<p>Hi, Is it possible to see the common application once it has been submitted? We are dealing with a high school counselor that is not acting very professionally. He purposefully left off a weighted course on my daughters transcript because he didn't agree that it should be weighted (although this course has been weighted for years). We caught that in time to have it fixed but he was very unhappy about it. Now we are worried that he may not have been completely fair and professional in his evaluation of her. We are not the first parents by a long shot to have issues with this counselor, his reputation is horrible. She is ranked first in her class currently and has worked incredibly hard to get there. Is there anything we can do?</p>
<p>Did you/she waive the right to see the letters of recommendation - “Waiver of access (FERPA)”? If you or your student did, you cannot see the counselor’s letter unless he volunteers to share a copy directly with you.</p>
<p>You could meet with a higher up about this concern if you really think it might be a problem. Why did this counselor oppose weighting the grade? Did your daughter advocate for herself or did you? Is she the only one who had this issue or are their other parents wondering the same thing about recommendations? Do you have a good working relationship with the school? Is there any other reason the recommendation might not be stellar?</p>
<p>Too many questions, hard to offer advice. It may be that fighting over that one apparently small GPA issue might affect the more important recommendation (though class rank can have financial repercussions for scholarships, I realize). Who do you work well with in the school?</p>
<p>The official transcript should be … just that. An official transcript established by the rules of the school. It is doubtful that a GC has the ability to make whimsical changes. Unless your school is different from most others, the functions of maintaining and commenting on the transcript should be separate. </p>
<p>Regardless, in addition to NOT overly worry about the impact of a weighted grade in general, the proactive steps include meeting with the registrar to obtain the last official transcript AND the school profile, as well as any handbook distributed at your school. Issues such as weights should be covered in the student’s handbook.</p>
<p>Review the information and discuss with the GC to eliminate any confusion. His or yours. If there is a conflict, make an appointment with the school principal and share your concerns about the inaccurate information and the possible negative relationship between your child and the GC. </p>
<p>Lastly, meet with the teacher of the problematic class, and request a detailed narrative of the course and the grading policy.</p>
<p>The advice you received above is great. I’ll just a few things. </p>
<p>Prior to attending a college, unless the GC cooperates, it is not possible to see the GC’s submitted school report regardless of how the applicant responded to the FERPA waiver prompt. That waiver has no bearing on the ability of the applicant to see the application materials before being admitted. </p>
<p>The GC has no obligation to show the submitted school report to a student or to disclose what was on it.</p>
<p>If your DD waived that right, no, she does not have the right to see the rec. Yes, it can be a major problem and keep your kid out of the most selective schools if the GC writes a rec or checks off the blocks on the common app showing noting issues about your student and rating her unremarkable. That often weighs in heavily in the app assessment and it doesn’t take much to get dinged in the appraissals when it comes to the top schools. </p>
<p>If it is a known issue BEFORE all of this is sent out, one can request the princiipal or asst principal or other school official to write the rec and be listed as the contact person at the high school instead of the GC. </p>
<p>I don’t see how the course can be changed on the official transcript either. Was this done for all the kids taking the course? So the change was made to reflect the weight for everyone who took the course now? I agree this sort of thing would not have been so important, but that rec that GC wrote or the check list is absolutely a integral part of the admissions assesment at selective colleges.</p>
<p>All my above assumes that the course was offered as part of the regular curriculum. Online classes or college classes taken off-campus might trigger a set of issues. For instance, AP distance courses which are not graded by the regular teachers at your school might not be weighted, or even be part of the GPA calculations.</p>
<p>By the way, in your meeting with the GC stress that the better results in admissions reflect on the school and the GC in particular, It should be in his best interest to present the most compelling cases for his students. Most issues with GC are about missing administrative tasks. Rarely are their actions based on malice. Overworked and, at times, ignorant, they might be, but a proactive parent can usually help with that situation with politeness and … resilience.</p>
<p>The OP states that the issue with the grade was resolved before the transcript went to the colleges. The issue is that since the GC was unhappy with how his decision was usurped (in his mind anyway) the consequence might be that he did not present this student in his LOR in the best possible way.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the GC LOR is usually,mostly, a listing of facts and figures about the student and boilerplate about the school, etc. The teacher LOR is usually much more nuanced and a more subjective evaluation of the student. The fact that the GC may not like the student or her family should not be discernible from his LOR.</p>
<p>The fact that the GC may not like the student or her family should not be discernable from his letter, but it very well could be. I understand the concern. If the OP truly think the GC is capable of this level of vindictiveness, I think they need to meet with the GC’s boss and talk about their concerns. Presumably they can check what the GC wrote and make sure it is not out of line. If it were me, I’d probably go in to the higher up’s office saying, “I realize I may be being paranoid, but…”</p>
<p>I know our GC’s, despite not knowing the students well, do their best to provide a lot more than boilerplate information.</p>
<p>Op,
I write LORs for people involved in medical field applications. I would be willing to show the applicant their LOR if they asked me, but no one has asked me so far. I do have the perogative to not write an LOR if I didn’t think that I could write a very favorable LOR for the candiate.
