<p>I would like to hear from experiences of parents who had had bad experiences with Guidance Counselors.
Can they intentionally cause any harm?
How much of the college admissions process depend on them?</p>
<p>I am considering going with a private GC. </p>
<p>Would we still have to depend on the High School GC for anything?</p>
<p>Basically what do we have to depend on the High School GC for college apps (if we get the guidance from some where else?) </p>
<p>The high school GC has to provide official transcripts, the school profile, and recommendations. It’s great to get guidance elsewhere, but it would be a mistake to alienate the school GC as they can damn your child with faint praise if they so choose.</p>
<p>S was in G/T program in middle school which included finishing Algebra II in 8th grade with a perfect score on statewide test. Freshman year he took Elementary Functions which is like pre-pre-Calculus because the GC told him he should (despite his 8th grade math teacher recommending he go straight to Pre-Calc). At the end of Freshman year he had a B in EF and the GC recommended he re-take it “because there would not be any math for him to take senior year.” I asked to hear from his EF teacher what course he recommended and he said definitely Pre-Calc because S was already bored in EF. Math Teacher was correct, he got a 5 on the A/B Calc AP exam last year and will take the B/C Calc AP exam next week.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the GC was fired a few weeks later for cruising porn sites on the school computers.</p>
<p>The new GC for both kids (assigned alphabetically by last name of student, follows the kids throughout HS) is wonderful and a vast improvement over that guy.</p>
<p>We had a public school guidance counselor that I was giving info to…and she had been doing it for years…but, no, I would never alienate her…just helped her do her job…</p>
<p>The college counselor at my soph D’s private high school told a group of parents last week that there was a Social Studies section on the ACT…I zipped my lip, but not a good sign…</p>
<p>I had a nightmare experience with my son’s GC. From not sending the required forms to sending recommendation letters with the wrong kids name on it. My son’s name in the first paragraph and another boy’s name in the second paragraph. Obviously NOT a personal recommendation from the GC. She’s probably sent the same letter for years and only changed the names of the student. Just terrible. She didn’t send out the mid-year report until almost the 1st of March. That was my absolute breaking point - I called about the middle to the end of February, becuase the mid-year report was not showing up on any of my son’s college sites as being rec’d. I called her and she was like - I haven’t gotten to it yet. Well, I just blasted her - no cursing, but gave her 20 minutes of my mind. The entire process was a nightmare. No help - no instruction - just do it on your own and when the GC gets to something, she gets to it - no sense of responsibility or urgency. Such a bad reflection on a student that has worked soooo hard for sooo long. Some of the colleges my son applied to stated clearly - your application will be reviewed when ALL of the required forms are received. Doesn’t the GC get that. Obviously I’m still upset about the whole process. The same thing happened when I needed transcripts and letters of rec for scholarships - she did not guarantee that they would be sent out in time (she said she was always swamped) - and I always sent them in very early. I don’t know how you would use a private GC for these types of things - the school gc still needs to be the person to get the letters of rec out and transcript - the private gc can not do that.</p>
<p>zoosermom has it right. You have to be nice to the school GC because they will be sending in a lot of paperwork and writing the school recommendation. All a private counselor can do is give you advice on where to apply and how to improve the application. Your school GC may or may not be able to do as good a job on that part. Our older son’s GC was very nice and came up with a perfectly reasonable list of suggestions of schools, though we ended up doing our own homework - we had two schools she didn’t suggest, that I heard about either here on CC or from people in real life. We were on our own in terms of writing essays, though my son’s GC did see the essays. I don’t think most GCs intentionally cause harm, it’s in their interest to see that students to get into as good a set of colleges as possible, still many are overworked and a few are incompetent.</p>
<p>When colleges request a recommendation written by the student’s guidance counselor, they want a candid and confidential recommendation if they can get one. They are looking for materials submitted on school letterhead, sent in school envelopes. A recommendation written by a professional hired by the parents would have little, if any, value to an admissions staff.</p>
<p>We met with D’s first GC at the end of soph. year to prepare for the college search. The woman kept talking about a major that D wasn’t planning to do, a particular college D had no interest in and some girl we didn’t know. Thankfully our school also had a woman in the Guidance office who’s job is to help with college admissions, and she was very helpful. At the beginning of D’s junior year, her part of the alphabet was reassigned to a new GC. The new GC has been wonderful and D really likes her and feels very comfortable talking with her. She has been a big help.
