Nov. 30 — Monday — is circled several times and highlighted on the calendars of high school seniors across the state. That’s the deadline for fall registration to public universities in California.

It’s the last day procrastinators can get their applications into the state’s 10 University of California campuses, 23 California State Universities and 110 community college.

Nadia Ventura, college counselor at Santa Maria High School, has been helping students research schools, gather transcripts and fill out applications for weeks. All of that effort comes down to 5 p.m. Monday.

“It’s crunch time,” she said.

Actually, the drop deadline for application submission is 11:59 p.m. on Monday, but Ventura’s office, along with hundreds of others like it around the state, closes at

5 p.m. After that, students are on their own.

Ventura has been the college counselor at Santa Maria High for three years. Before that she was a student counselor at Lompoc High. As her work has increased, so has the number of Saints being accepted into colleges and universities around the country.

Santa Maria High students received 77 acceptance letters last year, including Harvard University, Cornell, Penn State, UCLA, the University of Oregon and more. Ventura expects this year’s group to surpass that number.

Four 2009 graduates of Santa Maria High – Maria Sanchez, Rosario Reyes, Gretel Corsa and Diana Garcia – earned either Gates Millennium or Dell Scholars scholarships last year. Sanchez earned both.

After the final bell of class rings each day for the past several weeks, students have filed into the College Center to research schools and fill out applications. The center features a roomful of computers where students can plan their futures.

Santa Maria High students are a little more fortunate that some when it comes to assistance. Because the school qualifies for Quality Education Investment Act funding, it’s able to retain more counselors than most high schools in this budget-slashing era.

Santa Maria High has seven student counselors, Ventura’s College Center and a Career Center. It also has an Early Academic Outreach Program, a University of California project aimed at reaching underserved students.

All of the resources are being stretched this time of year, Ventura said.

“This is the busiest year I’ve seen,” she said. “Every year since I’ve been here, the number of kids who are accepted to a university keeps going up and up. We’ve got really good kids here.”

The process is pretty simple. Students check in with Ventura or assistant Vanessa Guerrero. They review their high school transcripts and find if the student is on track for college. If they are, transcripts and any extra work and documents are gathered, schools are researched and applications are filed.

If students need more work, they can do it during their last semester of high school and apply to a college later, or they can apply to a community college. Hancock College is experiencing record enrollment this year.

“I want to have students open as many doors to secondary education as they can,” Ventura said. “Community college is a great choice. I don’t think kids realize how lucky they are to have a great community college they can walk to.”