the skills of taking notes, studying and how not to procrastinate is because I

felt like teachers focused on making sure you memorized the information for the standardized

test rather than actually knowing the information.

A brief history/context of the question. Consider the report's questions: Who? What?

When? How? Why?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 69.7 percent of 2016 high school graduates enrolled

in a college, and only 50 percent of high schoolers believe that their school has prepared them to

develop the skills and knowledge for college-level classes If high school’s main purpose is to

educate the population on basic skills that prepare students to be both college and career ready,

why are only 50% of graduates prepared for success? There is an obvious problem here and there Commented [1]: believe they are prepared right?
needs to be reform to our public education system. The school system teaches students how to

memorize information and prioritizing on having good grades, rather than actually learning the

information itself.

What did you know about your subject before you began? How did you learn it?

I didn’t know that much about my subject before I began, as most of the information that I have

is from personal experience. When I did the research for the topic, I learned it from articles like

The New York Times, The 74 (a nonprofit news site covering education), Forbes and a book

called “ Readiness realities: struggles and successes during the transition to college” by Pamela

W. Hollander.

What evidence have you gathered to establish that it is researchable? Include a couple of

titles you have found.

The evidence I found for my topic is that there is an abundant of information that leads to high

schools not being effective for preparing you to be successful in college. According to Readiness

realities, roughly half of all high school students need remedial classes before being considered

ready for college-level work. Another book I found is called “Transitions from High School to

College”, and they state that many students don’t have the basic skills or habits of mind they

need to succeed.

What keywords/subject words can you generate related to your inquiry? Consider

synonyms for keywords in your question.

Some keywords that I used personally to help me find information on my topic were “transition”,

“basic life skills”, “college-readiness”, and “remedial”.

Where might you look next for more perspectives on your question?
For the perspectives portion, I will be looking for more student opinions on why the high school

didn’t prepare them for college. While doing research, I couldn’t really find any student

opinions, more just studies about students. I think I will do a survey to gather more research. Commented [2]: On-Campus/In-Classroom survey is a
good way for your research. Maybe Academic Journals
can be of use?
Can you limit or enlarge your question in terms of geography (UNCC, N.C., the U.S.) time,
Commented [3]: Yes, we will compose surveys after
break.
or population?

I can enlarge my question in terms of geography because there is a good amount of people living

in the United States that have been through the transitional process. I will limit the time and

population to people who have just got into college and people who have already graduated, as

they have the most recent experience of their high school to college transition.

What specific questions are occurring to you now that you’ve begun to think on paper

about your question?

I have begun to thought about how specifically we can help fix high school education to help it

tailor more to benefiting the transitional period of high school to college.

Why might your inquiry question be important to your classmates and the larger UNCC

community?

My inquiry question can be more important to my classmates and the large UNCC community

because everyone who has gone to college, has gone through high school and experience the

transitional period. Some better than others, so it’s important that we learn how to improve this

process.

Peer-Editing Comments:

I think your topic is quite interesting. What makes it flow and appealing is your honesty about

your first semesters in college. The story of not liking your major and finding college
challenging pulls the reader in.

In terms of limiting your question, you could look specifically how the North Carolina school

system prepares its students for the transition of college by high school statistics.

A fresh perspective, you could think about in your project could be highlighting the transitional

process between students in the public vs. private schools for more distinction.

WID 2/15/19:

Given the feedback that I got from Josiah, for my research I could look into how North

Carolina’s school system prepares its students for the transition of college by high school

statistics.