<p>Does anyone else agree?</p>
<p>Mine are awesome...but I go to a really small private school where its like 20 kids to a counselor</p>
<p>Yes and no. Their job is to get you into a college and they generally favor the HS's "feeder schools", which are schools that are inclined to accepting students from that HS and the school typically sends a lot of students there. It doesn't necessarily matter how good the school is as long as it is within the student's range. For the most part, they don't care how prestigious or good of a school it is, as long as they get their students into some school. But, with more students comes less time and less of a chance to get to know the students. I definitely would NOT trust everything that the guidance counselor has to say, and it's important to use your own judgement in this process, but they are after all responsible for transcripts, etc. and you have to be somewhat cooperative.</p>
<p>Yeah my counselor deals with like 500+ kids, no wonder she's terrible. Although she actually KNOWS me and knows my name, but only because I got NMSF and was the only person at my school to get that.. lol</p>
<p>Even though my counselor is good I definitely don't trust everything they have to say...like taking a Kaplan course is like one of the best ways to spend your money</p>
<p>The typical high school counselors at my school:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They're "fashionably" late - they sometimes arrive at noon (school starts at 8)</p></li>
<li><p>They're always walking around with their coffee mugs, laughing their hearts out.</p></li>
<li><p>They're mysteriously absent on some days - and (what bugs me the most) NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THEY WENT!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'm not too happy with my counselor. He actually discourages me more often than not. Every time I am in his office, I feel as if he's dreading my presence and wishes that I'd just get out. I don't know if he acts the same way around other students but everyone I know who has him says he's terrible. He doesn't even know my name and I'm one of the few students who actually visits him once in a while to discuss about my college plans.</p>
<p>@calculus09: That sounds a lot like the counselor at my school... ugh.</p>
<p>well, my counselor is really sweet but sometimes i'm not happy with the classes i have or something. you know, it varies.</p>
<p>she likes me though..i hope she'll write me a good rec</p>
<p>Mine are...okay.
Sometimes good, but not in all areas.</p>
<p>Give these people a break, seriously. They deal with hundreds of kids, not just you. They do the best they can with what they're given. They don't just work on academic issues, they also have to deal with personal situations as well with their students. </p>
<p>Sorry if they can't give you the personalized attention that you want (whatever that may be), but give them a break. There are hundreds of students under their care and they have to deal with it the best way they know how. Which generally means helping out the kids who are barely going to make it through high school. They figure that people like you (typical CCers) know what they need to do or have the means to do it and they need to help those who don't.</p>
<p>Mine is horrible. I'd be fine with her constant mistakes if they weren't paired with her consistent lying. I can't stand a liar. It's one of my biggest hatreds. Often the school councelors will make things up so that they won't have to change a schedule, and I've done a bit of digging to make sure it wasn't a basic mistake several times. </p>
<p>My councelor also underestimated all of the students, and I, if not almost every student, gets the, "I don't think you're smart enough for that" look/response to our requests. I could be asking to take a class a level down from what I'd like, and I would still get that look from her. The ironic thing about this is the local community school is the feeder college.</p>
<p>Mine is fairly nice (in terms of personality) but not that competent and helpful either in terms of information and stuff.</p>
<p>Thoughas the gypsy.plum-obsessed/insane girl has clearly said (;)), get over it...lots, lots of counselors are incompetent and you aren't the only one. If you truly need sources go research a couple stuff yourself and look on websites (like this one LMFAO). And etc.</p>
<p>My counselor is very nice and accomodating, but her mission is to get her students into college. Not a "good" college, just college. To her, rankings don't matter, and all colleges are the same.</p>
<p>I want to be a guidance counselor as a career.</p>
<p>And I will be a competent one at that. <em>fingers crossed</em></p>
<p>My GC right now is nice and all but sometimes I have to explain to her some things that she doesn't know about or understand.</p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes: I'd like to think they do their best, but then I'd probably be wrong. For NMSF, the counselor didn't give out the info until 3 days before the stuff was due. We heard about it from the newspaper before we knew it ourselves. She's never once been right about any college I've applied to. She didn't let me drop one of my 6 AP classes. I had to go directly to the principal, a really nice, cool guy, to convince him that 6 was too many, and I needed to get rid of one. He agreed and did the switch himself.</p>
<p>Last year, all the counselors mysteriously disappeared from October 15 to 29th. Right before ED/EA apps were due, and UC apps opened.</p>
<p>Most of my school goes to Community College, and Probably 100 out of 775 go to a 4 year college. Yet, they still make the ones going to a 4 year go to an hour long session every year to see if they are on track to GRADUATE.</p>
<p>If you've been doing this job for 25 years, you shouldn't get corrected by a 14 year old, every, single, time they ask a question.</p>
<p>She told me that I didn't have a shot at any Ivies, and shouldn't bother applying, because I was outside the top 1%. Then I came here.</p>
<p>My guidance counselors don't even deal with college issues, we have to go to the college counselor. There's only one in a school of 2000 people. Plus she's usually talking with the Principal rather than in her office helping kids. She refuses to talk to anyone other than seniors until the end of the year, she'll talk to juniors, once all the seniors have got accepted to their colleges. Plus, she usually will only talk to people who totally suck up to her.</p>
<p>Our gc is horrible...She constantly bombards kids who plan to take more than 2 APs with discouraging comments like, "Are you sure you can handle it" and "You know there was this very smart girl last year who had a break down became she had too much on her plate. I hope that doesn't happen to you" HORRIBLE</p>
<p>^ My gc encourages people to take too many AP classes. She stuck 30 juniors this year in 2-3 AP classes each who had never even taken honors before... They keep sticking people who shouldn't be in AP classes into them so the school will get more money. Also, it's practically impossible to get out of them. My friend was in 4 AP classes and she was taking AP Physics without any Physics background. She tried to get out because she couldn't keep up, and my gc just told her "Come on, a lower grade in AP Physics would look better on a college app than an A in regular Physics." My friend had to get her parents to complain to the principal before they'd let her out.</p>
<p>I agree whole-heartedly. It took me a month to teach them how to correct my GPA which was off by .2 points...which is actually a pretty big deal. They're such idiots.</p>