<p>Seems a lot of schools and scholarships wants letters of recommendation from your counselor. What if you counselor doesn't even know you? Ive had 5 different counselors in my 3.2 years of highschool! My current school has 2 counselors for a student body population of 800! Ive met my counselor ONCE to get some scholorship stuff signed and she acts like it paines her to help me... Gah... Im sure asking her to write a letter of rec will ruin her day... I feel a great letter coming! LOL! </p>
<p>I think my counselor doesn't even know I exist. I have been to her office twice, and she asked what grade I was in. Yeah... I am in the same situation.</p>
<p>the best is when your guidance counselor has a 100 for four years, has had you in an advising situation of at least 1x/week and still has no idea who you are. </p>
<p>she even messed me up with another girl in my class-frankly telling her my GPA, SATs, etc..</p>
<p>You could always go introduce yourself and explain the situation...I mean, I know my counselor fairly well but I'm still going to meet with him to talk to him about my recommendation, because I'd like for him to focus on specific aspects of my high school career. My dad's a teacher, and he says he likes it when students tell him what they think he should write about in their recs...he says it's much more difficult to do one when a student just says, "Here, write me a recommendation." So you could always make an appointment with the counselor and say, "Hi, I'm so-and-so, and I'll be applying to Such-and-Such University, and if it's not too much trouble, I'd love it if you could write me a recommendation. Since I'm probably going to major in X Major, could you write about how I've taken advanced classes in X Subject Area?" Sounds cheesy, but hey, if you need a rec written.</p>
<p>But it's still difficult if you try to get someone who basically doesn't know you to brag about you. Imagine drag a stranger off the street, give him your report card and ask him to write you a rec. That's how I feel about asking my counselor.</p>
<p>our school has a form you fill out where you put your activities, etc. and the counselor writes a glowing recommendaton (providing you've never been suspended) with pretty much whatever info you want in there, even if you've only talked to her once. haha i read mine and it was like "brieb08 has been an excellent student and irreplaceable contributor to our school community. in the three years i've known her, she has done blah blah blah and blah blah blah."</p>
<p>she pretty much lets us write it ourselves lol.</p>
<p>and yes, i'd say it's a good idea to ask in the first few weeks of school before they get a huge rush of students wanting recommendations.</p>
<p>My counselor told me she didn't think I was ready for "college-prep" physicsmy senior year, right after I completed AP Physics B with an A-. And also that I take AP Stats, since that was the "whole purpose" of precalculus. She's so cute and ignorant tho, I can't help but love her.</p>
<p>Also Americanmanford, I kno this might not help much, but colleges understand that some high schools work like yours. If bad turns to worst, I think you should include in the extra materials section that you've only known your counselor for such and such. Ofc, that might suck if the rec is beautiful. But this is me presuming your counselor will let you read it.</p>
<p>Try to make your presence known to them. Start going in to ask simple questions to let him or her know that you're serious about college. Try to go in once a week or every other week with that. Also, my counselor has students fill out an in depth survey AND our parents to get to know students on a different level than just academics to make the recommendations holistic. Offer to write up something that summarizes who YOU are, as that would aid them in the recommendation process.</p>
<p>I had the same issues. But, with some of the recommendations, they'll have a printable sheet that asks stuff like "what is this student's GPA" or "Has this student been in any trouble?" Doesn't need to be specific. But I would suggest getting a rec from a teacher as well. Councilor recs aren't too difficult to get completed.</p>
<p>My councilor got to know me when I went in to get my transcripts lined up for my colleges and the ROTC scholarship. He is basing the rec on how I presented myself the some 4 times I went into his office.</p>
<p>Yeah, my school has 5 counselors for our 3500 students.. not a good idea. I've only gone to the counselor once, and I'm a senior now. I know one of the other counselors somewhat casually, and would rather he write my recommendation, but our school has this silly policy that you MUST only go to the counselor to whom you're assigned. It's messed up.</p>
<p>Does a college counselor count? My SLC(small learning community) counselor hardly knows me, yet I come into the college center on a near daily basis. </p>
<p>I think for colleges, if I asked my college counselor to write me one, it'd make me sound like God. Hehehe.</p>
<p>Wow, our student:counselor ration is about 40:1. Not that they know anything about college (told me my state flagship would definitely be a reach even though I have a 3.9 GPA and all honors AP classes and have won state science awards). But at least my counselors know enough about me to write a decent recommendation and they know generally who I am and all my interests.</p>