<p>Our school district is talking about slashing guidance counselors to one for every 1,000 students. I’m thinking when my kid can’t get the classes he wants and has no one to talk to, that I might notice what they do…</p>
<p>I frankly think it’s silly a GC has to sign an ED application – this person is a virtual stranger, why would they be involved in a contract between me/my kid and a college that they had no involvement in picking out in the first place. It’s like asking the teller at the bank to co-sign on my mortgage because I’m using my money in the bank to buy the house. Again, this is not directed at the people - they are hardworking people. But it’s just a silly system in public high schools where counselors have hundreds of kids in their load and can’t get to know them at all.</p>
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<p>Did you get an answer to that? I wonder the same thing. I do not think my daughter’s guidance counselor could pick her out of a lineup. </p>
<p>“Junior College Night” is scheduled for the last week in March, the week before spring break. Too late for people to use any knowledge gained to plan out-of-town college visits during the break.</p>
<p>I went to a public school smaller than most private schools. Our guidance counselors knew us, or at least knew OF us, from 7th grade on. They had personal relationships with admissions offices at colleges all through the area. If a kid didn’t get into any of the schools he applied to, one call from the guidance office would get him accepted somewhere. Our guidance counselors came into the science classes in early spring and told the freshmen and sophomores “If you have a B or better in this class, you should take the Achievement Test (now SAT-2) this spring because you are going to need three of them for college applications.” At my daughter’s school, I asked the chemistry teacher whether she recommended the students take the SAT subject test at the end of the year and she had no idea what I was talking about.</p>
<p>Yes, I did. She said that they could pretty much tell whether a school GC really knew the kid and had something to say in depth, or whether it was a “Mary is a smart, hardworking kid who (looks at transcript) seems to like science a lot.” And if it was the latter, they discounted it and understood the context. It still doesn’t answer for me why they still do it. The colleges already <em>know</em> that Elite Private School has knowledgeable GC’s and Average Public HS has overworked administrators; I don’t see the point of asking a question for which they already know the answer.</p>
<p>I’m with you glido, I don’t see how a guidance counselor who has 200-300 students to track is better equiped than a parent who only has their own child’s welfare to contemplate.</p>
<p>My son met with his GC the second week of October of his senior year to plan college. He politely said “Maybe you’d like to use this time with someone else. My applications are all done.” </p>
<p>This particular GC was WORTHLESS. She was the one who told my kid not to bother applying to the school where he got his bachelors degree “because you just won’t get accepted”. He was a music major. She know NOTHING about music admissions at all. We complained so much about her for several years that they switched her “letters of the aphabet” (kids were assigned by last name) and our daughter got a different GC. He was better but still not terrific. One year, she got her schedule without ENGLISH on it (yes…required for four years in our state). He couldn’t understand my annoyance about this. HELLO…it’s required. How could it NOT be on someone’s schedule. When DD was a senior, she really wanted to take culinary arts as an elective. He told me the class was full. I told HIM to bring it up on his computer…immediately…and guess what…there was an opening. He was a tad more helpful with college stuff than DS’s GC. But he too told my kid that she was not going to get accepted to her top choice school. She is graduating from there in June. Oh…he had never HEARD of the school before, but he was still sure she wouldn’t get accepted. Go figure.</p>
<p>As with others…I found that “old board” (which will remain nameless for discussion purposes) to help my kids with the college application process. I was happy to migrate here where I got a huge amount of help with DD’s college search.</p>
<p>Our guidance counselor was nice, but not very helpful at all. S had met with her earlier, and I met with her & S early fall of senior year. She kept having to leave the room to deal with a mediation session.</p>
<p>I asked her for some suggestions for academic/financial matches, safeties for S. She got on the internet and checked a few sites. Her suggestions mostly did not even offer S’s major, and UVM is not a financial safety at 40K OOS.</p>
<p>Everything I needed to know and have learned about the process I learned here.</p>
<p>DS and I LOVE his public HS college counselor. Conscientious, courteous, forward-thinking, embraces change. Goes above and beyond, IMO.</p>
<p>My guidance counselor is nice, and seemed to know about the selective colleges that I’m applying to, but he barely helped me (probably because I was so knowledgeable due to CC!). I’ve only met with him to have him sign my app fee waiver forms, and to show him my acceptance letters. </p>
<p>My previous counselor is currently on maternity leave, but I didn’t see much of her last year, either. She called me down once to see if I was interested in colleges (this meeting is mandatory for juniors). By then, I had already been researching for years, and had a rough list going, albeit this list changed dramatically before January 1st. I had already done visits, and I had rough drafts of my app essays. I suppose if I was less prepared, she would have been loads more useful. I did course selection, too, but I only went to see her when I couldn’t fit all of my APs. Unlike most people in my school, I began to plan my schedule as soon as the new course list is released, so I had an awesome list of what I wanted to take.</p>
<p>Our family loves our GC. She responds to my email day or night, even on the weekend. She’s guided our kids through many challenges in HS and into colleges. It hasn’t always been easy to figure out colleges, but she’s very helpful and always willing to get involved. Even wrote a follow-up letter to colleges. </p>