However, if I was a GC, I would not show a student or parent their LOR because
I was required to write an LOR for every student (i.e. I don’t have the option of opting out of writing the LOR), so there may be a “range” of strength of recommendations
If I showed 1 person their LOR, then soon others would be asking and then others might want theirs “changed” etc.
Also, now that the LOR is submitted with the application, there is nothing you can do about it anyway. The negative distraction of trying to replace a GC LOR with somehow a “new” LOR would be much worse than probably whatever is in the current LOR.</p>
<p>In rare cases, people legally demand seeing the LOR (after the admissions cycle) and have tried to potentially threaten litigation. Thus, sometimes a GC LOR might say “contact me for more info” whereby info can be transmitted via phone and no paper trail will be left. But these types of negative LORs would be more in line of severe breaches in ethics, etc, and this would not be related to your kiddo.</p>
<p>Since we all are stuck with a GC writing a LOR for each of our kids, it usually is best to play polite politics with them.</p>
<p>Also, whether a particular class with be “weighted” as an H or AP class is determined by the school (and by come colleges such as the UC system) and treated the same across all students of a particular class, so would seem odd that they would change the weighting for 1 student. Many colleges ignore the weighting are re-weight according to their own criteria. Also, changing from unweighted to weighted may have changed to overall GPA by what - 0.05?</p>
<p>Time to take a deep breath and step back or the GC may not help you if push comes to shove during the waiting list portion of this application process.</p>
<p>"If it is a known issue BEFORE all of this is sent out, one can request the princiipal or asst principal or other school official to write the rec and be listed as the contact person at the high school instead of the GC. " Agree with CptofHouse. If this is a fight with GC before the LOR was written, you can get the LOR from another “HS official.”</p>
<p>After admissions were wrapped up, I saw a copy of the GC’s LOR for my S. The factual errors were significant. She had omitted all of the honors he won junior year: first place in the state in the national exams for two foreign languages in a single year (and very high national rankings), plus a one-student-per-state award in one language. She had left out other things, and gave no flavor at all of who he was. It was clear that she had written this for the junior year book award citation, and simply not bothered to update it.</p>
<p>Was this malice? No. He simply wasn’t on her very short list of favored few kids to push for. (This despite being a NMF and all that stuff. Their minds were made up years before, and the favored few got just about all of the goodies. He wasn’t the only outstanding kid left out, by any means.) Any successes he had in admissions were despite the guidance department, not because of them. You would think that a GC would want to do their best for kids who were viable Ivy-peer candidates, but you would think wrong. Believe me, I am not the only parent who felt this way, and we were not delusional. Parents whose kids WERE among the favored few recognized it, since they had had other kids who didn’t get that treatment.</p>
<p>Everything I’ve read about most high school GCs rec ( and teachers’ recs) that selective college adcoms have written has said that they tend to be unremarkable. They tend to be so unremarkable, that key words are sought in the recs and if the ratings are used that is what the selective schools will focus on They are looking for something along the lines of "Best kid ever’, “talented I have seen” , “top of the class”, “blows me away” type of comments letting Admissions at the selective colleges know that this kid is the pick of the litter, and yes, if the GC or teacher wrote this for every and any kid, that makes the rec a loser right there because what the college wants to know is if this is one of the best kids in the running from that school, like top 3, and one of the best in the history of the school and memory of the teacher and counselor. That’s what it takes to get accepted to a HPY type school. If the rec doesn’t convey that info, the kid gets a 3 out of 5 in the rating scale for the rec. Them’s the facts for those schools that are lookng for the quadruple leaps.</p>
<p>This is where excellent college prep schools, a lot of the private ones shine. The GCs know how to write competitve school recs. They also have the leeway of writing terrific things about more than the top 2 or three kids, when their school is filled with kids that are all top drawer. There are public schools that fit into this category too and the results are obvious in the number of kids who are accepted each year at top schools. They did not get into those schools with a 3 out 5 counselor/teacher rec. So, the fact of the matter is unless your kid can get that top o’ the litter language in that rec, it’s an impediment. Forget the mentioning of honors won, placement in state or national exams. That stuff should be listed in the awards section. The counselor needs to simply have some magic words in an othewise crappy rec and that will garner the 5. Colleges do not expect getting a flavor of who the student is from these recs from the vast majority of schools and counselors and teachers because most of them are terrible in writing them. Just certain key phrases do the trick.</p>
