Counselor talks to Admission Officer

<p>Can school counselor talk to admission officer to advocate an applicant before the application decision? I heard private schools' counselors do this A LOT, but isn't it unfair for those kids who went to public schools because counselors there aren't as attentive as the ones at private schools?</p>

<p>Any GC an make a call–it’s a free country. But a call without a pre-existing relationship between the college and the high school or between the admissions office and the counselor doesn’t really pull any weight. It’s not a matter of inattention…</p>

<p>Since when do kids, or anyone, get a level playing field?</p>

<p>It is all about the relationships. GCs know not to ask for too much, but they can certainly draw attention to an applicant at any time.</p>

<p>I don’t know if our GCs call before decisions, but I do know that my younger son’s counselor called to ask GW why a girl with higher stats was waitlisted while they accepted someone with lower stats. (The answer turned out to be she didn’t visit or show the love.)</p>

<p>Public school GCs call too. The ratio of student : GC may not be the same in public school vs private, and some parents pay top dollar tuition to ensure their son or daughter gets that personal touch, but public GCs call too. Ours did.</p>

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<p>I’m surprised a GC would make a call like that. Certainly all GCs would know that there are always intangibles and other factors besides “stats” which come into play during admissions.</p>

<p>I’ve been a counselor at an elite private and an inner city public. I advocated equally for my students at the 2. The issues are different.</p>

<p>What is clear is that the kids at the elite private had every advantage all of their lives in most cases. Having good counselors advocate for them is just another.</p>

<p>No, I’m not talking about counselor calling the admission officers. I’m talking about like face-to-face conversations! For example when admission people come to school or couselors gather with the admission officers at some big college fair(the ones that only open to high school counselors). I’ve heard from my friends that their counselor was at one of this biggest college fair in the U.S. and advocated for his students for like half an hour.</p>

<p>That ain’t how it’s done, jawboning in public.</p>

<p>From what I have seen, a lot of the advocacy falls into four categories, none of which leaves too many tracks:</p>

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<li><p>The counselor advocates for the school, not specific kids. That is always OK, but if it works the kids who apply get a boost.</p></li>
<li><p>The counselor tries to avoid head-to-head competition among similar students, so that the admissions officers “know” which applicants from the school are right without much effort. Students are encouraged to apply ED to different colleges, for example, or not to have their lists overlap too much. Where two similar students compete head-to-head, the counselor makes clear how their strengths and weaknesses match up (which effectively means the counselor decides which one to push). But what they really like is to have 6-7 kids look like the best in the class, and have them all applying to different schools so that each of the schools can believe it is getting the top kid.</p></li>
<li><p>The counselor makes certain that the teacher recs are appropriate and effective.</p></li>
<li><p>When kids are waitlisted, the gloves really come off, and counselors will work admissions staff over to get a kid off a waitlist.</p></li>
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Well the GC had access to a fair number of the intangibles too. The student was upset and I believe may have asked the GC to ask. The GC was telling us this story, because she knew my son was considering GW and wanted to make sure that they knew my son had visited if it stayed on the list.</p>

<p>Our Guidance department sponsors not only a college fair, but a college night where they get admissions officers to talk about different aspects of college admissions. They do a lot of schmoozing with the officers then. The same reps are there year after year and I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten to know at least some of our counselors. I also know they work very hard to sell the quality of our school.</p>

<p>I know our (public) school college counselor talks to all the reps who come to do info sessions at the school. I’m sure they discuss students who will be applying. My D was the only student to attend a particular info session a few years ago, and the counselor was talking her up to the rep (did not end up in an acceptance anyway)</p>

<p>Indeed, a good counselor doesn’t advocate for individual kids at college fairs or conferences. Counselors do attend these events to get to know the admissions people, it’s an important part of the job if your school can afford it. Conferences are much more important than college fairs, no kids or parents, just the “industry”.</p>

<p>Many of the top high school counselors were top college admissions people. They wet their feet for a couple of years in Princeton or Hanover and then get to move to a top private school where they really want to live.</p>

<p>The bottom line is its a small community and counselors and adcom often know each other and yes, call each other. A counselor knows she’s really plugged in if she gets to have dinner with an adcom passing through.</p>

