<p>CG even the ones of very good high schools can sleep on the job. My son and my niece go to a very good school and have different CG. Her’s never recommended her to take the SAT even once, even though her ACT result was not that great. My son’s CG was always on his case. He made him work hard and never feel that he was am automatic acceptance just because he did well on the ACT and had good recommendations. Regarding. The school ability to place students or the CG on placing students, I can only say that every year 3 people go to Harvard, non to Yale, 3 to MiT, 4 to UPenn and so on and those proportions per school do not go up or down. Coincidence? I think not.</p>
<p>At larger public schools, I think the GC reference letter is really more a report, and is unlikely to help, but might harm an application. Are there any red flags? Any discipline problems, etc.? Does the student really participate in the school ECs that are claimed in the application? How rigorous is the student’s schedule in the context of the school? </p>
<p>I’m happy with my D’s GC (she has been very responsive to any questions that I’ve asked), but I’m sure she has no idea which schools my D is most interested in.</p>
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<p>This is the part that blows my mind as the parent of the aforementioned public-school-kids-with-a-GC-with-300-kids. I don’t know how it could possibly be the GC’s business what schools my kids are applying to - any more than it would be her business if they take afterschool jobs or we take a family vacation or get a dog. I don’t get having to “run it by” or justify it to her, at all. I get that it’s totally different with the private schools - it’s just odd to me. Like asking the bank teller who hands me my money for input on how I should spend it. I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but at the public hs level, I think of a GC as like an ATM for transcripts to get from point A to point B.</p>
<p>Our public school GCs are better than that – and know our state system cold, as they should – but they have way too much caseload to provide much individual attention. One thing that does help is that our local HS is big enough to have a full-time dedicated registrar, so the GCs don’t have to be “transcript ATMs.” </p>
<p>Since I know that, it’s okay with me if our GCs focus on the hard-to-place, kids who really need merit aid, and the squeaky wheels, as long as they basically stay out of the way, are responsive when asked targeted questions, and don’t try to under-match my kids just to process caseload.</p>
<p>Pizza girl,
The background context is different, though, for GCs at small, elite private HS compared with large publics. They vehemently discourage parents from hiring private college advisors, saying that they will work in that context. The GCs meet many times with kid and parents to form their lists of reach, target, lsafeties based on criteria that the parent and kid, separately, has listed as important for their college search. (The parents fill out questionnaires to state the relative importance of a ton of factors, including cost, school setting, competitiveness of admissions, etc). I’m not sure, but the GCs also probably discuss finances, FA, etc with the parents and advise on this as well. In exchange, these GCs try to place the kids in the school with the best fit. The trade off for all of this is that there is a large % of class that gets into Top 10 schools, for the kids that want that. So, yes, the GCs get hyper involved on the back end (telling u how to spend ur money, as u say) but the back story is that they have also been so involved in the front end, much like a private college advisor.</p>
<p>And, pizza girl, yes, our GCs usually know if we got a new dog or where a kid goes on vacation or if they got a new job. And parents will often know about the GCs dog as well.</p>
<p>SomeOldGuy talked of “under-matching” SO true. I feel our high school GC are risk-aversive. Early on I looked at what was published on where our graduates were going and was very disappointed. Best to take matters into our own hands.</p>
<p>I happen to think that those calls are much rarer than the “GC is important” propaganda would like us to believe. Except for a few fossils of yesterday’s glory days of the good old’ boys network, and perhaps a few bastions of blue blood excellence, the GC are mostly irrelevant.</p>
<p>And the system would gain from making their role even more irrelevant to the admission process. Technology should allow the students to control their academic history via portable files. Just as it will happen in the medical field, progress will make the record keeper an issue of data warehousing.</p>
<p>My son’s public school GC (one of 2 for 1200 kids) had a meeting with each college bound kid, invited parents to send in a “brag sheet” answering specific questions, asked each student to get brief written statements from 3 favorite teachers, so he could compose a meaningful LOR for each student. I can’t believe how much work this must have been, on top of all his other duties. When my son showed him his essay, he took the time to run it by a friend of his at Middlebury College admissions (S wasn’t applying there). i don’t know when this guy ate or slept, but I was impressed!</p>
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<p>Good that the C is in GC does not stand for cluelessness. Or does it, which is often the case.</p>
<p>The rest of the post is about a fantasy land and a romantic view of the GC role. And by the way, one can know all about the GC dog, have friendly interactions, and STILL realize that the role of the GC in terms of admissions should be confined to issue correct transcript and those senseless canned evaluations. </p>
<p>There is a reason why private counselors exist and … thrive.</p>
<p>@xiggi at my son school we have three CG for 140 students and the process is very similar to the one described by Yohoyoho. I believe that they are in closer contact to the colleges than we think because at many times when students have visited colleges in other states they have said that they are very familiar with our school. Our school has only 600 students and is not on the top 20 most known HS in the US so I do believe that the CG do more than just forwarding information about students. Unfortunately this year one our CG, a Brown graduate is proving to be a disappointment. She is not been able to gather information readily available in sites like this one and pass it on to students. This might not be a problem for a kid with an A average, 8 APs and a 35 ACT but for others more average students any information that can better theirs stats help. I know that in public school is almost impossible to expect this, that is why private help exist and trive.</p>