<p>Is this a big school where the counselor writes lots of recommendations? I think that colleges take that into consideration when reading these letters. They would understand that in this type of situation the letter might be more of a “form letter” than a personal one.</p>
<p>We had a private college counselor for D2. He advised us to have a discussion with her GC to get a feel of which boxes were going to be checked off. He said the write up wasn’t as important as those boxes - top 1% vs 5% vs 10%. Adcoms know most GCs do not know their students very well, so whatever they write would just be very much bullet plate.</p>
<p>We spent few months “negotiating” with D2’s new school on how to convert her old school’s grades. The new school didn’t want to weigh some grades from D2’s old school. My feeling was they wanted a student who had gone to their school from 9-12 grade to be the Val and D2 was challenging that position as a new kid. It so happened that year they had more kids graduating than other years, so being a Sal would still be top 1%. We decided to let it go, and we were pretty certain the GC checked off top 1% for every box. </p>
<p>If OP is so concerned, I would ask the Principal to see which boxes the GC checked off for the D. As long as top 1% (for academic) was checked then I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If it wasn’t checked off then challenge it because the D would have a very good reason to do so because she is the Val of her class.</p>
<p>Consolation,
Isn’t it amazing how there are a favored few! Our school has the gifted class, and they get such preferential treatment even though some of them have very little drive. NONE have been accepted Ed because all they have is their gpa and act scores, which are high. Others of us who have very good ec’s and community service and in the top 5% have several offers to great schools as well as full rides at he state flagship. I’ve heard at lunch for over a year how they would never go to the state flagship, and they recommend local colleges for those of us below them. So far in my group are people accepted to Ohio state, unc, wash u, vanderbilt, and they have been deferred from these same schools. Still, the gc gives them preferential treatment on scholarship apps. It has gotten ridiculous. Now, they don’t know about our acceptances, but the gc does and it is still the same treatment. I just don’t get why they don’t cheer for all of us. It is beginning to look like several will probably go to the state flagship, one has decided on culinary school!! These kids get an hour in their ‘gifted’ class every day to fill out applications and get a grade for doing so (an easy a). i have to do all my apps on my own time. It is crazy but I see now life is not fair. I really hope your gc did the right thing.</p>
<p>Well, cptofthehouse, I think you misunderstand the situation. Part of the problem was the GC chose to mention the awards he won sophomore year (2nd in the state in both languages) but leave the larger ones off. Do you think a GC would not bother to mention that a kid was an Intel semifinalist or had placed first in the state science fair? Really?</p>
<p>Secondly, S <em>did</em> have "best student I ever had* language from at least one teacher, possibly two. He also had higher SATs than the favored few (Presidential Scholar finalist), equally good ECs, more evidence of intellectual enterprise (independent study and summer courses), and a MORE rigorous schedule. (If the HS weighted grades, I would not be surprised if he were the val, instead of the actual val, who took automatic-A band and fewer academic solids with more study halls.) </p>
<p>He was accepted several top schools and attended one of the Ivies. The val and sal–unweighted grades, remember–went to Yale and Harvard, respectively. Other kids in his class went to Cornell, U Penn, JHU, Tufts, Bowdoin, Smith, Wesleyan, Bates, Colby, Williams, et al. So they did in fact have a deep bench of kids to push for. They just chose not to <em>really</em> support all of them to the degree they deserved.</p>
<p>You may think I’m nuts. The mother of the Harvard grad doesn’t: she’s seen it before, with her other kids. The school system has the habit of picking out some kids as the favored few early on, and makes sure that they get what is going. For example, the val had no “leadership” on his resume. They nominated him to Boy’s State, for no apparent reason. They also nominated kids who were into student government and/or state/national politics: perfectly reasonable. Why him? They were punching his ticket. At an earlier age they selected kids to participate in some mentoring programs with younger kids. Most of them had evinced no interest in mentoring or in younger kids. Why? It was the beginning of setting them up for the future. (This view given to me by the mother of one of the kids so selected, btw.)</p>