<p>I remember once, when we were torn about the “old” SAT and the new one, we had many discussions. She was totally right. (she discouraged my son from taking the old one. He took the new one in March 2006 and aced it. Got 2230. It was nice he only had to take that one once.)</p>
<p>When we first met our hardworking, alert, community-grounded GC, he had racoon eyes from spending his whole weekend “bailing kids out of jail.” I figured we were on our own. </p>
<p>I liked him for other reasons than college aps. He understood the tough town and advised both of my older kids how to socialize more effectively with the vast majority of schoolmates for whom the last thing on their minds was college.</p>
<p>His grammar was pretty rocky. I wondered if a polished college AdCom were to call him about my kid. What would they think when the GC said, “He could have went…” or “I should have came…” Part of me actually wanted those conversations to occur, so the colleges would know what an uphill battle it was to find education in such a bad school. </p>
<p>Anyway, we really respected each other. In a million years, he couldn’t have figured out my kids’ college list. And I still don’t know how to bail a teenager out of jail.</p>
<p>We would be totally lost at sea without my D’s GC. She has been helpful from day 1. My daughter met with her at the end of 8th grade to complete scheduling for 9th grade. My daughter met with her again in the middle of 9th grade to plan 10th grade. 10th grade was the “melt down” year for my D. I really don’t know what we would have done without her GC. She helped adjust some of the levels in D’s too strenuous course load, help her with a medical exemption during mid-terms due to a death in the family coupled with a broken arm, helped advise on strategies for daughter to dig herself out of a hole, met with us and daughter on at least 4-5 occasions over the next year to revise a target college list. She made sure to address some of the issues D faced that impacted her Soph. year in the GC evaluations. She is with out a doubt, one of the hardest working people at my D’s school. </p>
<p>I would say my daughter went out of her way to make contact with her GC from the beginning. D gave her GC a synopsis of each of the schools where she was applying along with a summary of why they were of interest and a good fit. The school also has the rising seniors complete an application / career pack that includes information on the students academic and EC achievements, interests, etc. This also assists the GC in writing the recommendations, etc.</p>
<p>At the end of the day it is a two way street. The student has to be proactive in getting to know their GC and having their GC know them from freshman year. Waiting until November of Senior year to introduce yourself won’t get the student the same result.</p>
<p>I love the GC at our small private school. She works hard in a range of activities and gets to know most kids personally or through info exchanges with teachers. But as far as college counseling, she is limited as to what she can do for individuals and if it weren’t for CC, I’d come out with a poor grasp of the process and probably have unrealistic expectations. If I were to advise her, I’d tell her to emphasize more to kids and parents early on that they have to do a lot of their own research on application requirements, scholarships and admissions probabilities. She can only give general ideas of schools and is familiar with some more than others, but I think parents and students here might depend too much on her presumed knowledge. I’d also tell her to be very clear in preparing kids for rejection and making them understand the at times arbitrary nature of admissions. I think she follows a policy of not “chancing” kids for any schools–as she would never discourage a kid from applying to their dream reach, just as she would never offer absolute assurances that they’d be admitted to a safety (although she might warn of the difficulty of admission to a particular school in a general sense). I feel this contributes to unrealistic expectations for some kids and a lot of disappointment come decision day. I’m glad I’ve had CC to help temper expectations and help me prepare my D for any outcomes.</p>
<p>My experience based on my own experiences and my kids is that the GC’s are so overwhelmingly rooted in getting kids into local schools, that if a kid expresses interest in a selective college, the selective colleges that are nearby are the only ones that get mentioned, and something farther (further? I never got that one quite right) away might as well be in Timbuktu. </p>
<p>As someone who went to hs in Missouri, I got “apply to Wash U” and they looked at me cross-eyed when I said that my family would be taking me on a tour of some East Coast schools. The smart kids here get “apply to Northwestern” and if they don’t spark to that, “apply to U Chicago / WashU / Notre Dame.” Then it’s the usual Big Ten suspects. I think that’s trite, pointless advice for a smart Chicago-area kid. I recognize that there can be financial issues with having kids apply elsewhere, but I think it’s their responsibility to open up and brainstorm possibilities rather than just assume the kid wants to be within a few miles of home.</p>
<p>The other thing that they did both in Missouri and here, which drives me nuts, is that they tell the smart kids to apply to the (out of state) Big 10 schools – Indiana, Iowa, etc. But then you’re going to be paying OOS tuition and those schools aren’t going to be throwing money at another state’s residents when their mission is to educate the students of that state whose parents pay the taxes to support it. For families who need financial help, I just don’t see OOS big state flagships as the place to start hunting. Better to hunt at a private that has more financial aid, and that is not beholden to the residents of its own state. (To be clear, I’m not talking about places like U Alabama, which might go out of their way to provide lots of money to attract high caliber students. I’m talking about states where there are already lots of high caliber students attending the flagships, and they really don’t need to search out and find the 3.9 student from the neighboring state.)</p>
