In my context, a K-12 independent school in Florida, administrators have been trying to persuade students to apply to universities other than just the local state universities. They hired a part-time school counselor five years ago, whereas in the past the assistant principal assisted students with the college application process. Eventually two-years ago they increased the school counselor’s time to full-time status to serve the students. They have also ensured sophomores and juniors have an opportunity to meet with the school counselor at least twice in a school year, whereas in the past he/she focused on just the seniors. However, the increased time with the school counselor did not change students’ college application behavior, even though it has with past interventions (Belasco, 2013; Bryan et al., 2009; Bryan et al., 2011; Malone, 2013; Stone-Johnson, 2015) . The students continued to apply and enroll in the local state university, regardless of their academic standing or career interests. 

With my needs assessment, I discovered that amongst the variety of reasons why students were choosing to only apply to the local state university was a lack of accurate college knowledge amongst parents and students regarding actual net-costs of other universities as well as assuming all universities are equal. In addition, there is a cultural element present amongst the school community that students are expected to stay home for college, at least during their undergraduate studies. With my intervention, I hope to increase parents and students’ college knowledge with a culturally-sensitive print resource and series of workshops in hopes that they may create a cultural shift in regards to applying to universities other than the local state university. I am also interested in using the Diffusion Theory to assess where the students and parents fall post-intervention such as with Ashley (2009) and Hsiang-Ann Liao (2005). In order for diffusions such as the boiling water or increasing college applications in my context, it is necessary to conduct a needs assessment to understand your participants further. Without the needs assessment, I would have made many assumptions based on previous literature that would not have been applicable to my context. 

The platform used (social media/newspaper), the presenter (influence, my friend, expert in the field, etc.), and my personal schema of who or what I trust and don’t (which newspaper, which influencer and which friend) all impact whether I adopt the innovation or not.