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<p>I agree. When my kids’ public school GC had 300 kids on her watch, it was FAR more important for her to advise kids who needed scholarship money to be able to go anywhere, than it was for her to know the finer points of northeast LAC’s that were on the radar screens of my two kids and probably no one else at the school. I am not complaining.</p>
<p>Xiggi did not mean to plagiarize, lol. Just noticed.</p>
<p>Funny you should ask. Late February last year, my S’s GC (private day school) told him that an admission officer had called to check his class rank. The college was somewhat of a safety, and S would have expected to get in with his stats. The GC said, "I told her that you already got a likely letter from Duke…but it’s “Bob’s first choice, so whatever you can do for him would be great.” I couldn’t believe how presumptuous this was. S ended up being waitlisted at the school and “Bob” was rejected! My S felt especially terrible about Bob. When he heard about the decisions, the GC muttered some sort of expletive.</p>
<p>After all the decisions came in, it was clear that he would not have attended anyway, but at that time all he had was one likely letter, so it didn’t seem wise to take any options off the table.</p>
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<p>I do not doubt that there are schools that do a remarkable job at presenting their students, and go beyond the typical school profile. I know schools that present full narative to support rankings of their students on a class by class basis I also have little doubt that the colleges have learned the type of students they will get if admitted, as well as the type of students who will “reject” the offer of admission. </p>
<p>The part that I do not buy is that this informational excellence opens the door to the ancient art of horsetrading between adcoms and the uberGC, again as some would like us to believe. What I would buy is that adcoms, especially the junior-traveling-recruiter-snakeoil salesmen type are sending plenty of smoke signals to make sure that the objective of increasing the number of applications is maintained.</p>
<p>All in all, do I believe that GCs can influence the decisions of adcoms during the ED/EA and RD decisions rounds? Except in very rare cases, the answer is no. Do I think that there is a bit more “talking” in the aftermath of WL and summer melt? Yes, but again on an extremely small scale. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, do I believe that GC can and do ruin the chances of plenty of applicants? That answer is an absolute yes, and this through incompetence, overwork, or simply being thrusted in a position they should never have been in. I have no doubt that the weak link in admissions is well inside the four corners of most HS buildings, and especially in the GC office. </p>
<p>IMHO!</p>
<p>The difference is that the large public school GC is a bank teller and the elite private school GC is a financial manager. One of them only takes your instructions; the other is a consultant. One should choose the appropriate service – though we’re somewhat thwarted by the lack of mixing and matching. The elite public school comes with the financial manager even if you went there looking for great latin instruction. </p>
<p>If you do some web searching, you can see concrete examples of how GC’s play the roles described above at elite privates (advising students, to optimize the classes overall success rates).</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that one can make such distinction based on size or based on private versus public schools. The exceptional GC might surface anywhere. Exceptional meaning both great and very rare.</p>
<p>Well do not get me wrong. I believe a good CG can help a student choose better classes in junior year, make him look for internship opportunities and present a better curriculum for colleges, however, they cannot makeup for a bad students or for bad grades. I am yet to see a mediocre student from our HS attend any prestigious college. On the other hand, I have not seem a good student not get in a good school.</p>
<p>Xiggi,
Yes, there are excellent and terrible GCs at both public and private. The only reason that we are generalizing to small, elite private HS, is because the GC to student ratio might be 1:20 or 1:40. When the GCs have fewer students, it’s easier to move the students around like pawns in the game to get all students placed in their top 3 choice, and making the GC and the HS look good. A GC who has a ratio of 1:200 does not have the time resources for this game. When we say private or public, it’s just an approximate shorthand for the GC to student ratio and how much time the GC can devote to each student and their family.</p>
<p>And yes, horse trading is probably unlikely during the crunch time of EA or RD rounds. But when lists are getting narrowed down and finalized, then yes, that’s when situations like gourmetmom and others come into play.</p>
<p>Zbreeze, nice analogy.
Ddahwan, I assumed you were mirroring the language for effect.</p>
<p>My DS goes to a large public high school in Georgia with about 1600 students. We have 4 GC’s. My son’s GC was great. At the beginning of senior year each student fills out a questionaire and makes a resume which they submit to the GC. In addition as parents we also fill out a questionaire about our child. The GC then writes her recommendation based on what she knows about our child plus she uses what information we have given her. In addition if a student requests a transcript and/or recommendation it is turned around in 3 days or less. My son applied to 19 schools and numerous honor & scholarship apps where we needed her rec’s. Given the amount of students that she handles I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job. There is no way I could see her telling an adcom anything that would hinder his college acceptance.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse Actually, they call GCs all the time. My best friend is an admissions rep for a Big12 school. It’s her job to go to high schools and get to know GCs. She happens to be great pals with one of our GCs and it’s no surprise we have a lot of kids who get in there. These reps all have have territories, and when they admissions time comes, they personally rate the kids from their region’s schools based largely on recs from the GCs. Private colleges in particular use the GC relationship with admissions reps. GCs hold a lot of power in the admissions process and no one should underestimate what they can do both good and bad for a student.</p>