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<p>I respect my kids’ GC a lot and she has been helpful in other regards. Selective college admissions just isn’t one of those areas. Not enough of her caseload falls into that bucket that it is worth her developing a competency in that area. And developing a competency in that area, knowing schools, traveling to them, developing relationships with adcoms, etc. takes an awful lot of time and money that she just doesn’t have. Look – why <em>should</em> she travel to the East or West Coasts to go scout out my pet selective schools when 85% of her case load is going to go local? It would be a poor allocation of her resources, however much it might personally please me to have her know something about it.</p>
<p>Our h.s. has 8 guidance counselors for 1800 students spread across 3 grades. The role of the guidance counselors is educational and they do not get involved in disciplinary matters except as they impact on educational issues. We found that for both our kids, each of which had a different GC, when it came to college apps, the primary function of the GC was to suggest colleges and facilitate the school’s process for providing required application materials. The GC’s met with our kids in the spring of their junior years, discussed their interests and goals, and then suggested colleges to look at. In the case of our son, there really wasn’t too much for the GC to do in that regard; our son had decided that he was interested only in attending our 2 state schools with campuses in our area. Our son’s GC, however, needed to be prodded to get paperwork out on time when apps were submitted in the fall of the senior year.</p>
<p>Our daughter’s case was much different. She intended to pursue musical theater in either a BA or BFA program. In talking with other parents at our h.s. with students heading into other performing and fine arts, we found that our daughter’s experience was pretty typical. Our daughter’s GC, while well intended and interested in being helpful, really didn’t have a clue about how to find appropriate colleges. The GC, based on my daughter’s academics, found a few BA programs that academically were appropriate and which were reputed to have good performing arts programs but the GC really didn’t know much about the performing arts programs and whether they would meet my daughter’s needs. When it came to audition based BFA programs, the GC really had nothing to offer in terms of identifying appropriate schools or knowing how to navigate the admissions process. We also used a private college counselor for our daughter who, while good at the traditional aspects of the college application process, was equally clueless about the differences between BA and BFA programs, how to screen schools based on their artistic programs to find appropriate matches and how to prepare for and navigate the artistic aspects of admissions. In fact, she did not even have on the initial list of colleges she gave us the school my daughter ended up attending and when she found out we had added it to the list of schools to seriously consider was wholly unaware that it has a nationally very well regarded program.</p>
<p>For our daughter, we ended up doing all of the research with her and relied heavily on information available on the musical theater major forum on CC. We really had to navigate this “brave new world” on our own, educating ourselves as we went along. As I mentioned, for students at our h.s. interested in acting, music, dance and fine arts as majors, the process was and continues to be about the same as what we experienced.</p>
<p>After reading these other posts, it occurs to me that maybe the reason I like our GC so much is because I already came in with a lot of knowledge, thanks to cc. I helped ds craft a great list so he didn’t need a lot of guidance in that way – what we really needed is a partner to help facilitate what we were already doing.</p>
<p>PizzaGirl, you used farther correctly. Farther is used to when you are talking about actual distance – We drove farther – and further is used when talking about degree, such as “We should have looked into that a little further.”</p>
<p>GC’s help with college? I thought they just helped schedule the ASVAB for kids who want to go to the Army. Whod’ a thought.</p>
<p>Guidance Counselor = Mom and Dad.</p>
<p>A few months ago, I was so angry at our GC for telling my D she had a good chance of being accepted by a certain school. Her stats were the lowest on the Naviance chart, and two people with higher stats had been rejected. She got a deferral letter. Guess what came in the mail this week? An acceptance letter :o Guess he really does know his stuff! Seriously, he is very knowlegeable about schools, and because our public is small, he also knows the students.</p>
<p>In large public Middle and High Schools I have always said it is best to think of it as public assisted Home Schooling- at least in CA. It doesn’t mater if you are in a high ranking competitive school system. As we all know, planning, prep and selection starts at the latest 6th grade-not placed in advanced math in 6th grade, not on advanced track for science or english either. When 9th grade rolls around, game over for multiple AP’s- not enough time. Since each student is evaluated in the “context of opportunities available” at their school, the learning curve for parents is fast and steep in order to figure out how everyone else in maximizing the “available opportunities.”…</p>
<p>Really, the internet should be the great equalizer here, all the info is there but it must be sought out and managed by both the parents and students. S1 did have a private coach (that’s how she thought of herself) but mainly because it eased the tension between US, she could tell him what he needed to do and how to follow through. She also got us up to speed and out of dreamland when selecting schools- letting him know he could not be just your AVERAGE 4.0, he needed more. Wake up call for ALL.</p>
<p>S2 in private high school- he is much less motivated so experience told me best to have a VERY supportive high school guide this one.</p>