<p>Last week my D and I attended a college night for juniors put on by the GCs at her inner city school. Each GC has 100s of kids assigned to him/her with about 60% applying to college. It is great that they are focusing on informing the junior parents what needs to be done now. But nothing, not one thing that they said that night was new. This information can be found in much greater detail in any number of books on college admissions on Amazon. Get 3 and read them. They will each have all the of same info and probably one or two tidbits. This is doable at any income level (about $35 investment) and will give your kid and you all the info you need. This should be done as freshmen, but not too late as a junior.</p>
<p>Alright, I’m gonna speak as a kid with a 0 EFC and a minority going to a good uni soon:</p>
<p>It’s just odd okay, especially now how I read all these things on here, like, I can’t see how what kind of AP class you take matters but just that you take it should look good. See, with me, I knew nothing. Nothing, my parents never graduated high school, neither did my older brothers or sister. So their advice is to not get pregnant.</p>
<p>I got lucky, I got involved with the Good Samaritan Center down the street (because we had my nephew enrolled in the free daycare and they said “hey, we have this thing for high schoolers and it pays!”. I found out when I joined that the pay wasn’t much, about $40 a week during school, but it had a lot to do with encouraging community services with the kids and college help. Thanks to that I’ve visited most unis in the TX and we went to DC even (though those are crazy expensive), they gave an SAT prep, and they really encouraged me. It’s called M.O.D.E.L.O. (some acronym w/ leadership, but it’s spanish for “model” which is what we were supposed to be for the younger kids at the center) and is awesome for kids on the west side of my city. Obviously, most of us (I think all actually) are called “at risk”, whatever that means, for living on the west side, for knowing friends in jail, etc.</p>
<p>So I got what they called “outside help”. Also, here’s the honest truth, if some white guy was saying “Hey! You, poor child with good scores! I’m gonna counsel you as an experiment! Also, $100!” yeah, I’d do it for the cash and think of him as a jack***. Rich people are always going by the Good Sam, to consider donating, and it’s whatever because we need the funding but when they treat us like social experiments it’s annoying. And then rich white kids from up north come down for 1 week to volunteer and leave and while here they speak to us like we’re gangster bums and ask if we’re even considering college. </p>
<p>So a part of me not wanting to go to ivy schools is fear of meeting more people like that, kids that only volunteered to look good on college and a bunch of rich preps that treat me like I’m only there to add diversity. I applied to Cornell, only for the possible money, but didn’t try because I hated that place on the visit. I like Carnegie when I visited, fun and crazy and a real focus on my majors. UT is cool too. And I’m a finalist for the Gates by some luck.</p>
<p>Also, my school is on the southside and pretty sweet. I mean, if you don’t care about college then fine, we have a cosmo and mechanical program that allow you to graduate with a possible career. Also a parenting class for all the pregos so they don’t drop out and a home-ec that’s pretty good at getting kids into hotel management. But there’s also AVID and decathlon and IB, the last I was lucky to get into because that way we get our own little counselor (the IB coordinator) so the ration is about 50:1 instead of 300:1. I know AVID and decathlon have people like that too. Also for FAFSA there’s ProjectStay that comes by and helps file all that for me and others which we’d be screwed without.</p>
<p>My parents? They’re clueless. But they know I’m going somewhere nice and paid so it’s all good.</p>
<p>I think I’m lucky. The kids in my school are, but I see those that missed the luck too and that sucks.</p>
<p>Awe, I used the crap out of collegeboard. Like the little collegematcher deal. And I look at US rankings too, just to get a general idea of a place. But my major is engineering and I think it’s good so long as it’s ABET accredited so I just looked at places that I liked the environment and general people and seemed like they’d give the most money.</p>
<p>@lockingbackeast
my parents would never really care to do that, actually I wouldn’t either, I don’t buy books, I check out from libraries </p>
<p>My mom would never spend $35 on books, she just wouldn’t. I don’t figure that’s good advice.</p>
<p>Ok, most of the same books are available at the library. YOu won’t be able to keep them for the long run but they will be free. If you are a freshman (best time to get started), you may want to have them for the duration to refer to each year and we are talking about less than a six dollar per year investment in your future. They are also usually available used. Just trying to help.</p>
<p>Speaking from the perspective of an inner-city public high school graduate:</p>
<p>Counseling at my school was non-existent. </p>
<p>Well, let me rephrase that. There was a counselor and some books and reference guides to college. But there was no incentive to get help, no sense of urgency, no awareness that going to a good college was a possibility. What good are resources when the students don’t understand its function? Until summer of my junior year, I’d always assumed that I would go to my flagship state university. </p>
