College Guidance: When & What Do Your High Schools Provide?

[AustenNut]

I’m mostly familiar with public high schools with guidance counselors responsible for hundreds of students who are more focused on getting kids mental and emotional counseling, social work services (housing, food, etc), and pushing them along to help graduate. The extent of college counseling is primarily making sure they submit the FAFSA, a graduation requirement in our state.

For those of you whose high schools have college counselors or some adult that helps shepherd students through the college process (or even have a college night), when do they start having the college search talks? Do they do it in the spring of junior year? Start of senior year? Are there summer meetings or assignments? Any details would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone knows of any higher-poverty districts/schools that are doing this well, I would love to know their names (on this thread or via PM).

[Mom270]

Our high school is about 1,900 students and is very diverse racially and socioeconomically, ranging from “Free and Reduced lunch” to very wealthy families. Most students go to college, ranging from community college to the Ivies. I think the guidance counselors start talking to the students junior year. In the summer and September of senior year college app workshops and essay help is available. Different college reps visit the school during the day in the fall and in March there is a college and career fair at night. In October seniors and their parents meet with the counselor to discuss their college list. Many parents hire private college counselors. The school also does a “Grads Return” program where former students talk about their college experiences.

Last year by 11/15 the school had sent documents to colleges on behalf of 234 seniors to support 1,432 applications. I know two grads are going to Princeton, three to Brown and at least two to Columbia. The high school scholarship fund awarded $248k to 129 students.

[momofboiler1]

Our D went to a private catholic HS. Lots of low income students because it was part of the voucher program for the city.

College counseling started sophomore year. Pretty low key stuff like career inventories and practice PSATs.

It ramped up junior year and they held a lot of workshops for both students and parents. Lots of emphasis on the financial side. There was much more of a focus on affordability and finding merit awards than going to top schools. 99% of the graduating class went on to 4 year colleges.

I believe my D had a very detailed questionnaire she had to fill out ahead of her first one on one meeting which happened early Junior year. She had a couple of meetings with the counselor and then there was a one on one parent meeting at the end of junior year.

Students worked on common app essays in English class spring of junior year.
Essays were reviewed by the English teachers and the student’s college counselor.

It also seemed like the college counselors made sure that the top students were nominated for regional awards and getting accolades to add to their application.

New this year (I still follow the school on social media) is that they had all the rising seniors come to school after the common app opened and the counselors helped everyone get their applications started and reviewed the process one more time. The goal was to have the applications for rolling admission schools in before classes start to try to relieve some of the pressure.

The college counselors only did the college stuff and there were separate guidance counselors. They’ve cut back on the staff since my D was there. When she was a student they had a staff of 8 - 4 guidance counselors and 4 college counselors. Now they are down to 5 - 3 guidance counselors and 2 college counselors. My D had 200 students in her graduating class. Not sure what the class size is now.

We thought they did a great job but it paled in comparison to the college counseling a family member received at their prep school where everyone was gunning for top schools.

[CT1417]

Public HS in VHCOL area. Guidance counselor assigned to student at start of 9th grade. Each GC has approx 50 seniors, or a caseload of 200 or so students.

Students are introduced to Naviance in 9th grade but not as a college selection tool-- more planning/organizing. I don’t know what they used it for but GC met with students in small groups starting in 9th grade.

Students and parents are each expected to complete their Jr Packet halfway through Jr year, and then GC arranges a meeting with parents early spring term Jr year to answer any questions they may have. Meetings with students are ongoing.

I don’t know how much actual help the counselors provide because I had all my questions answered here or via online research. The Guidance Dept was very on top of the administrative functions of applying.

College reps visit the HS throughout the fall and students sign up to attend 30 minute group session with the reps. Seniors are allowed to miss class but Juniors can only attend if they have a free period.

There were one or two nights throughout the school year where a panel of reps from four or five colleges would discuss admissions topics. These were open to parents & students of any year, not just Jrs and Srs. There was a separate evening session mid-fall of Jr year that all Jrs and parents were expected to attend.

[bethy1]

Our 3 guidance counselors for 2200+ students are focused on what AustenNut described above. They do have ideas for applying to the local CC and 5 public in state universities. And one specific private school they seem to favor. Honestly I don’t blame them - keeping kids whole and fed and basically educated is a noble cause for sure. They are overworked and underpaid.