<p>So, really, so much for “diversity.” Unless your kid is at Exeter, Andover, Harvard-Westlake, Harker, etc. or the elite public New Triers and Scarsdales of the world, fuggetaboutit. You’re really just not worth the time of day and you won’t be considered equally / fairly. You’re a fly that can be swatted away. This is the message I get, loud and clear. If there’s no preexisting relationship, the GC doesn’t matter, and the only way a GC can have a relationship is … well, if she has a preexisting relationship.</p>

<p>I think I’m just going to tell my kids to go for the local comm college, if all the “better” schools’ slots are already spoken for. Very discouraging. </p>

<p>And I still don’t get this: “Students are encouraged to apply ED to different colleges, for example, or not to have their lists overlap too much.” Our GC’s have had absolutely zero input on our lists – we (parents / students) researched and crafted them. Nor frankly would I think to involve them on where my kids should apply ED any more than I’d involve them in what I’m making for dinner tomorrow night. “Here’s my kid that you don’t know, he / she wants to apply ED to College X.” What on earth would they add to that decision-making, esp in the case of my D where she’s applying to a school that maybe 3 kids from the school have ever applied to?</p>

<p>At my kid’s private school, before decision comes out, each college counselor is assigned X number of college rep they have to have conference call with. The reason that’s given is it is an opportunity for them to discuss each applicant more in depth with each adcom. What really goes on is it is time for them to do some horse trading. Reps would ask GC how serious each applicant is in attending the school, what other schools would most likely admit an applicant.</p>

<p>D1’s GC knew which schools D1 was going to get admitted to before letters went out. In speaking with her GC a week beforehand I knew it wasn’t going to be good. She never told us beforehand, but as soon as results came out, she told us why D1 wasn’t admitted to some schools and why she was waitlisted. Waitlisted schools told GC that they thought they were D1’s backup schools, and if she was truly interested then they would reconsider.</p>

<p>Those private school counselors do not have the kind pull they used to, but they still have some voice with some of those colleges. One well known LAC close to the HS was a backup school for D1’s HS graduates. They had an agreement with the high school to take anyone who wants attend that LAC.</p>

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<p>I thought that’s one of the reasons why people go to private high schools.</p>

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<p>Right. I understand that relationships with the big-time prep schools aren’t going to go away, nor do I expect them to. But it never occurs to any single adcom that it’s completely unfair that they’ll buddy-buddy with the GC’s in Suburb A but not Suburb B? That if they have a question about Joe Schmoe in Suburb A, why, they can do all the chit-chat that oldfort refers to, but if they have a question about Jane Schmane in Suburb B, since they have no relationship with anybody, they won’t ask the questions?</p>

<p>Either you’re all wildly overstating this and plenty of kids get in from high schools that haven’t previously sent / there are no GC relationships, or it’s really just hopeless and it’s the same 100 high schools sending to all the elite colleges, in which case, why bother.</p>

<p>Another way the middle class applicant (non-URM, non-recruited athlete, etc.) gets shafted…</p>

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I understand your frustration, but obviously there is a whole spectrum of schools between the hypsmc and the community college. ALL of them serve an important purpose, in fact, the cc’s probably more so than the hypsmc’s which serve a tiny fraction of the American higher education student body. The rich and well connected have always had access to things/jobs/etc. that the rest of the society hasn’t. Why should education be different?</p>

<p>Pizzagirl: There are many students at Phillips Exeter, Andover, Choate, St. Pauls, National Cathedral; Collegiate; Harvard-Westake, etc. that are not eltist rich kids. They get in because these schools want diverse student bodies. So, it is simply not accurate to assume that the only kids that benefit from the expertise and relationship of the GCs at these schools are rich and elite.</p>

<p>Second, elite colleges are aware of the inequity and they do reach out to suburban public schools, just not on a pro rata basis.
Yes, it is very hard to get accepted at the nation’s top-teir colleges and students from some schools have a better shot than students from other schools. There are tens of thousands of qualified kids that do not get in. It is an uphill battle, but worth applying if there is real interest.</p>