<p>My school doesn't adequately prepare its students for the SAT. As a guise, my school offers an "SAT Prep" class. My counselor even tried making me take it, but I adamantly told her no. Not many people get above 3's on AP Tests, either. Yay for my school...</p>
<p>I'm doing full time community college for my senior year (dual enrollment), with some supplemented Virtual School courses.</p>
<p>I would have never heard about it if it wasn't for CC, I also heard about graduating with an AA degree from a phone call by my Virtual School Precalculus teacher.</p>
<p>My school is exactly like that. They act as if the world is tiny and if you so happen to get a 2000 on the SATs then you're doing "extremely well". Hell, I didn't even know about AIME and USAMO until last November. I didn't even know about SAT II's until my senior year. My counselors are clueless. I mentioned at the end of junior year that I wasn't sure where I wanted to go, and they encouraged me to attend community college. Erm. Top 1%, 4.00 GPA, 2200 SATs, and community college? I was baffled. Thankfully I took the initiative to figure things out myself and it paid off too. I'm the first person in my school to go to an Ivy/equivalent.</p>
<p>I totally agree. Our guidance counselors meet with us once every year and that's only to plan classes for the next year. We only offer two AP classes, and of the sixty or so students in them, only 6 took exams this year! No counselor or teacher ever mentioned the SAT, let alone the SAT subject tests. The first time most students take the ACT is in April of their junior year when the state requires all juniors take it. Ivy league or anything equivelent is never heard of, and only just about all the counselors recommend going to the local community college for two years. Two years ago, the salutatorian went to Northwestern, and that was the best school any graduate from our school had ever attended. Hopefully I don't fall into this mix.</p>
<p>I feel better now :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Erm. Top 1%, 4.00 GPA, 2200 SATs, and community college? I was baffled. Thankfully I took the initiative to figure things out myself and it paid off too. I'm the first person in my school to go to an Ivy/equivalent.
[/quote]
haha elitist. ;) </p>
<p>(jk)</p>
<p>My school isn't the best of best either, we aren't allowed to take like 8 Ap's starting 10th grade, we have only 6 classes possible per year, no exceptions, and crap rules like to join the NEWSPAPER you gotta take a CLASS. W(T)FBBQhaxorjewMonkeyBananaPokemon? I swear. That is so ridiculous.</p>
<p>We have a lot of clubs, but not really encouraging of signing up or anything. My GC is mediocre at best, but I haven't talked to her once other than for selecting classes in which she'd give crappy advice...wow.</p>
<p>It's okay. Not a big deal for us that don't have the fantastic private schools.</p>
<p>I agree so much, that I started a College Club to help each other with admission. All we do is eat pizza, and get money from the school (Because we technically have over 50 members, we get over $100 from the school every year. That provides 2 pizza parties) Find like minded people and work together. It's like CollegeConfidential IRL. We discuss college stuff, decide what we need to do (I made my Siemens team from this club and started a computer repair business with members)</p>
<p>VIVI, what school did you go to in Austin?
I'm an Austinite, but I go to private school. Unfortunately, even though our classes are ridiculously tough, they don't ever talk about college here either. SAT IIs? I'm the only one in my grade taking them, b/c I am the only one applying to Ivies/equivalents. APs? No classes designated "AP" offered; therefore, no AP testing. ticks me off.</p>
<p>Yeah... ours did nothing. Meh.</p>
<p>Wow...