So fate worked in our favor. Perhaps you could get your child reassigned to another GC? ( this is not unprecedented in D’s school)</p>
<p>I had a different GC every year from eighth grade until I graduated HS. My letter of recommendation from my GC for college started with “I don’t know RacinReaver very well, but his file looks very impressive.”</p>
<p>I still managed to get into every school I applied to but one, and I’m sure that wasn’t the deciding factor.</p>
<p>The guidance counselors in the public schools in our area are not, for the most part, very knowledgeable about colleges outside the SUNY system, Cornell, RPI and a few other NYS private schools. They do, however, play a very important role in the process as noted by zoosermom and others. If you hire a private counselor, try to make sure it is an individual who is on good terms with your child’s guidance office. We helped our daughter with her college search, so that it was essentially in its final stage before her pleasant, but inept GC brought her into her first “college meeting” at the beginning of her senior year. As the time approached for applications we provided him with a detailed list of the schools she was applying to, deadline dates and a resume to assist him in writing his recommendation (GC generally only knew the kids with problems that he counseled on a regular basis). My daughter checked in with him regularly, provided him with 9x12 stamped, pre-addressed envelopes to the appropriate admissions offices and generally tried to help make his job as simple as possible. He still messed up getting a couple letters out on time, but nothing too serious. When the process was all over we gave him a big thanks and a “job well done,” just to make sure he had positive memories of D#1 when D#2 entered high school this year.</p>
<p>We plan to follow the HudsonValley model with D2. It’s been made clear that the college office won’t provide any assistance in formulating a list, so we’ll make her list, do her applications and provide the envelopes as early as possible to beat the rush. Hopefully that will gain some goodwill.</p>
<p>My friend hired a private counselor for her daughter (who turned out to not be at all helpful, FWIW) and she had to keep that fact a secret from the school guidance counselor. The school GC made it clear to parents that she would be offended if they hired a private GC (notwithstanding that she has hundreds of kids to help and a limited amount of time). You can’t risk alienating the school GC because most colleges require a recommendation letter from the school GC, and at least at D’s HS the school GC generally coordinates the transcripts, school profile, teacher recs, etc. At D’s high school, there are a few good counselors, a few mediocre ones and a few who are completely and totally inept. Which one you get is dependent on the first letter of your last name.</p>
<p>OP - It’s easy to lose faith when you know (much!) more about college apps than the GC does. But as ZooserMom said, you can’t really supplant the HS GC with one of your own choosing. I recommend the approach used by HudsonValley51 (and ZooserMom). Whatever you do, try to keep that ‘hyper’ stuff under control – GC’s are people and they don’t respond well to beatings. JMHO of course.</p>
<p>You should take a good look at an application. It would do much to show you where a GC is needed. Try commonapp.org as an example of an application.</p>
<p>There are two parts of the college application that require a GC’s input. One is the School Report. It requires a school official to fill out information regarding the school itself (or attach a School Profile that is prepared by the school). Also included is a report of the applicant’s GPA, class rank, GC’s assessment of the rigorousness of the applicant’s curriculum and personal qualities of the applicant. The GC is then either asked to answer a number of open ended short answer questions about the applicant or is asked to provide a written recommendation. Also, questions about the disciplinary record of the applicant are asked.</p>
<p>The second part of the application that requires the GCs input is the follow up report that must be filed after 1st semester grades are recorded. </p>
<p>No private college counselor can provide those documents.</p>
<p>If you are lucky, your counselor is very knowledgeable about the local and state college scene; if you are very lucky, your counselor is very knowledgeable about the national college scene. If they are not, this is where a paid college consultant could be very useful to you–to help you find which colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>It surprises me that a school GC would be offended, or even care, if a student’s family hired a private counselor. Private admissions counselors and public school guidance counselors are not the same - they have different jobs to do. In our hs, it’s understood that the school GC will provide timely, professional service in preparing and sending application materials. But no one expects the school GC to propose schools for the student’s list, or to be up on the latest admissions trends (though they are expected to know the admission year schedule of testing, deadlines, etc. - and they do). Our GCs rarely read students’ essays, for instance, though the nicest ones offer to; it’s my understanding that most private counselors do read essays and make suggestions for improving them. </p>
<p>Public school GCs are busy people. Even in our fairly affluent school system, where more than 80 percent of graduating seniors are headed for 4-year colleges, GCs have a lot of other stuff to do besides helping students get into college. They manage scheduling, do some kind of odd but time-consuming personality testing for all sophomores, arrange for working papers/homebound instruction, mediate student/teacher disputes occasionally, provide future planning seminars for each class, attempt to establish relationships with each kid (particularly the troubled ones), and burn up a lot of time listening to parental complaints on the phone. So, at least in our school, GCs don’t see themselves as being in charge of each kid’s college search - nor should they be. </p>
<p>I’ve always felt that the title “guidance counselor” promised more than it’s reasonable to expect.</p>
<p><strong><em>It surprises me that a school GC would be offended, or even care, if a student’s family hired a private counselor.</em></strong></p>
<p>Fortunately this is only one of the GCs at D’s high school (and mercifully not D’s counselor, since she’s reputed to be the least competent of the bunch). I don’t think any of the others care if you hire a private counselor. But it’s a shame for the families that are stuck with her and forced to sneak around with their private counselors. I agree with you, I can’t imagine why she’d care or be anything but happy to have her load lightened a bit.</p>
<p>THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your responses. Really appreciate it.</p>
<p>I am in a situation where I have do not have the confidence that the GC would send the recommendations/transcripts on time etc… But looks like I have to depend on her for that! I wish it were easy to change the GC. Our school district has over 3000 kids in high school and they just go by the last name to assign a GC. </p>
<p>Centh - I am glad it worked out for you in the end! I am in a similar situation in terms of placement in classes. The teacher recommends, the GC denies! </p>
<p>Be cautious with the guidance counselor…treat them with respect in a public school setting and try to find ways to secure what you need.</p>
<p>I am not sure what went wrong with my ds and his counselor, but it became clear to me after the admissions decisions were made that she may not really have liked him. Although she seemed to support his choice of schools, and even suggest that he would have positive outcomes at some of them, after the results were in, and were not consistent with the forecast, she changed her song. I am still bemused - I do not know whether she really was not fond of him to begin with, or became negative to justify the outcomes when I queried her about them in a non-confrontational way.</p>
<p>Of course, I love my DS, so hearing some of the negative feedback after the results was very difficult - I hope she was just having a ‘bad day’ and that I was her 100th phone call… and I am reluctant to make waves because DD will have the same counselor in another year…</p>