Hi all. New parent posting here for the first time. My son is applying to East Coast boarding schools from his public H.S. in Australia, and we have a dilemma regarding the principal/counselor recommendation. Public schools in Australia do not have a guidance counselor function, and his principal is brand new and does not know my son. Would it be an absolute disaster if the recommendation is filled out with the column “No basis for judgement” ticked? Son is a straight A student otherwise and we are pretty confident the teacher recs will be great. He is also involved in tons of activities and sports. Also, the school coordinator may not know basic info requested on the Transcript Form, such as what percent of students receive which grades. I’m freaking out about all this – any advice?
Contact the AO’s at the schools your son is applying to. They may tell you it’s not a big deal or they may tell you to have someone else write a rec. They might make you submit a principle rec but allow you to submit a supplemental recommendation as well - from someone in charge of one of his activities maybe?
Thanks very much, great suggestion. I’m also wondering how much a black mark the AOs will have against an applicant if the current school officials are not very cooperative. While son’s school is considered one of the good public schools in the area, the school official has indicated impatience with filling out the transcript form. Australian schools do not have the same application process as U.S. prep schools and this is all rather new and tedious to them. We understand they do not see this as part of their jobs so are trying to be as respectful and helpful as possible.
I think AOs experience a fair bit of this every year, especially the ones that have students from all over the world.
Many public schools in the US don’t do a great job with this either, btw. They are set up to work with the regional public high school. Period.
So while amazing recs can add a little oomph to an application, I wouldn’t worry that this will be a black mark, especially because you are working hard to be accomodating.
+1 on reaching out directly to the AOs. They may also suggest/allow the prior principal - assuming they knew your child - as a substitute. (Even better, if you could think of a specific person to suggest to them, that might help).