If seniors Lazori Paige and Taylor Crawford hadn’t joined AVID their freshman year, Paige’s acceptance to Howard Payne University and Taylor’s acceptance to the University of North Texas would’ve been harder to achieve.

“If it wasn’t for AVID, I don’t think I would have applied to colleges by now, FAFSA wouldn’t have been on my radar and I wouldn’t even know how to apply to FAFSA. I’d be on the struggle bus,” Crawford said. “I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

Paige, Crawford and other current AVID seniors took AVID I, II, III and IV with Ms. Jamie Dorsett, and up until their senior year Paige and Crawford had the same AVID class.

“My favorite part of AVID is probably the friends I’ve made along with the relationship I have with my teacher,” Paige said. “[Ms. Dorsett’s] very sweet and she’s almost like a mother figure to all of us.”

Every six weeks in AVID, Ms. Dorsett required seniors to apply for scholarships as a grade, pushing them to find scholarships. When Paige first joined AVID, she hoped the club would help her become more organized and prepare her for college. AVID taught Paige to utilize physical planners as well as her phone calendar to stay on top of college preparation.

“I have been able to get accepted into many schools and have scholarships to go to the schools and see them as options,” Paige said. “AVID, along with my teacher being very supportive throughout the whole process, helped teach me time management and also made me stay on top of filling out FASFA and different important documents that I needed.”

Paige and Crawford learned what to expect when they applied to colleges and scholarships through exposure to different colleges, introductions to people who graduated college and their AVID teacher.

“Some of the goals I hoped to accomplish were getting scholarships and being able to participate in community service more often,” Crawford said. “I achieved all of them through AVID.”