<p>So I'm reading parents' posts and threads and I'm thinking "Wow, they sure do know a lot about different colleges/universities and the vibe on separate campuses and the odds of being accepted. Man, I wish my GC was like them."</p>
<p>And then I reason out that of course they do since they have kids going through the same things we are (or did) and, time and money permitting, they visited different campuses across the country and really tried to keep update on the educational news.</p>
<p>So it struck me that my GC has never gone through this process before with a child of her own and so has never had to put up with WUStL pamphlets arriving by the bushel to her house and watching her kid desperately refresh the window at CollegeBoard, seeing if the SAT scores are up.</p>
<p>Do you think it makes a difference if the GC has/had a kid go through the college admissions process? Or that their suggestions of which colleges suit you (or your child, if you're a parent readin' this) the best and where your/your child's best chances are can be found from attending counselor conventions/educational fairs (I believe my GC went to one in The Hague over the New Year break) and reading books such as "Harvard Schmarvard" and Loren Pope's books and "The Gatekeepers" without the personal knowledge?</p>
<p>My son and alot of other people on CC have had GC's who basically knew nothing about admissions to the elite colleges. I always thought that they could have at least have read one college guide, even if it was on their own time. In my own case, I'm kinda weird. I got interested in the process and I've read over 10 books and guides on admissions. I hesitate to mention this but I read the "Princeton Review Best nnn Colleges" all the way thru. Like I said, I got interested. I've read over 100 books on the Amer Civil War because I got interested in it. My point is that I would think that somebody who has a job as a GC could read one book on it. To be fair, most of a GC's job in public schools is probably related to discipline problems, handling irate parents, and dealing with the bureaucracy. In addition, the bulk of the students in some of these high schools are going to community colleges or state colleges, and so the GC doesn't deal with the special admissions issues of the elite colleges. In the end, alot of high school students are on their own unless they get help from their parents.</p>
<p>Dufus said it all. My high school GC handled 450 students and everything from discipline problems to class schedules to psychological issues--college was one of her smallest priorities. He also hit the nail on the head when he said that 97% of the college-bound at my high school were going to one of 5 or so state schools. She probably didn't have too much experience with other schools, and I'm not saying she didn't try or didn't care, but she was much to busy.</p>
<p>I think it's different at big private schools or magnate schools that probably have a separate college counselor and tons of experience with kids going to top ranked schools. </p>
<p>At the same time, I don't think there's anything a GC could tell you that you couldn't learn through diligent research on your own.</p>
<p>The problem is that I think that 3% that doesn't go to the local community college or nearby state schools are the 3% whose college decision is really going to make the difference, and it's that 3% that distinguishes the high school in the future. These 3% shouldn't only get 3% of the attention is what it comes down to.</p>
<p>What do you mean the 3% who go out of state are the ones that "really...make the difference?" I have to disagree with what you said; the 3% who go out of state shouldn't get an unfair amount of time with the counselor to the detriment of in-state students. Why is one necessarily more deserving than the other?</p>
<p>It may be a difference of schools, but I don't think my public high school ever used the college admissions of its students to garner prestige. To my knowledge, my high school doesn't even know where its students have gone (except for the final transcript request).</p>
<p>It could be argued that the people applying to elite colleges require more time because it is more difficult, but I agree that somebody going to an elite college isn't any more important.</p>
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<p>the 3% who go out of state shouldn't get an unfair amount of time with the counselor to the detriment of in-state students</p>
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<p>I don't think other students should suffer, but realistically students aiming for elite colleges will need significantly more counseling time. It's a much higher stakes game, and things like the counselor recommendation will require detailed attention if the student is to have his/her best shot at getting in. Many kids applying to state schools (for example) are well qualified for admission and simply won't need much counseling. (I'd add that a good number of these students might benefit from exposure to out of state schools where the might qualify for merit aid and even lower tuition thatn in-state schools, but that's another issue.)</p>
<p>I'd look at it kind of like most schools look at sports - a basketball team contending for the state championship will get a lot more coaching than a club team; the entire athletic department and school administration will take an interest in helping the team achieve at the highest level. I don't think anyone would begrudge the champion basketball players that attention, nor should they begrudge some extra time spent with a handful of kids applying to Ivies, MIT, et al.</p>
<p>Getting into a state school may be just as difficult for some students as it is for other students to get into elite school, and just as important. However, state schools are more numbers driven than the elite colleges. A student trying to get into a state school doesn't have to worry about how to present EC's or write essays. On the other hand, a lot of what a student does in order to get into an elite must start early around 8th grade, and so GC's probably can't help there.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that GC's at public schools have hundreds of students assigned to them, and they probably think of college counseling as a small part of their job. Most of their time is spent on discipline or behavior problems, counseling students with poor grades in classes, meeting with teachers and parents, scheduling classes and so on. At the expensive private schools, they will have full time college counselors because the parents are paying for it and expect results.</p>