<p>Every piece of good advice I got about the college application process was from college confidential (which I found beginning of senior year searching for SAT information on Google). I realized that… wait… I might actually have a shot at these schools I’ve heard of, but never thought I could possibly be qualified to attend. It was an amazing realization that gave me hope and ambition: I no longer was satisfied with just going to my state school.</p>
<p>I’m really glad that I came to this realization - I now go to a great school and pay less than I would have, had I gone to my flagship state school. But I had a lot of help: supportive parents, a good group of friends, and access to information. I know plenty of kids at my school who weren’t as lucky: who didn’t recognize the importance of college, and didn’t feel any sense of urgency in high school. A quarter of my freshman year class didn’t make it to graduation with us. </p>
<p>And that’s really sad. They never stood much of a chance in the first place. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is environment/home/parents/etc. But a big part of the responsibility lies on the school and the counseling it’s supposed to offer. It failed its kids by never believing in them to begin with.</p>
<p>Token adult
Not getting any cc advice till senior year is par for many schools.I’m just wondering what type of advice you think might have made a difference in your sons ninth and tenth grade years? Did he get good advice about classes to take? which tests to take? Do you think that ninth grade counseling would have changed the outcome for where he and others were accepted?</p>
<p>I’m not tokenadult by any means, but let me chime in here.</p>
<p>I’d like to see ninth and tenth grade counseling as well. Low-income students tend to be first generation. This means they usually know little about college except that it’s a goal for some and that it’s expensive. Many low-income students approach even their senior year with little to no knowledge of financial aid, much less affordable schools. If students in the ninth and tenth grade knew more about what options were viable for them, they may be able to work harder, choose more difficult classes, and craft their high school career early on. This is true both for students who will be aiming for the Ivies and their ilk (that is, 100% need, no loans schools) and students who will be looking at a combination of merit/other scholarship and federal aid elsewhere.</p>
<p>I think ninth grade college counseling for low-income students would be primarily educational. These are the colleges you are looking at, these are your best bets financially, this is what financial aid is, etc. Tenth grade would focus on choosing classes, SAT or ACT prep, crafting the high school career, etc. Junior year would involve a lot of application prep - making students either eligible for merit scholarships, top schools, transfer credit via high school relationships with the local community colleges, etc. It would vary by level of student. Not every low-income student is going to get a full ride to Stanford, but that doesn’t mean those students can’t be 100% prepared for community college or local satellites. Academic preparedness means less time wasted, more time learning, and a cheaper experience for all students. Senior year would return to financial aid counseling: how and when to fill out forms, what to look for in the financial aid policies of college choices, how to apply for scholarships, etc.</p>
<p>hi applicannot</p>
<p>I dont think this problem is unique to low income students. I think its a problem that most college bound kids face. There is just not adequate counseling - and well trained counselors- to meet the unique needs of each student. Here in CA we have counselors telling top students at our high school to go to community college… because its so affordable and they can transfer later…somehow they have reduced the equation to money, and that’s never a good thing.</p>
<p>I’m not disagreeing with you by any means. It’s just that this is a thread for low-income students.</p>
<p>Speaking as a guidance counselor, my2sons is absolutely right! It is not simply a low income student issue, it is a high school issue across the board. Most schools do not have a dedicated college counselor (as college counseling comes under the hat of the GC). College counseling is a low priority when it comes to dealing with social emotional issues, programming, attendance outreach, ACS issues, etc.) </p>
<p>It is not unusual that many GCs do not know college advising because no graduate programs offer courses in college advising in grad school. The training is to mostly deal with social emotional issues, run groups, etc. It has been my experieince especially when talking to othe counselors that so those who know college advising have either learned it on their own, or knew it before they came in to the profession. </p>
<p>As a career changer with a HR back ground in training & development, adult education and workplace learnin, I remember when I did my GC internship, I was assigned to a school where the college counselor was excessed and the remaining GCs were responsible for taking up the slack and doing the college advising for their caseload. I ended up teaching them college advising. I ended up having a mentor who has 35 years in the system and is great with the social emotional can give you a referral at the drop of a dime, but could not tell you anything about college counseling because she never had to do it . We ended up teaching each other.</p>
<p>
No, it certainly is not. Many, many students don’t get any kind of real college counseling through their schools.</p>