<p>My counselor thinks that they dock 1.6 points for every wrong answer on the SAT...</p>
<p>Mine told me that all colleges except Ivies offer merit aid (blatantly, obviously WRONG!). She also suggested that I, a foreign national who doesn't qualify for federal aid, apply to public schools in hopes of getting scholarships. She specifically suggested William & Mary, whose website clearly states that if you're international and can't pay full tuition, just don't bother. When I asked for advice about schools where merit aid might actually be a possibility, she told me that that's the sort of thing I need to research on my own, as if I were just being lazy (as opposed to at a loss). She's a nice woman, but a constant source of unhelpful advice and misinformation. Oh, and she thinks I'm a prestige whore... and I'm the girl who spends dinner table conversations desperately trying to convince her parents that yes, Grinnell/Macalester/Kenyon/Colgate/Scripps is a good school, even though you've never heard of it!</p>
<p>By the way, this is at a fairly prestigious private school with an average SAT in the high 1300's on the old scale (I have a 2270/1560).</p>
<p>my counselor's pretty nice. The only problem is that my high school has alot of students in it, so the she's always in a hurry and tries to find the quickest way to do things, even when its wrong and she never has any real answers to my questions. I usually have to depend on other teachers to help me with my schedule and other things.</p>
<p>i liked my old couselor. my new one is kinda boring</p>
<p>I have to admit that the counselors at my Hs are all very good in what they do. However, due to my crappy luck I got one of the head counselors who has many more responsbilities such as meetings/traveling/ etc. Although many might gasp and marvel at my supposed great luck for having such an authoritative figure as my counselor, I frown at such an occurence. He has absolutely no time for his threadbare, tired, and depressed students. He doesnt provide that emotional support that counselors are expected to provide. ..oh well..pity me.</p>
<p>I loved my counselor. She was great. But she left. But she was great while she was there.</p>
<p>A career counselor, a college counselor and a regular counselor? So each kid has three counselors to deal with...hmmmm</p>
<p>mine's so smart and encouraging, luckily</p>
<p>Ugh, I hate mine SO much! </p>
<p>It didn't start out well, because the summer before sophomore year (high school is 10-12 here) I took a math class. So, I needed to be bumped up a year in math and when I asked them she kept complaining about how I "was just making way more work for them." So, finally got that done with after much begging. Fast forward a year, I got accepted into NASA SHARP which is like this awesome program that's pretty hard to get into. I had to leave school a week early and when I went to explain it to them they're like "Oh, like a summer camp... So its like a vacation?" Uh, no. Its just a high school internship with NASA! So, they wanted to give me F's in all my classes for missing the last week, but I got a paper signed from all my teachers that I had A's in all their classes and permission to leave early. Finally, this year (junior year) they decided to change some of the classes that meet the graduation requirements and she "forgot" to mention that most of the classes I specifically took to meet these requirements would no longer even count! Of course, this was after I had worked hard and completed these classes. Now, I'm doing even more graduation requirements this summer so that I can actually graduate. Even though I'm in the top 10% and taking tough classes (multivariable calc, thermodynamics, etc.) she continues to say condescending things like, "if you can even graduate from here." Grr, she's one of the most frustrating people I've ever encountered in my life!:(</p>
<p>yea i agree...
i had three different counselors for the three years ive been at my new high school....it was frustrating because when it came to writing recommendations for colleges...they didn't know butt crap about me since we were newly introduced....