At some point students take a test which identifies their talents vocationally.

I am just praying our GC has time to submit D23’s transcript - and letter? - by EA time.

Also I have to give our school in that they do host the PSAT and SAT twice per year.

There are a very few each year that go out of state (not that that’s the gold standard) and probably one Ivy ever 2-3 years. They have very involved and affluent parents for the most part. Or resourceful parents like me and my husband.

[tamagotchi]

Public HS with a very wide range of income levels in our district. We have 2 college counselors for 3500+ students. Students are given informational materials and spreadsheets to fill out in the junior year. Then a senior packet at the beginning of senior year. My son (rising senior) has had one individual meeting with a college counselor so far over his entire HS career. It’s challenging to get appointments with them. There are parent volunteers who help with essays and applications. Our school doesn’t have Naviance.

Guidance counselors are separate from the college counselors and are not involved in anything college related. Guidance counselors help students with course schedules, high school advising, accommodations, educational or other issues, social work etc.

My kid is nervous about the schools that require a “counselor recommendation” because our counselors don’t have much contact with each student and their case loads change every year.

[sbinaz]

Our kids attend a BASIS.ed charter school. BASIS has campuses in AZ, TX, LA, 1 in DC. Plus there are BASIS ‘independent’ schools (aka private schools) in Silicon Valley, northern VA, and NYC.

I don’t have any experience w/the BASIS independent school counseling set up, so my description below is based on 1 of the public charter schools.

My kids’ school has 2 counselors - 1 handles grades 9-11 and 1 only handles seniors. College counseling starts in 9th grade. Well, actually the topic is introduced to parents in 8th grade when it’s time to do open enrollment for the next school year…that’s when the school has an info night for rising 9th graders & their parents. There’s usually a panel of HS students to answer questions and the senior counselor spends a good amount of time laying out all of the stuff they do as counselors to help them be ready for college applications.

I’ve now attended this Rising 9th graders night twice. It’s very informative. The senior school counselor said that prior to working at this school, she worked in the NE for an elite boarding school and basically did all the same stuff there that she does here…only at our school, we don’t have to pay $35,000/year in tuition for it.

Senior counselor also states in the Riding 9th Graders presentation that parents’ focus should be on helping their kid find the right school for THAT kid instead of focusing all on “you MUST go to Harvard.”

Usually once during the school year, the school has an info night all about paying for college, and there’s some financial advisor presentation that explains a lot of stuff about financial aid, explains Net Price Calculators, and all that jazz.

9th grade:
In 9th grade, they set up each kid with a Naviance account, usually in the latter half of the year. 1 of the counselors explains to the kids how to use Naviance. They have the 9th graders do a couple of personality test things on Naviance. 9th grade field trip involves a tour of a local college. 9th grade parents are instructed by the counselor to not take their kid on Ivy League or other elite college tours…instead, parents are advised that if they MUST go on a college tour in 9th or 10th grade, just tour ONE big school and ONE small school just to get a general ‘feel’ for what those 2 different types of schools might feel like. Kids & parents are told to sign up for Raise.me because there’s a lot of colleges that give out micro-scholarships for you tracking your progress there throughout HS.

10th grade:
School counselor meets regularly w/10th graders, usually as a group, a couple of times 1-on-1. More Naviance assignments to introduce them to other stuff in that online app. 10th graders are told that they can attend college info sessions at school (colleges send admissions reps to the HS) if they want to, but it’s not required. Student has to get permission from the teacher and go to the class’s student hours after school to make up any work or assignments or lessons missed.

9th grade has 2 english classes: 1 english language, 1 english literature. Both in preparation for AP’s later in HS.

9th graders also highly encouraged to take 9th gr PSAT in October as practice.

10th grade begins these “Thoughtful Thursday” presentations during lunch period. Actually, all of the HS’ers are encouraged to participate, but I know that D24 and her 10th grade classmates were required to attend & participate during 10th grade. They cover a lot of different topics…how to write a resume, how to figure out what you might want to major in, how to manage stress, how to stay organized, how to budget your money & time in college, how to figure out extracurriculars and such. Sometimes they’ve even had them practice yoga and meditation.

10th grade takes AP English Language. D24 took this last year. Quality of her writing went WAY up last year during this class. Teacher had a LOT of assignments that were in the realm of college app essay questions. The english language teacher is amazing.

