College Counselor (As Good As) Won't Let Me Apply To a Certain School...

Parent Cafe
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<p>Maybe this post doesn't truly belong in the parents' forum but I wasn't sure where else to put it, seeing as I haven't been able to find a comparable problem anywhere else on these boards. </p>

<p>So my college counselor isn't too happy about me wanting to apply to Georgetown. He hasn't given me any reason for this opinion, other than mentioning the fact that it is Catholic and I am not. I have also discovered that several other people at my school have been told the same thing by their respective counselors and some other people of authority have discouraged me from applying. </p>

<p>I'm very confused as to why they would do that. I thought that maybe it has something to do with me leaning towards being liberal rather than conservative, but as far as I have seen Georgetown isn't THAT conservative(I have actually heard that it is more Dem than Repb.) and besides I'm not liberal in an obvious way. I also know that it definitely doesn't have anything to do with academic compatibility as the same people are quite alright with me applying to say, Brown and Columbia. </p>

<p>Although I am a Westerner, I am not American, and therefore not all that familiar with the college system here, but this seems like a very strange thing to do. I really don't know what to think and I'm not sure my school will give me any straight answers about this. If you have a similar example that might shed some ligth on my situation or any insight on Georgetown or anything to add at all really, it would be greatly appreciated :)</p>

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<p>You can apply wherever you want. If this so-called ‘college counselor’ won’t give you a reason why he thinks you shouldn’t apply to a particular college then I’d apply anyway if I wanted to and I’d ‘fire’ that college counselor.</p>

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<p>The OP is not American.</p>

<p>I’m assuming that the “college counselor” is a school employee.</p>

<p>If this happened in an American public school, the parents could insist that the student be allowed to apply to Georgetown.</p>

<p>But the OP lives in another country. It may be acceptable there for a school employee to prevent him from applying. And the school could do it simply by refusing to supply a transcript and recommendation.</p>

<p>I wonder whether the problem involves the college counselor being unfamiliar with how things are for non-Catholic students at Georgetown. </p>

<p>To the OP: Would it help if you wrote an e-mail to the Georgetown admissions office, explained that you would like to apply to Georgetown but that people you respect at your school have discouraged you from doing this because you are not Catholic, and asked for information about the experiences of non-Catholic students at Georgetown? If you like the reply you receive, you could share it with the college counselor. Just remember to write the e-mail in a way that doesn’t say anything nasty about the college counselor.</p>

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<p>Funny, at the time Georgetown was established, Catholics were discriminated against. Lots of non- Catholics attend Georgetown.</p>

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<p>This would make me wonder what may have happened to students in the past who have applied to Georgetown. Maybe they rarely accept kids from your school, and the counselor is trying to give you a reason ( not an accurate one, though) not to put your energy there. Sometimes counselors have a feeling about a place or a sense that a college doesn’t like kids from a particular school, and they do sort of discourage them from applying.</p>

<p>Our counselor was kind of “down on Brown” when my daughter applied. They had consistently turned down the best kids our school had for years- brilliant kids, actually that wound up at HYPMS. Dd applied anyway, and was wait listed. She chose Yale instead, but maybe it was just a polite wait list and there was nothing she could have done to
impress them.
You might want to have another conversation with the counselor and see if he has any other reasons for discouraging you. It would be interesting to know who had been accepted from you school in the past, if anyone.
Or, he may just not be aware that Georgetown is not a “religious” college.</p>

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<p>Sometimes a counselor will discourage some kids to keep the top attention on a few select others that he or she thinks should have the spotlght. Are your grades, rigor, scores and activities in line with Georgetown? Or are you hoping lightning will strike?</p>

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<p>Not sure if the OP is currently attending an American HS (perhaps living in the US for a time due with a parent on an American assignment from work) or if the OP is truly applying from another country. An American HS can typically only get so many kids per year into any given college. Each college wants to put together a class of kids from many different high schools. So the kids in each high school are, in a sense, competing with each other for the seat or seats that Georgetown might be willing to give to people from that high school in any given year. An adult might discourage a kid from applying to Georgetown if the adult would like to see another student from that HS get a better chance at getting into Georgetown.</p>

<p>The counselor may also truly believe that Georgetown is looking for Catholic students, or that non-Catholics would be unhappy there, or that non-Catholics would be pressured to become Catholic there. I do not believe that any of the above are true. I did not go to Georgetown myself, but I know a lot of people who did.</p>

