do high school guidance counselors look at your whole school record before they recommend a college for you?
do high school guidance counselors look at your whole school record before they recommend a college?
Probably.
If you have a good one that has time to devote to you - yes. That’s not the case at all schools, though.
To be honest, I think it’s a huge mistake to assume your guidance counselor will find you the perfect college.
You’re one of how many students that guidance counselor is working with? And my school is probably the exception; our kids have a College Placement counselor as well as a regular guidance counselor. My kids attend/attended a school where the regular guidance counselor handles the college stuff as well as the kids with anxiety issues, the kids who are living with a sick parent, with abuse, with all the other stuff guidance counselors deal with every day. Getting the perfect college list together for each kid is a nice wish, but I can see how many counselors simply wouldn’t be able to find the time.
It’s up to YOU to define what you want and search online to find it. When my daughter had her end-of-junior-year- meeting with her counselor, we had a list of schools already in place. That list has evolved over the last year, but at least my daughter had a jumping off place.
Start defining a major, a budget and what you’re looking for in a college. There are tons of College Search surveys online. Take a few, and start coming up with a list of schools. Then, sometime soon, start looking at some of those schools. The first few college visits will help you refine what you do and don’t want.
Most guidance counselors will not have a good understanding of what a student’s financial limits will be, and in some cases they are forbidden to introduce the topic of money in the conversation. That means that you and your parents need to come up with your own budget limits, and you need to be able to express that information to your counselor when you have conversations about college.
In many schools, the principals, counselors, and teachers are engaged in my-students-get-into-better-colleges-than-your-students-do competitions with principals, counselors, and teachers at other nearby high schools. This can mean that they lose sight of financial issues and true best-fit issues for the students. You (and your parents) may find that you need to stand strong in that situation.
Our guidance counselor recommended one school to us. He had a meeting and asked D what her interests and needs were. He asked us nothing about our financial needs. Then he recommended a school that matched absolutely none of the very reasonable requests D made. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why he put that school on her list. Maybe he picked out of a hat?
Your GC may not know colleges beside the ones most students at your school apply to.
Go visit your state’s flagship and a directional that has a good reputation for the fields you’re interested in, then add a private selective LAC and a regional private university. Or, visit any college you can get to. Try to get a feel for them, what you like about them and what you don’t: lots of green space? brick and column architecture? Modern steel and glass architecture? Hogwarts’ vibe? inspiring library? awesome climbing wall and lazy river? the fact the modern language building has its own movie theater? the squash courts? kids playing quidditch or frisbee or flag football on the quad? being within walkable distance to a college town/neighborhood? being able to take the bus/metro to the business quarter? Hospitals and clinics accross the street or within driving distance? a 100,000 people stadium? etc…
You have to borrow a book called Princeton Review’ Best COlleges and read through it, select 25 or 30 of them (about 10 where you’re clearly among the top 10%, about 10 where you’re near their top 25% threshold, about 10 others). Then run the NPC on every single one of them, one by one. Bring all the results to your parents and talk with them about what they can afford from income and savings (NOT from loans they’d take for you). Cross out all the ones that are above budget. Get a Fiske guide and look up each remaining college - they’ll have suggestions of similar colleges. Run the NPC for every suggestion and add the ones within budget, cross out the ones out of budget.
This way, you won’t depend on your GC.
My kids’ GC has 400 kids. In no way is she a resource for this kind of information. She has minor knowledge about the instates, we meet twice per child in 4 yrs of HS. I wouldn’t even consider asking her about colleges.
And we wonder why there are so many fewer low income or first gen students applying to top OOS colleges…
Even for those of us who are college grads, the landscape has changed since we went to school. At least we have an idea where to start and some research skills. And some families have the ability to hire college counseling.
But it’s another way that low income students and students from most public schools are at a disadvantage in the college application process.
To be honest if your GC to student ratio is small then they would be able to help you a ton. But if your schools ratio is large like mine then you proably have to do most of the work with your parents pertaining to college admission.
Our GC’s handle everything as well. I will say that as much as I didn’t care for my D’s GC, the school she recommended to D as her first choice turned out to be the school D went to and loved and which my next child also wound up attending. I loved S17’s GC and felt he got him. He maybe should have fought me a little harder when I refused to let S17 take slow algebra 2 and instead had him take accounting for his third year of math, but other than that, he was great. He gave us an initial list of schools but when S17’s ACT composite went up by 3 points, he called us back in and gave us a completely different list. S17 isn’t at a school the GC recommended but that’s because his list was based on S17’s initial interest in majoring in psych and not theater tech.
It does vary by schools (especially private schools) but most GC know the instate options, maybe a few in neighboring states, and where other kids in their school have gone, but that’s about it. The high school I graduated from is huge, wealthy, and has sent kids to all types of schools over the last 40 years. It is a big sports school, so many kids have more options. The counselors know about the Ivies, know about California schools, know about the Flagships. Almost every graduate goes to a 4 year college.
I think if you want help or suggestions you are going to have to push for the help, ask for the help. It may be that a favorite theater teacher or art teacher will know about more options than your GC. Go to all the college fairs and meetings your school offers. Just start looking and talking to people about colleges and you may learn of a hidden gem.
Can I just add another 2 cents?
I’m speaking for the guidance counselors at my kids’ public school, in a good neighborhood in the 'burbs.
This year they had a Senior commit suicide in pretty much the most violent means I can imagine. I didn’t know him, but the thought of his choice still haunts my dreams. They’ve had to do some pretty major work on healing his classmates, as well as coming to terms with the fact that he had been bullied for 7 years.
A few months later, a few of his classmates were arrested at school, apprently because they were dealing Opiods.
Add in all the “normal” guidance issues-- kids with eating disorders, kids with anxiety issues, kids with parents in hospice, kids with parents who are divorcing, kids with ill siblings, kids who are being abused.
Finding the ideal college for each of their 400 kids, complete with the ideal setting at the ideal price point in the ideal location with the ideal major simply doesn’t fit onto the calendar.
At the end of the day, they’ve advised you well enough to get into a college. Finding that ideal college simply may take time that they don’t have.
Are you a junior? If you tell us your GPA, test scores, and how much your parents can pay, we might be able to suggest options. If you’re worried about that middle school suspension you mentioned in your other thread, don’t be. Colleges won’t receive that information.
What your guidance office almost certainly can do, is share information about where students with profiles like yours have been accepted in recent years, and which places have always accepted students like you. If your high school has Naviance, your counselor should be able to show you how to use it to find reasonable academic safeties and matches.