<p>Again I tell you, I am far from the only parent who perceived this.</p>
<p>You can well say, what are you complaining about, he did fine. Yes, he did. No thanks to that idiot. He might have done even better if she had been less blind and more capable. And he’s not the only one.</p>
<p>Let me add a couple of details that might suggest a different angle, namely that one can do extremely well without a glossy GC recommendation. It really is NOT that important.</p>
<p>First example is based on the simple fact that a GC would NOT write any narrative because he did not think it was important. He simply attached a copy of the transcript and mailed it in without ANY comment. Nothing positive and nothing negative. Just NOTHING. How did I find out? When I found my own prepaid enveloped returned for insufficient postage because it was stuffed with a dozen applications. All the GC were identical: nothing positive and nothing positive. </p>
<p>Second example is one of a GC who loved her students, but never filled a “best in the class” and never a “most difficult curriculum.” Her point that there were schools “out there” that were a lot harder and that there were students who did much better than her own. She never believed she was supposed to describe how HER students did at HER school. This GC described the val at her school in the same terms, and filled the rank as “top 25 percent.” Fwiw, not only did she love the val, she adored her as she was her student assistant who worked in the GC office. </p>
<p>Ib both cases, this never stopped the school to accumulate prestigious admissions. The key was to obtain descriptive and accurate LORs from the teachers and being proactive in describing worthwhile ECs to the teachers. The LORs contained plenty of information about the courses and how the students fared in each course, AND contributed to the school outside the classroom. Picking teachers who happened to participate in the ECs and attend sporting events did not hurt. </p>
<p>All in all, although some place much credence in the GC reports --or even in the direct discussions with adcoms-- there is another reality. And that reality is that adcoms have learned that there are great, competent, and dedicated GCs, but that they are in an overwhelming minority. </p>
<p>In the end, few if any amazing applicants will be undermined by a GC whimsical actions, and few if any of the run-of-the-mill applicants will ever be admitted based on a syrupy and overly optimistic letter. And neither will they pay much attention to the abundant typos and poor grammar that routinely adorn the LORs and GCs letter.</p>
<p>Some day, colleges will realize that time has come to abandon the GC requirement to “write” a report and replace with one that is important, namely simply getting the correct information sent on time. And nothing more!</p>
<p>Consolidation,
I do agree with you that some schools favor who they are going to promote for the tippy top colleges. For example, at a private HS with 100 grads, usually 1-2 gets into Stanford. Thus this school identifies the say 4 kids who they think are most likely to get accepted and helps them during their 4 yrs of HS. Yes, it is unfair.</p>
<p>When I read an LOR, I personally hate it when the writer includes things like awards. It’s to show the reader how much the writer “knows” the appicant, but it’s clear to me that it’s just pulled off the cv/app and it’s more efficient for me to read this on the cv/app section so I just <em>ahem</em> skim thru this part of any LOR. So by leaving out awards it doesn’t hurt your kid. I just read for special words (and other special words which are negative) and anecdotes to support any claims. But yes, not being “groomed” for 3 years can hurt kid.</p>
<p>In the school I teach at (800 student public hs), guid. counselors ask students to write a detailed “resume” for them highlighting specific info. They also ask parents to submit a detailed form. The counselors I spoke with spend approx. 3 hours per student LOR. About 15 years ago, our school eliminated all weighting of courses and ranks. There are about 30-40 college admin. reps who visit our school each year and ALL say they recalculate GPA based on their OWN criteria. One ivy even showed us a video where 4 students (all with 3.9 gpas from same school) were rescaled. The results were:4.1, 3.8, 3.75 and 3.3! Students give up all rights to read LOR from anyone in our building, but can ask administrator to look at letter on their behalf if concerns arise. I guess the new system can’t be too bad…so far my calculus classes have 9 ivy acceptances and 2 MIT. I am not teaching the AP Calc…they probably did even better.</p>