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<p>My experience has been split on this. I know one student who really wanted to go to Swarthmore but the counselor discouraged her from applying, but in reality if you go to US Affiliated school you have the right to apply to anywhere you want to go. She applied, got in. The thought was her grades, scores weren’t high enough. However, I believe she had the full support of teachers to write her recommendations and too, the GC still has a recommendation to write as well. I think, in this case, he wanted her to have a reality check. But lightening or not, she graduated magna cum laude. Not bad for a kid who were GC felt she didn’t have a shot.</p>

<p>In other examples, a EA to Yale also had her applications into Harvard, Princeton and Stanford as well. When she got into Yale, it was expected she would pull her other applications. She did not, deciding she wanted to see her full set of options. It was felt that her application in at Harvard might take someone else’s spot that barring hers (as she was a very strong candidate) they might get in. While no one knows if anyone was rejected because of her application (because many really awesome people get rejected from Harvard every year), she was offered a spot in the Harvard class. It is interesting to note that in the past three years of the 15 students accepted to Harvard 14 chose to attend (and student in question did end up at Yale). So while it wasn’t really discouragement as it was encouragement to end the college game with EA, she still felt “unsupported.” The thing to remember here is that she had not gotten her EA acceptance before submitting other applications, and so there was no question they were all of equal support (on paper). Emotionally, not so much.</p>

<p>Here is my advice, have you asked directly why you are being discouraged from applying? I know a few schools, like Dartmouth, seem to enjoy getting our school’s applications while other school’s (like Princeton & Brown), seem to not accept nearly as many as Harvard or Yale do, not even close. So it might be a personality fit between the admissions and the school. I think you deserve some honest answers. If it’s just a matter of thinking you might be on the losing end of the proposition, you simply have to speak up for yourself and your willingness to face difficult challenges AND that if you are not accepted, this is a risk you are willing to take. You will probably have to do the same if teachers, especially those writing recommendations, are also negative.</p>

<p>There is also the possibility that your school ranks itself on some sort of acceptance percentage or similar. Do you have a naviance connection at your school? Is there a way to see how many fellow students applied to a particular school, how many were admitted and how many choose to attend? This would be a good place to start because I sense it is more the culture of YOUR school than it is about the culture found at Georgetown.</p>

<p>At the end of the day, if it’s an American School, your right would be to apply anywhere your heart desires. I suggest working WITH your school to make an application. You would definitely earn my respect if you were both respectful and persistent. Good luck to you.</p>

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<p>You might tell your counselor that they were the first university (I think) to have an imam on campus. His office is right next door to the priest and the rabbi.</p>

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<p>I think she does live in the US, because she said this:</p>

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<p>So I assume she lives in the western US, but will apply as an international (?) I wonder if she goes to a religious high school that is not Catholic. Could that be the issue with the school counselor?</p>

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<p>Possibly as I do know of kids who attended certain fundamentalist Protestant or even Catholic high schools which strongly discouraged their kids from applying to BC or Georgetown because they were Catholic and/or “too liberal”. </p>

<p>Then again, this may have nothing to do with religious issues…but whether the GC feels the OP is shooting too high, wrong academic/cultural fit*, or school animus against Georgetown for not accepting many/any of their graduates for some years in a row. </p>

<ul>
<li>Knew of a GC at our high school discourage a few older classmates from Georgetown…but mainly because he/she felt their stats were too low or their interests in some non-medical hard sciences weren’t going to be served well there. That GC would have done the same if a classmate was similarly inclined to try applying to Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, or CMU to study English literature or History.</li>
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<p>Thank you all for your answers :slight_smile: </p>

<p>I am not from Western America, I actually live on the East Coast and attend an American Prep-School. By Westerner I meant that I am from Western Europe. </p>

<p>My college counselor is actually very, very nice and he has faith in me getting into some really good schools and after some persuading he even let me put Georgetown on my Naviance list where it is listed as a reach, not a far reach but a reach. I checked it out on Naviance, and the acceptance percentage for our schools is just a tad higher than the general one. I also checked out some of the other schools that were recommended to me, such as Brown, and while those numbers are significantly higher than the general averages, they are still lower than the one for Georgetown…</p>

<p>No one is actually forbidding me from applying, but they are seriously discouraging me though. And because the Georgetown application is seperate from the others, it makes me wonder whether the same amount of effort will be put into those recommendations as the ones for the general application. It’s not like I believe anyone would deliberatly sabotage me, but maybe just not try as hard–which could make that little last piece of difference between a waitlist and an acceptance.</p>