10th graders all take the PSAT during the school day in October for free. School also has a practice PSAT on a Saturday morning a couple of weeks before hand. And the Saturday before that practice test, there’s info sessions taught by the HS teachers on how to prepare for and take the PSAT. So nobody goes in cold.

11th grade:
11th graders are required to attend at least 1 public university admissions session at school and at least 1 liberal arts college session as well.

They’re also introduced to this college rating chart that the senior counselor gives them…requires them to jot down notes in an organized spreadsheet sort of way for different aspects of a college. They have to fill it out for each admissions officer info session. And are told to fill one out after every in person college tour they go on.

All the 11th graders take the PSAT. School pays the fee, no charge to parents. No idea if this is how it’s done at local public schools or not.

I know that there will be more frequent counselor sessions during 11th grade…I want to say once a month during 1 of their classes? I don’t remember right now.

Everybody takes the ACT in the spring.

All 11th graders take AP English Lit. Not all 11th graders end up taking the AP exam. School pays for all of the AP exam fees. At some point during latter part of 11th grade, prep begins in english class for college app essays. Students are given optional work to do over the summer to get their common app personal statements completed over the summer.

School counselor helps all 11th graders figure out which teachers to ask for letters of rec. All teachers upon being hired are told that a job requirement is to write letters of rec for students. Students are counseled on how to pick 2 teachers for this…they have to pick 1 STEM and 1 humanities teacher (english, history, foreign language). Students do not have to fill out a ‘brag sheet’ for the school counselor because counselor already know the other stuff that the students are involved in.

12th grade:
Students take ‘capstone’ classes. Senior counselor said these are equivalent to upper division college seminar classes…

• 1 humanities capstone class. 1 of the options this year is “history of food.”
• 1 foreign language capstone class. This is in whatever language you took in 11th grade as AP. For D24, it’ll be french.
• 1 math capstone class. 1 of these is always something like differential equations. D24 won’t be taking Calc BC, so she won’t be taking differential equations next year…she’ll end up taking whatever the other math option is in 12th grade.
• 1 science capstone class. 1 of the options is usually something like biochemistry or organic chemistry. This year 1 of the other science capstone classes is applied physics.
• college counseling class.

That last class is taught by the senior counselor. Her entire job is basically to help them get into college. Class is Mon-Fri for 50 min each day. Class assignments surround college app essays. Senior counselor coordinates getting all of the teachers’ letters of rec submitted on time to all of the colleges’ deadlines. She also sends out all of the transcripts. She also handles sending out a write up of the HS, includes a summary of the curriculum at the school, etc. Senior counselor also writes up a guidance counselor letter of rec for each senior and submits that, too, to all colleges that require it.

Senior counselor explains to students at start of the year how to decide which schools to apply to, what the difference between ED & EA are and why you shouldn’t apply ED unless you’re really prepared to attend that school. Senior counselor also requires all seniors to apply to at least 1 national scholarship competition, which includes more essays, letters of rec, and all that.

Seniors’ regular classes finish in early Feb, then they start a senior project/internship pretty much anywhere they want on any subject they want. Part of the senior counselor’s class Aug-Feb is also to come up with a senior project idea, write a proposal, get a faculty advisor for it, and find and land the project internship. Internship/project is from early Feb - early May. Students have to give a 15-20 min presentation in 1st 2 weeks of May to the school presenting their work.

[rickle1]

Two kids. Two different HSs. Two VERY different experiences. S went to a small, public charter HS. It was a low socio economic school designed to help improve outcomes for those kids. Ironically, we’re not low socio economic folks and we decided to send our kid here because it really was a great academic school and we felt the local public schools were too big and were full of drugs, gangs, etc (was true). His charter school had a 100% college acceptance. However, very few kids had attended top schools or even out of state schools. S was interested in both top and out of state so the GCs didn’t really know how to help. He was their Jefferson Scholar nominee and one of the GCs attended a mixer with us. She told us that S had forced her to learn all about admissions to these other schools.

D went to a Public magnet (performing arts) school. Very large and was more like the typical public school experience. Very difficult to work with and get anything meaningful form the GCs. Made us pay for records in excess of X #. She had to cast a wide net for Musical Theater just for the right to hopefully get to audition, so we had to pay at least $100 for records. Very poor responsiveness re meeting deadlines for these school. Most of this was do to the general population was typically headed to CC or local state U. The Magnet Art kids were all over the place so they weren’t staffed with the knowledge to help the arts kids (crazy for a magnet school), but this was an inner city school with lots of first gen college students.

