Student Services at Weyburn Comprehensive School is there for students who may need some guidance. From scholarship applications to helping students choose the classes they need for their transcripts, the department assures students have what they need to succeed.

Though it may seem like the frozen dead of winter outside the school doors, the WCS Student Services staff is busy helping students plan for the fall.

Guidance Counsellor Joanne Jensen says some students may not be ready yet to fly the coop, but they do get to spread their wings and exercise their own kind of freedom.

“In student services, we are busy right now getting ready for students to choose their classes for next year,” said Jensen. “All of our current Grade 10 and 11s will start by picking classes in what they want to take for the next year's school year, so we're going to meet with them one-on-one to pick their classes.”

Jensen shared WCS’s impressive graduation rate.

“Grad rates are over 90 per cent, which is something to be very proud of, and our school takes a lot of pride in having those grad rates,” she said. “We [at]tribute that success to our teachers and all of our staff working diligently with all students for success.”

Whether the graduates plan to go into trades or attend a college or university campus, or even take a year off for work or adventure, Jensen said close to half of them do go on to further their education.

“Some years we have more that go on to university, and then other years we have more that go on to tech school and do the trades,” Jensen explained. “But generally speaking we would have in around 45% of our grads that would go on to do some kind of post-secondary.”

Trades have been gaining in popularity for practicality’s sake, but Jensen said their numbers are still very high for students moving on to college or university.

“Every year it can fluctuate, one year it's more university and the next year it's more going into the tech areas,” she explained.

For those Grade 12 students who do plan to attend university and may need some help paying tuition, Student Services at WCS will be holding scholarship preparation workshops during the lunch hours on Wednesday and Thursday of next week.

“Students can come to the workshop, and I'll have scholarship booklets prepared for them, all of the scholarship applications, as well as some hints on how to apply for scholarships and some of the important things they need to be successful,” Jensen said. “Those scholarships won't be due until the end of April but we like to give them lots of time to work on them.”

The scholarship application process takes time and sometimes even requires submissions of extra material.

“Some of them have resumes, some need to do letters of reference, some of them have essays,” she said.

From helping students choose the classes they need to not only graduate but to get into the right post-secondary school, Student Services helps to ensure success for all of the students at WCS.