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<p>^ and they might have a good point Cobrat, but it’s fair and right to be realistic with kids, but it’s unfair to pull the rug out from under them just because the GC has more experience. As our GC says, it’s a huge reach, but if you don’t reach you never know! No one should have to go through life wondering, what if? But I think it important for OP to state the case that they are more mature than being given credit for and if rejection is in their future, let that be Georgetown’s admission’s call, and not the GC’s</p>

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<p>Dragon - I will add one thing about Georgetown. It’s not that their application is really all that different from the rest, once you start applying to schools with supplements. In fact, you can basically craft equally great answers to pretty much any supplement once you have a handful done as I recall. BUT… do they still “strongly encourage” three SAT subject tests? That’s where S I think missed the boat. His subject tests in general weren’t his strongest (but had an ACT of 34), and getting three to be stellar was not happening. He was rejected, but it wasn’t a good fit for him regardless and I knew that from the get go. But he tried… and in life, that’s pretty much all you can do.</p>

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<p>Standardized testing is the least of my worries, I test well on things like that, sometimes even better than on normal tests. I was actually planning on taking about 3-4 subject tests regardless–they go well with my curriculum this year and I will be taking them just after APs/Finals so it will hopefully work out OK. </p>

<p>My biggest concern regarding the separate Georgetown application is the fact that supplements concerning it, the ones that don’t go directly through me, are also separate. And while I trust my school’s admissions faculty, it seems like they might not put the same amount of effort into those if they have some sort of hidden grudge against the school. </p>

<p>I’m fairly confident about the process as a whole, while fully realizing that I might not get into my first choice, and I do have some safeties that I am also genuinly interested in, even if they wouldn’t be my first pick. I think I do have the maturity to be rejected and handle it with grace–when I was initially applying to my prep-school I didn’t even let myself think about going there until I had that envelope in my hands. </p>

<p>On a sort of side-note, my CC wants me to apply to a certain school, as a safety, but one which I am not really interested in attending. I actually can’t see myself going there at all. When he suggested it, I made some minor protest, but he still added it to my list. I believe he has some personal ties to this school and I’m wondering how to convey to him, without being rude or insulting the school, that I really don’t want to apply there? I have nothing against the school, I just don’t think it’s a good fit for me.</p>

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<p>OP, most adults will not sabotage a young person’s application. As far as the school you do not want to apply to, simply save it to last…</p>

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<p>I don’t understand the “letting you” part. You should be able to do whatever you want regardless of what the counselor says. They should be ‘advising’ you - not ‘controlling’ you.</p>

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<p>At high schools where a high proportion of graduates apply to the same group of selective colleges, the counselors often take an active role in shaping each applicant’s list. Sometimes the role is TOO active in that it crosses the line between being advisory to being manipulative and restrictive. </p>

<p>In my son’s situation, the school set a limit on the number of applications. In others that I’ve heard of, the counselors limited the number of applications to a specific college so that the students wouldn’t compete with each other. </p>

<p>In my opinion, both of these examples are not acceptable. At the end of the day, it’s up to the student and the family to finalize the list, not the counselor or the high school.</p>

<p>Some counselors react badly to disagreement. Because they write an influential recommendation and in some cases actually communicate with the colleges on the applicant’s behalf, the student and the family need to proceed diplomatically; however they shouldn’t be “bullied” into decisions that they don’t agree with.</p>

<p>DragonMagic, From what you’ve told us, it sounds like your counselor is directing you in the wrong direction! Without knowing your whole list it’s difficult to comment, but, for sure, if you think Georgetown belongs on your list, no one should be telling you otherwise. Similarly, if you’re not thrilled by the safety that your counselor suggests, find another one.</p>

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<p>Well, don’t apply there, but you need some safety which you are assured of admission, you are assured of affordability at list price or with guaranteed aid and/or scholarship money, and is good academic and non-academic fit for you. Unless you decide to use community college or a low selectivity four year school with a post-April application deadline as your safety, you need to find a safety to put on your application list.</p>

<p>Don’t be the student who comes back here a year from now asking what to do after being “shut out”, or getting admitted only to schools which cost too much.</p>

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<p>Guidance counselors are not minor dieties although they can be helpful. ANY good college counselor would advise a student to choose a safety he/she would actually attend. If you hate the school OP, it is not a good choice of safety. I would be wary of your GC’s advice on that basis alone. </p>

<p>And plenty of schools have a story or more of the student who was admitted where the GC said there was no chance.</p>