Neither of our kids had much help which required us to do a lot of research on our own.

[mountainsoul]

Public high school with six counselors for 2000 students. Most of their efforts are aimed at the 500 or so rising seniors. While there are no required college planning meetings, counselors do have an open door policy for any questions or concerns.

College planning starts freshman year with all students completing the Naviance career interest profiler in freshman seminar class. By senior year, students are required to indicate In Naviance which colleges they are applying to and update Naviance with their final college choice as part of the graduation checklist. Because of the requirement to use Naviance, our school has years of historical data thereby improving the accuracy of the scattergrams.

The counseling department also hosts two college planning nights, one during the spring of junior year and one during the fall of senior year. They review graduation requirements, college entrance requirements, timelines, financial aid, and the college application process. There are plenty of additional resources available on the counseling website too from how to handle waitlists to information for families new to the American college system.

Annually, over 300 colleges visit our high school and 90% of our graduates attend 4-year colleges.

[rickle1]

Experiences are so different . We had NONE of that. Would have been so helpful. Even in our public school with 2300 kids we had basically nothing. Not sure what the GCs even did.

[sbinaz]

It’s frustrating how different the college guidance experience is from 1 school to another. I wish the stuff that was available at my kids’ school was available to students everywhere, but that’s a different topic for another day.

[mountainsoul]

The educational disparities are frustrating and depressing. I realize my family is privileged to have a well-resourced public school of choice. I wish others had the same choice. Unfortunately, solutions for closing the opportunity gap are neither easy nor quick. In the meantime, students are left behind and families are left floundering, trying to figure out the changing landscape of college admissions.

[rickle1]

100%. Ironically we are quite comfortable and privileged too. We chose to send our kids to certain schools because our local ones were overcrowded and declining rapidly (and we live in an affluent area). Our kids “commuted” to inner city environment for either a better education or a concentration in their interest (lousy overall school but top Performing Arts school in the area / state). Services weren’t available so we took it upon ourselves to fill the GC role. Fortunately we could and were interested in that so the kids got what they needed (minus the known pipeline to certain schools). If we weren’t motivated or able to fill the gap, the kids would have been left with whatever was available (not much). You do what you can.

[natty1988]

We had good college counselors at our small private school. There are 3 of them. It’s such a privilege and I wish that was available to all kids. Each grade in the high school is not that large so our principal knows every kid and the counselors get to know each kid.
That said, some families still hired private college counselors…

The college counselors have an open door policy at our school and kids can come to them anytime, starting in 9th grade.

9th grade: Students are first introduced to the college counselors at Freshman orientation. That is also when they set up their Naviance accounts. The also go over high school graduation requirements and what classes they should be taking to meet the requirements of our in state universities. Towards the end of the year, they meet with all the 9th graders and talk about taking the PSAT next year and what to expect. They also send home stuff for parents. As far as college tours go, they recommend doing an informal tour (just walking around, no official tour) of a local university if the student is interested in doing so.

10th grade: They meet with the entire 10th grade to talk about taking the PSAT in October (they take it at school). They do some preparation in class and then take it during school some day in October or November. They also meet with the counselors as a group to talk about what classes to take for the next two years of high school, how to develop interests outside the classroom, etc. They also talk about when and how many times to take the SAT and ACT. Or course they also emphasize that students do not need to run themselves ragged and they don’t need to do fancy camps to impress colleges. They take a field trip to visit a local college. At the end of sophomore year, students are assigned to 1 of 3 college counselors.

11th grade: Students are required to meet with their college counselor in the fall and in the spring. They are encouraged to take the SAT or ACT at some point this year. Representatives from colleges visit the school and students can start going to their presentation during their junior year. They also talk about keeping up with their classes and extracurriculars and graduation requirements. They are encouraged to make a list of colleges they’re interested in. If they take any APs they take the AP exam at the end of the year. At the end of the year, the counselors hold a meeting with just the students and then with students and parents, about applying to colleges. It covers everything like how to apply for scholarships, how to write essays, how to ask for teacher recommendations, how to list your test scores, how to choose where to apply, etc.

12th grade: Students meet with counselors and sign up to take the SAT/ACT. They start applying to colleges and meet with more college representatives.