<p>At my D's school there are 2 guidance counselors in addition to a college counselor. She has been a college counselor over 10 years. She got the job as a result of being a parent of a high school student (school was new at the time) and volunteering to assist the GC in collecting the information, talking to students and parents and helping with the paperwork. She went to graduate school got her NYS certification and had been working for th ebd of ed for 10 years. She has done the process with her own 4 kids, knows LACs like the back of her hand. She does get a graduate intern each year that she trains and this person starts out by taking care of all of the State university applications, then moves on the the selective schools.</p>
<p>sybbie: Is that a public or private? If it is a public, then your D is very lucky. </p>
<p>I was also going to say that from the viewpoint of job satisfaction, a GC would be justified in having a greater feeling of accomplishment for having gotten a potential high school dropout into community college than getting a student who is obviously going to succeed anywhere into Princeton instead of just one of the top fifty colleges.</p>
<p>I am a guidance counselor, and I can assure you that I have learned a great deal more about elite college admissions in the seven years I have been helping my kids get into college than I did previously. I actually have not had any students at my high school with the stats/EC's/grades/desire combination to get into HYP in all the years I have been counseling (a lot); by way of reference, I have had TWO Commended Scholars and no National Merit Semi-Finalists in all these years. I do spend the vast majority of my college counseling time trying to help my students, most of whom are low income, get the scholarship help they need to go to the colleges they choose, largely but certainly NOT ONLY state schools. </p>
<p>Still, going through the process and having some success helping my own children get into a variety of LAC's and top tier universities has given me lots of insight into the process. I keep wondering if I am supposed to move on to some place else to work now that the app process is over for my last kid, since I have learned this stuff and COULD be of help to someone else. :) Still, all kids do deserve help, and I love the students I serve now. </p>
<p>As Dufus notes, it is very rewarding to hear from a kid that they would probably not have gone to college at all if I hadn't sent them that letter saying they qualified for a scholarship at the local community college.</p>
<p>momofthree, thanks for sharing your experience. Kids at every level need help, and often finding money is as important as finding the right school. Keep up the good work! (It has to be tempting to move to an environment with a higher record of academic accomplishment. Kudos to you for helping kids who really need it.)</p>
<p>At our kids' HS (urban pubic), the head of the GC dept. had a daughter (her oldest) who graduated with our D last spring. She admitted that, after the process, she finally realized that perhaps the HS should reorganize the timetable it had advised parents to take. Example: a financial aid panel that occurred during the fall of senior year should be held during the junior year to give parents adequate time to prepare for the fall. With funding from the PTO, the HS also held an essay-writing workshop for seniors on a Saturday--the first one ever.</p>
<p>I would hazard a guess that there will be some changes made as a result of her experience.</p>
<p>interesting. our school has 4 GC's for 800 students, and they vary in levels. it so happens that the best councellor of the lot has kids that are at least a decade from college admissions. </p>
<p>and the best councellor i have ever met is only having his first son enter college this year. but he's great regardless - he's visited pretty much every major college over the years, has experience as an assisstant dean at Swarthmore, and is part of the national college admissions delegation. </p>
<p>what it comes down to is that it doesn't matter if the GC had a daughter or son go through the process. it helps, sure, but the better councellors (and the ones with a small amount of students, unfortunately) will understand anyway</p>
<p>I think going to a public school is really helpful. Sure the GC knows nothing and there's a lack of information. However, through the information gathering process I find myself to be more independent. I get help from CC but i gather my own information and learn from my mistakes. If i went to an elite prep school, information would just have been given to me. College admissions might be a little easier but i wouldn't have the chance to nurture the independence that i will so dearly need in college. Public school i think encourages this independent thinking and information gathering.</p>
<p>I agree -- public school was for me, despite the woefully lacking AP classes, jam-packed required classes (35 in chemistry in a room built for 20 isn't nice), etc. I feel that I am better prepared to be independent--everything you get in a public school, you've fought for yourself.</p>
<p>My school has ~700 kids and one full time counselor, and one that works 2 days a week. Our part-time GC works mostly on updating transcripts with grades and test scores, administering state and national testing (Gateways, End of Courses, helping people with ACT forms [I'm the only person at my school to ever take the SAT], etc.)</p>
<p>Our full time GC basically does the principal's job, because he is constantly involved in disciplinary behavior problems and bureaucratic BS. That, combined with the ignorance of HYPSM due to ruralness (how many schools have more ag classes than APs?) can create problems for those of us with the credentials able to scrape the bottom of the prestige barrel.</p>
<p>yeah.. at my horrid, good-for-nothing public high school (im kidding duh) about 55% of graduates go straight to a 4 year college, and half of those are probably public colleges, and after that, people quite often go on to really well-known local private ones, or ones that arent so hard to get into. on top of that, think of the guidance counselor's OWN experience. now to be a guidance counselor, you don't need a doctorate, and you're not going to be making much money. mine went to Bridgewater State College. They may not see a point in going to a top ranked school, or have much info on it. </p>
<p>Yeah, I'm one of those parents who's child has a GC who has no idea how to handle elite school stuff. It's not even that the GC is swamped -- the current junior class has 40 students, many of whom haven't even started looking at colleges. Because the school is new, there are no seniors yet. Despite that (only having 40 students to worry about), the GC seems utterly clueless. She teaches a required college prep elective where students are required to practice reading aloud, because she considers it such a valuable college skill. She told my son that she felt he was putting too much emphasis on his applications and college search, and not enough emphasis on getting an A in her class. </p>
<p>When he applied early this year to one school (he's trying to graduate early), we had the "Dean of Curriculum" at the school do his GC forms, because she knew my son and had spent 3 years as his "mentor advisor".</p>