Anyone feel like their high school didn't prepare them AT ALL for college admissions?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
41

<p>I may be a bit harsh in saying this, but the purpose of high school isn't to help get students into college - college is only one of many paths. Unless, of course, you attend a college preparatory high school.</p>

<p>If a public school does a good job helping students prepare for undergrad study, then great, but isn't really necessary.</p>

<p>For the record, I personally think it's bull that a lot of schools don't do a better job... but my opinion doesn't really matter in a school deciding how they want to function.</p>

42

<p>Wow, three pages of responses! It's nice to see I'm not the only one in this predicament.</p>

<p>My school only offers 2 AP's, and this year, one of them (English) was taught by a teacher who was in her fifth year of teaching, and she had only ever taught remedial English before.</p>

<p>We're supposedly ranked in the top 20 or so schools in Ohio, which goes to show you how crappy Ohio is. This year, we sent one kid to Brown and a girl to Johns Hopkins. Last year, the best school anyone went to was U of Rochester - certainly not bad, but not great either.</p>

<p>We have only a handful of extracurriculars - sports and speech are about it. There are a few "clubs" with only 4-5 people in them, but the guidance office makes no effort to inform people about the existence of any clubs or opportunities.</p>

<p>I only learned about the possibility of dual enrollment this year, because no one at my school ever takes advantage of it. Apparently, I could have been taking college classes since freshman year if I had known about it.</p>

<p>I see my counselor once a year to schedule classes, and when I showed her the classes I wanted this year, she tried to talk me out of them, saying it would be too difficult to handle (it was the most rigorous schedule available).</p>

<p>People in my school are hailed as gods if they get a 25 on the ACT. I got a 34 my first time, and people think that's like impossible to do and no one will stop mentioning it. Around here, every little boy and girl dreams of going to Ohio State and becoming a Buckeye someday. No one has even heard of half the schools I'm interested in - a kid asked me the other day "where in Ohio is Georgetown?" when I mentioned it.</p>

<p>Thank you to this thread for letting me let it all out. I hate the fact that my school fails to prepare kids for college, that's probably the reason almost two-thirds of the senior class went to either Kent State or community college.</p>

43

<p>My public school doesn't help with the college admission. Our counselor doesn't even know us or anything helpful but some of my classmates are rich enough to hire private counselors.</p>

44

<p>It's not a public high school's job to make sure their kids get to college, just that they graduate. </p>

<p>Simple as that.</p>

<p>Be independent, strong, and wise, and do the application process on your own. It will serve you well.</p>

45

<p>My school has a team of 3 counselors that do our college stuff or a class of 1100, but its for schools that want an act of like, 21 for guaranteed admission, and a 2.5 gpa. Its really not that bad, I just get most of my college aid from cc. I dont really trust socialists that work for the government either.</p>

46

<p>My schools' guidance department is quite incompetent at getting the general population to understand the admissions process. My GC did inform me about the importance of extracurricular and encouraged me to go into the Theatre Arts and audition for the fall play or join the tech crew. Only after did I found out he was the new Performing Arts head and needed more people for the production... </p>

<p>He is rather incompetent with everything else, such as not being able to answer any questions and messing up my schedule two years in a row (I don't even want to know how horrible he's going to mess up my Senior schedule). Another counselor, who is CSF/NHS head, is very nice and well-informed and I always go to her but I think i'm going to run into trouble since she knows me a heck of a lot more for GC recommendations and all.</p>

<p>Most I know, however, I know from CC. I would say about 75% of my classmates are clueless about the whole process. A whole lot of people have it in their head that because it's the local public school their going to get in at UCLA, even though they accept two people at most each year (and always the same archetype, hispanic female). A few of the teachers have been doing a great job at plugging their alma maters and letting kids in on the process, but it's not something across the board. I know a junior history teacher spent a class period talking about the process and on how to search for schools, and because of her, I would say about twenty kids are enchanted with and planning on applying to UWisconsin-Madision.</p>

<p>I also feel like i'll be filling out three sets of applications since i'm pretty much doing everything for two of my friends. I had to remind them to sign up for the SAT, I took them to a college fair, and helped them with their list and searching for colleges by taking one to Borders and we sat with the FISKE guide. It's also not fun since they like a lot of the pacific northwest schools that i'm applying too...</p>

47

<p>My school, while not as poor as some of the others mentioned on here, probably hasn't prepared me (and a few others) as well as it should have, or could have.</p>

<p>I think a big problem is that I'm in Texas. Texas is like its own country, and everyone believes that if you are in the top 10%, you will go to UT or Texas A&M. Heck, that's what I figured I'd be doing up until I started looking at OOS places after getting a NMSF caliber PSAT score. </p>

<p>The one nice thing my school did was pay for me and a few other students to attend an SAT prep place last summer (I guess the school has something to gain if kids score well enough for national merit recognition?).</p>

<p>Academically, our school isn't terrible. Just about every AP is offered (except languages-- we only have French, German, and Spanish) and there are a lot of kids who compete for the top spots in the class. Our ranking system is a flawed though, so I'm ranked in the 30s/~650 when my worst grades have been 4 B's- three 89s and an 88, not to mention that I'm taking more APs than my peers. Oh well. My SATs are better than all but about 2-3 other students who have the same scores I do.</p>

<p>Ah, tangents are fun to go off on. One thing that kind of made me laugh this year was when my English Lang teacher was discussing the AP exam with me. I got ~85% right on a released AP MC test, but I confessed that my weakness would be on the essays. She was like, "That's alright. If you do this well on the MC you will get a 3 for sure. A 3 is passing! If you do well on your essays you could even get a 5. But I mean, a 3-4 is sufficient for credit at most colleges. You need a 5 if you want to go to Harvard or Stanford or some place like that. You don't want to go to any of those schools, do you?" I just sort of shrugged and said, "I guess not." (I did end up with a 5!) :D</p>

<p>I have a feeling that next fall my GC will think I am crazy, applying to places like Chicago, Cornell, WashU, etc., especially when I told her in November that I was really interested in Texas A&M lol, but oh well. Perhaps it won't be too bad; last year we sent a guy to Rice and a girl to Columbia.</p>

<p>It's just weird. It seems like there's a small cult of people at my school who have high aspirations but no one at the school goes out of their way to really help them out. I guess that's just part of going to a large public school though. Classic how some of our best teams--Math team ~5th in state, Academic Decathlon team ~10th in state, go nearly unrecognized in the shadow of the athletic teams who can hardly make it to region. I consider myself fortunate that there are at least a few teachers, if not administrators, who are genuinely concerned about the future of the students, and can recognize bright students. (Namely, the coaches of the aforementioned teams.) </p>

<p>Bleh, that post was all over the place, but I'm glad I could blow off a little steam.</p>

<p>Also LOL at people who revere those who get 1800s on the SAT. I don't know what they would think if they ever came on CC.</p>

48

<p>
[quote]

It's not a public high school's job to make sure their kids get to college, just that they graduate.</p>

<p>Simple as that.</p>

<p>Be independent, strong, and wise, and do the application process on your own. It will serve you well.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's a public high school's job to provide competent guidance counselors and support for students who ARE independent and trying to do things outside of high school. Funding for clubs would be nice, but I guess that's not required, just something almost every other high school has.</p>

<p>It sure as hell is not a public high school's job to discourage students from doing things that will enrich their learning experience and help them go anywhere other than community college.</p>

49

<p>That's why CC exists.</p>