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<p>But the GC doesn’t need to be involved with college matters in order to have a family start thinking about what can we afford, do we want to try to plan driving or flying trips to such-and-such schools, etc.</p>
<p>3bysmom - good point! It would be worth pointing out to a 10th grader who scored maybe 190+ how close they are to being NM and that maybe a little tutoring or prep work is in order so that they can hit that 201+ junior year. Excellent suggestion.</p>
<p>^^ PG - I meant that I understand it from the Administration’s viewpoint … why tie up two GCs, one to handle 11th graders and another to handle college-related issues? And since the public HS has made it clear that it doesn’t want to serve the needs of academically-oriented students … within that context the GC assignment makes sense.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess the question is … how much of a “tie-up” is it to have a general session in junior year sometime where one guidance counselor says this is the process, these are the relevant tests you need to think about, think about using winter or spring break or other three-day breaks during junior year to go visit, etc. I’m not talking about individual counseling.</p>
<p>^ But who would present? The only logical choice would be the 12th grade GC. (Questions … those pesky parents, ALWAYS asking questions!)</p>
<p>Again, I’m not defending the practices at our public HS. I’m just saying that they make sense IF your goal is to serve the non-academically-inclined students in the community. (Typically the Val and Sal attend either second-tier or third-tier colleges.)</p>
<p>NewHope,</p>
<p>Check out “Admissions Matters”. </p>
<p>It’s a good basic guide for parents and students.</p>
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<p>You are lucky–our private DOES NOT allow parents or students to have a passowrd for Naviance, claiming it can be hacked and private information can be hacked, blah blah blah…</p>
<p>I will be asking for ALL of our kiddos information to be removed from the schools system since they have not given us access— I have to make an appt and use it with a guidance counselor present if I want to see what the schools stats etc are… If it is so delicate a system to be hacked–kiddo’s stuff need not be in it…and its been no use for us at all</p>
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<p>Is this really the GUIDANCE COUNSELORS insistance? As far as I know, this is the way most on-line applications are handled. The kids fill theirs out, then print out the GC and teacher recomm. pages to be mailed in. I don’t think that’s the counselor’s “fault”.</p>
<p>^ But who would present? The only logical choice would be the 12th grade GC. (Questions … those pesky parents, ALWAYS asking questions!)"</p>
<p>But again, so what? A 2 hour parent session sometime over junior year would be too much of an imposition on a 12th gr GC? Not much of a work ethic!</p>
<p>“I don’t think that’s the counselor’s ‘fault’.”</p>
<p>I can see both sides to this. On one hand yeah, paper forms are the predominant method … very time consuming and requiring a solid effort to get essential reports sent out. But it’s also a handy excuse for not making a more comprehensive role in the “guidance” portion of the Guidance Office. [Full Disclosure: My niece is a GC in a troubled school. She says she can’t help with college guidance because she spends 90% of her time on disciplinary matters, resolving teacher/student disputes, mediating between teachers and parents, etc.]</p>
<p>BRAG: Our GC is assigned alphabetically so a family can have the same counselor throughout all their years at the school, if there is no change in staff. Five counselors for 1600 students, however. Plus one who specializes in college and scholarship app process with seniors.</p>
<p>Our son is the only NMSF in his class of 408–and only the the second in three years. He is applying to highly selective schools. 75% of the students are collegebound; 90 percent of them will go to non-competitive schools within 120 miles of our small town. So the competitive application process is not the norm.</p>
<p>We asked for a meeting to be sure that the school would help us present the best possible picture of the school and our son’s standing. The principal met with our GC, the college counselor, our son, my husband and me for this afternoon. They were wonderful–asked how they could helped, reviewed the special requirements of each application, made suggestions on his essays and interviews. Wonderful help from a school that must devote the majority of its time getting first-generation college students to consider college.</p>
<p>^^^ “Not much of a work ethic!”</p>
<p>Check, and mate. “We don’t care. We’re the phone company, we don’t have to.” L. Tomlin</p>
<p>My son’s guidance counselor educated herself thoroughly on my son and on the safey and elite schools that would be of interest to him, financial aid for those schools, and the proper way to write admissions essays. She wrote him a glowing recommendation and even read over his essays!</p>
<p>He was accepted to his favorite 7/8 schools.</p>
<p>I am a homeschooling mom.</p>
<p>Just to clarify my point…what I meant was, most applications ARE done online. In our office, we are starting to get postcards from schools saying they will only send paper applications upon request becuz almost no one uses them anymore. </p>
<p>But when my kid did online apps. he was REQUIRED (by the university not by the GC) to print the GC form and the recommendation forms…they cannot be submitted online as far as I know…that is not the GC’s rule, that is the way it is.</p>
<p>Am I wrong/uninformed?</p>
<p>Common App now has a way to submit recs online. D and I tried to figure it out last year and got hopelessly confused and gave up.</p>
<p>Some schools don’t use Common App. This makes it harder for both students and counselors.</p>
<p>^^hey, LafAlum…see you at “home”…</p>
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My son applied to 6 Common App schools last year, and all 6 were entirely online - GC, teacher, transcript, and all. He was a homeschooler, but teacher forms are the same for homeschoolers. </p>
<p>That’s nuts that a school would want paper - maybe they want to save the cost of printing it themselves, but I’d think opening the envelop and de-creasing the paper would cost more!</p>
<p>does that apply to all apps or just the Common App? It was not used by several of the schools we applied to. I know more and more are coming on board.</p>
<p>I met DS’ GC at a parent information night. He said something I found, let’s just say, interesting. He was talking to one of the other moms about her DS and said he was getting some of the students to look at colleges that were not on the map, but which were actually very good schools. Her son is one of the uber-students. </p>
<p>When DS met with this counselor and told him he only wanted to apply to one school, GC said “ok fine”. </p>
<p>I’m sure they find the challenge of getting a super student into Harvard or Georgetown a lot more exciting than the mundane job of getting an OK student into Podunk U. </p>
<p>Lesson: families - parents and students - can’t rely on the GC to provide the advice/guidance they need. Places like CC, and other internet sites and books are far better resources.</p>