<p>I come from a very competitive school, and most of the time I am pretty sure that counselors try to convince students from having a competitive profile. They dont like it when people take too many AP's (and often take them out of AP's for no reason, causing oh so many problems), wont let people switch out of classes until they have lower than a 60%, restrict the non-common app colleges we apply to to five, FORCE teachers to assign less homework (though its not even enforced), and make us come to school and take the star test periods 1-4 during AP week (giving the kids who choose to ditch TRUANCIES!, even if their parents call in sick)
Dont get me wrong, most of the teachers in my school are amazing, but I truly do feel like I would get into a better college if the counselors in my school weren't so stringent on things. Their excuse is "We have to deal with the people who are failing first. People who have C's and want to drop a class, or go back and change the grade for a wrong assignment come second because we just dont have the time". Yet I know for a fact that at least after the fall semester they DO have time. Whenever i go to the office I always see them chitchatting about something stupid, or complaining about something. My counselor is "sick" the 10th-14th day of school every year, coincidentally the last four days before you can drop a course if you would like (I got into a HUGE argument with her over this sophomore year). Has anyone ever stood up to any of the policies similar to this that your school enforced? I'm just curious to see if this is because of budget cuts, or if its just my school. (Personally i think its part caused by tenure as well; we pink slipped our two best counselors my freshman year and kept 2 crappy ones, 1 mediocre one.)</p>
<p>That, my friend, is why some people send their kids to private college prep schools even if it costs them 30k a year. You get what you pay for.</p>
<p>My senior class started with 900 kids and ended up with 300 by senior year. More attention was put on making sure kids graduate at all than college. C’est la vie.</p>
<p>You should egg their houses :), for real though, there’s not much you can do. In my school my counselors don’t really care about us. They make no effort to try to know us and just show up for the paycheck. It sucks when you have a teacher or administrator that has no passion for their job. It also sucks, that if you try and tell your story to colleges they just think that your a kid who blames his or her problems on everyone else, and you come off as snobbish and superior. But I believe your story, not that it matters. Back to my originial point, Halloween’s coming up if you do decide to egg their house.</p>