Taylor Ackley knew she wanted to be a teacher after working with second graders during a Youth Apprenticeship Program (YAP).
But her path to becoming a teacher wasn’t quite as clear. “I didn't know where I wanted to go or where I could go,” she said.
That’s why Taylor originally joined LPP as a senior at Johnson City High School: to prepare for college and get the guidance she needed to apply. But, as a student in LPP, she didn’t just get the support she knew she needed – she got the support she didn’t even know she needed.
“They helped me with all of it,” she said. During her senior year, Liberty Partnerships Program helped Taylor with everything from college tours to her admissions essay and deciding on the colleges and programs she wanted to pursue.
With guidance from her LPP counselor, Taylor was able to submit her Common Application, apply for federal student aid, and apply for financial aid. Taylor and her peers in LPP even visited New York City, where she toured NYU and learned more about life in college.
But Taylor’s LPP counselor didn't stop at the college application and financial aid process. He also helped her prepare for college academically, by keeping an eye on her grades and showing Taylor that there’s nothing wrong with getting academic support.
“They were really on it, and that showed me I also have to be really on it – especially in college where I am paying my own money to do it,” she said.
Because Taylor had good grades throughout high school, she didn’t necessarily expect to get academic support when she joined LPP as a senior. However, learning a few extra study and essay writing skills from LPP helped Taylor make her college application even stronger.
“Before, getting someone to help wasn’t a bad thing, but it was kind of new so I didn’t really want to do it,” she said.
Taylor ended up getting into every school she applied to, and she now studies education at SUNY Oneonta. She also works at Weis Markets part time and is planning a study abroad trip to Iceland. She’s still applying the lessons she learned as a high school senior in LPP.
In one of her first semesters of college, Taylor decided to get a tutor for a math class – which helped her keep her grades up and understand the material even better. “If I wasn’t in Liberty, and they didn’t show me that getting help is actually okay, I probably wouldn’t have done that.”