For MSMS juniors, one of the many looming deadlines lies on May 6 in the form of senior portfolios. The senior portfolio consists primarily of three major parts: a resume, multiple short answer questions and two essays.

“It’s to make your job easier in the college application process,” said Dr. Heath Stevens, counselor. For example, the two essay prompts that students have to complete are taken directly from the Common Application, which many juniors will complete when applying to college. These are a huge resource for students, as more than 600 universities throughout the nation accept the Common Application.

Senior portfolios enable counselors to learn about the juniors and their interests. “It does help us in terms of getting to know some things about you [juniors] that we may not know otherwise” Stevens said. The short answer section of the portfolio especially indicates the juniors’ interests and personal lives more closely.

The resume section of the senior portfolio was made clearer by the resume seminar lead by Dr. Stevens and Mr. Marquis McCloud, a representative of the University of Mississippi Career Center. On April 21, McCloud gave students advice on how to give depth to their resumes. For example, McCloud provided juniors with a list of action words to use in resumes to make accomplishments more distinct.

Juniors are reminded that the quality of the senior portfolio is of utmost importance as they will be submitting their portfolios to colleges in the near future. Also, there will be repercussions for not completing the senior portfolios. Counselors will not submit transcripts or modify a student’s schedules until the senior portfolio is submitted.

For these reasons, MSMS counselors urge students to finish their senior portfolios as soon as possible.