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Well, in my kids' former private school, the GC would have waged a campaign to educate the parents and the kid starting in 11th grade, and (I believe) would ultimately have locked all three of them in a room and not let them out until the student had completed a good-faith application to a school the GC believed was an adequate safety.
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<p>It sounds to me that the GC (and others) waged a campaign to educate the student and parents. I'm against locking up anyone who has not committed a crime. As I've said in other contexts, stupidity is not a crime :)</p>
<p>Wow! I'm impressed your public HS GC has already asked for a brag sheet and a one-on-one meeting! Ours are still fixing student's schedules and doing the zillions and zillions of non-college related things they do. I'd be delighted if our GCs had time to spend this early with the tons of kids on their rosters! And Opie, you are hilarious!
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As far as expecting a GC to tell a student if her college choices are reasonable, it falls into the same category of questions like my answering my wife's question "does this make my ass look fat?" There are some things you just don't do...
<p>I went to a big overcrowded public school, and my guidance counsellor didn't really help me terribly much. My parents didn't go to college and are kind of clueless on the whole prospect - my mother told me several times that she thinks I could get in "anywhere I want" because I'm "sooo smart", but that she still didn't think it would be a good idea to apply to really prestigious schools because they cost more - which of course doesn't make sense because if I'd gotten into, say, Harvard, they'd have given me a whole lot more aid than my current school did. So I based my search on mostly geographical/size/atmosphere fit qualities because I was pretty much clueless on the whole academic fit front - I had no idea what would be considered a reach, what would be considered a safety, etc. My guidance counsellor didn't do too much with my schools list except say "yep, those sound good, you've got safeties so you're ok".</p>
<p>We had around 1500 kids in the school in total, and either 3 or 5 guidance counsellors - I don't really remember. So maybe around 400 kids for each one. I'd never really talked to mine except when scheduling classes at the end of the year, before all the college admissions process started. I think they tended to keep an eye on who the top students in the school where (I was one of them), because every once and a while we'd be summoned to meetings about qualifying for the national merit scholarship, or going to governer's school, or taking sat II's, and whatnot. So she probably recognized my name, but didn't know anything about me. I had to fill out a sheet with some basic info and then she asked more probing questions in person.</p>
<p>Considering this is a school where, if half the kids who graduate even go to college at all, it's been a good year, I think they did an ok job with what they had but it really was not helpful to the people who needed the guidance counsellor for actual guidance, instead of just keeping track of papers. I think they pretty much expected us to know what we were doing on our own, and they figured that if we made a decision to not take a lot of APs or only apply to these certain colleges, it was because we knew exactly what we were doing and knew the consequences of it, not because we were misguided or clueless.</p>
<p>My guidance counselor is absolutely useless. It takes weeks to get an appointment (we're not even a very big school), and when they do give you the time of day they make it while they're out to lunch. -_- I went their 5 times and he was "out to lunch" all of those times. I finally just went there after school.</p>
<p>I had a class with all seniors last year (they had the same counselor as me) and they advised me to get my transcript and all that stuff and personally mail it myself, because they asked him to months ago (with the envelope & all that stuff) and they got calls from their schools saying they were missing things from the application (the transcript/1st quarter report cards etc.)</p>
<p>Also my counselor is constantly messing up things for me. My GPA is always messed up, I have to check it myself, then go down there and after a long drawn out production with them (because they refuse to check it manually, but rather on the comp) they finally fix it. I ask nicely too, even though I think i have a right to be upset with them. He never gave me the papers I had to fill out for honor society (I had no idea it was so early and didn't realize). He constantly pressures me to take classes I don't want to take. And although I can't prove it, because I don't have all the info I would need, I think my rank is wrong. I get straight A's in all honor/AP classes (all 3 years) yet I'm behind someone in rank in regents classes with 1 honor class, who receives As & Bs. </p>
<p>My friends were sent papers to have a discussion about college stuff (going to be seniors like me also) and I magically wasn't.
It seems he doesn't care, and I despise him for it. I have tons of college questions, instead of talking to him I decided to come to college boards like this. ;P</p>