Interesting thread! :)
I must give props to the OP for posting this meaningful thread! ;)</p>
<p>I haven't seen a lot of these kind of threads in this section lately...</p>
<p>I'm from a school that opened when I was a freshman.</p>
<p>I was a guinea pig.</p>
<p>AP teachers that didn't teach. It's not easy to study euro. history when you don't even have a textbook.</p>
<p>Math department refused to allow me to make up work when I ended up in the hospital. Even though I had called and ASKED THEM when I was still sick.</p>
<p>My high school effed me in the A :[</p>
<p>But I'm going to college anyways ;]</p>
<p>I was on the tennis team and a week after I graduated the guidance counselor who had written recommendations for me told me she didn't know we had tennis courts, let alone a team! I was in shock. Most of ours are oblivious to anything going on outside the confines of their office.</p>
<p>jptoor, that's a really good idea to start a college club. </p>
<p>I just looked at the SAT score report for June...... the average at my school was a 480 CR/500 M/460 W. With my horrible 620 in CR I was in the 94th percentile...</p>
<p>I knew more during a one hour meeting with D's counselor. Last week, I sent D to the counselor to have her fax IDD Stockton application and the counselor asked my D "Are you sure you want to apply this early?" I thought it was a good opportunity, she missed the criteria slightly but they stated they encourage ALL to apply. This way, she'll know by early August whether she's been accepted (and there is not appllication charge). If she makes it fine, if not, it's just one college off her list.</p>
<p>I totally agree with you all.my school doesn't do crap to help us out.its so bad that over half of every graduating class ends up at cc...its become the traditional 13th grade lol</p>
<p>It is really sad because colleges think it's only the student's fault that they have no extracurriculars and bad SAT scores, but the students are really not the only ones to blame. Of course it's largely on the students to do well, but when the resources are not readily available and they don't know they had to do all this crap to prepare for the SAT and applications (I'm talking 75% of my class didn't know), who is truly at fault?</p>
<p>We have a meeting with our councilors in groups every year and they will give us a calendar of what we should be doing that year, when we should take SATs etc. They also gave us a handbook on applying to different types of colleges. We also have SAT prep courses after school, even though they cost around $200 for 6 weeks. We also have around 16 APs, no IB.</p>
<p>Even though less than a fourth of the students take advantages of this, but come to think of it, our school isn't that bad.</p>
<p>Let's see:
School offers 4 AP's, but schedules so only 3 can be taken. Scores are 1's and 2's; probably 6 people have passed in school history. The English teacher didn't know which AP English she was teaching and neither did the counselor. The AP calc teacher didn't know he was supposed to be teaching AP calc.</p>
<p>GC told the kids "not to mess with SAT ll's because they aren't important."</p>
<p>School schedules its first ever SAT prep course. Barely mentioned by GC. My S is the ONLY one who signs up, so they cancel it.</p>
<p>GC does have a FAFSA info meeting (which contains a lot of incorrect info), but she doesn't know what Profile is.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg....</p>
<p>I thought that my school was bad, because our guidance counselours don't mention anything about college until junior year. Mine actually told me that I was thinking about it too early and to basically forget about it until I'm in 11th grade. Good thing I didn't listen to her and found College Confidential. (Now I'm probably over-prepared for college applications. :P)</p>
<p>After reading all of these posts, I'm pretty thankful for my guidance department. Even if they do absolutely nothing, at least they don't encourage negative progress.</p>
<p>yes and no. some aspects of my school are very weak and some are very strong. the GS sucks but there are teachers around who are more than willing to take time out of their day to help.</p>
<p>most kids, even those who seem like the perfect applicant go to state schools and the majority don't even mention out of state or selective schools</p>
<p>however we have had some students go to Harvard, Swarthmore, and Notre Dame...</p>
<p>so we can't be too bad</p>
<p>My school is really huge (the biggest in Minnesota) so it's not that our school doesn't care......it's just that everyone is too busy to pay attention to individual students. For example, most students see their GC once a year at a group meeting (around 50 people) to discuss the time line for the next year (take a year of history, English, math, and science next year) </p>
<p>I usually manage to see my counselor two or three times per year or so, and before I can even make an appointment I get interrogated by the attendance ladies. It's really frustrating. </p>
<p>Oh, and our Gifted and Talented coordinator sucks! He lost everyones' PSAT scores last year. We had to wait like 1.5 extra months just to see them.</p>