my sophomore yr counselor was the worst...he took the WHOLE school year to put my freshmen grades onto my transcript since i was from an out of the country school...grrr, it really frustrated me because i couldn't apply to another high school (a better one) because i didnt have my transcript!!!! O_O</p>
<p>ok so I never met my guidance counselor until senior year. Yes SENIOR YEAR! When I read my reaches to her she actually LAUGHED...like LAUGHED out loud when I started listing Ivy's. Well screw her because I'm going to an Ivy league school. What made that situation worse was that I told one of my friends and she mentioned it to my counselor as a joke. My counselor then called me down and had a really awkward meeting about it with me. Another time my mom wrote an email about some random thing that I needed and she called me down to the office again and made jokes about how my mom was really offensive and controlling. </p>
<p>Well by the end of the year I did end up liking her. She went to college in the same town that I am going to be going to so we talked about the town a lot. I also did stuff like bring her flowers for writing me a recommendation so she warmed up to me and we have had some nice conversations since then. </p>
<p>But wat a crazy experience!! I still can't get over the laughing part!!! (ps It's probably also because my class is less than 150 and a LARGE chunk of it goes to local CT state schools. Noone goes to Ivy's so...) But ugh!</p>
<p>I didn't know my counselors until i was in my junior year...</p>
<p>The first counselor at one NY school was really nice and she would see me whenever i wanted to tell her something.</p>
<p>The 2nd counselor (i moved) for junior year was also very easy going and he let me switch out of classes that i really hated without confronting the teacher (who would try to make me stay.. and i really hated that class but i couldn't tell that to that teacher!)</p>
<p>3rd counselor though... she was a b1tch... I sent a note saying I wanted to switch my classes and she didn't do anything for a week. So i sent another note a week later and she finally called me in.</p>
<p>I said i really hated that classes and I wanted to leave and i kept on over reacting so she'll let me out.. and then..
.
.
.
.
she thought i was suicidal! hahahaha</p>
<p>"Do you want to physically hurt yourself?"</p>
<p>I'm like "no, why would i do that? (because of a stupid school class??)"
"are you sure you don't cause physical harm to yourself?"
"I'm sure... (***)."</p>
<p>And then she said she'll call me back the next day and said "I won't forget you"</p>
<p>and of course she did. what a b1tch. what would've happened if it wasn't me but a real suicidal student??</p>
<p>Well in the end i switched out to an elective class that i skipped every other day. haha</p>
<p>looks like almost evryone had at least one problem wit their counselors</p>
<p>when i first met my regular counselor she was nice, a little too prying, but nice. UNTIL I REALLY NEEDED INFO FROM HER</p>
<p>When i went to her during junior year for college advice (required) she listed one school from each east coast state that i might be interested in. that was nice but guess what? NONE OF THEM WERE TOP RATED SCHOOLS. and of course she didnt even advise me to consider any IVIES even tho both harvard and yale sent me application booklets in the mail w/o my request.</p>
<p>
[quote]
even tho both harvard and yale sent me application booklets in the mail w/o my request
[/quote]
You do know that that's not an actual indication that they want you? It's just advertising. It's not selective.</p>
<p>
i dont remember saying that because i already know that and i wrote a thread about it "harvard is teasing me". </p>
<p>and not everyone gets a booklet from them so what the hell are you talking about? if u show me a specific place where it states that sending app booklets is advertising, then i will believe you and still not care (i dont want to go to an ivy anyway). i was simply saying that my hs counselor didnt tell me to even consider anything top rated or ivy. remember-the thread is about hs counselors.</p>
<p>I'm starting freshman year, and I've only seen my to-be counselor once when she came down to the middle school to talk about the high school experience. She seemed fairly nice and all, but it was the middle school counselors that did all the actual explaining for planning high school schedules and aided us during the process. Just recently I learned how I could get rid of all those regular, required classes that would have hurt my GPA, and I called her office to ask for a schedule change. I had already checked the school's website and knew that all the counselors went on vacation during a certain time period (not the one in which I was making my calls). I even talked to a teacher who worked there and confirmed that for me, but I could not reach her! I called several times a day, left a new message every week or two, and sent several emails, but she STILL never got back to me. I'm probably going to have to get my mom to take me down to the high school (after their vacation is over and they're back) before I hear from her! I mean, ***! Is she frking ignoring me or something?</p>
<p>Guidance counselors really don't know anything about you. So don't feel bad if they laugh at your choices. At my school, they look on their computer, view your grades, and then make a judgment based on those. My counselor is actually the opposite of most of these, he saw my grades and was like "Well, for a young lady with your grades, you might be applying to an Ivy League or top-rated school." Well, actually, if maybe you got to know me a little bit, you'd know that I don't want to go to an Ivy League! Up until a few months ago, I wasn't even interested in going to college, but my guidance counselor wouldn't know that considering he never asked me...And that he doesn't know anything about me in the slightest...</p>
<p>However, my chemistry teacher is very discouraging in college matters. My friend expressed an interest in Brown and she said "Oh, no one from THIS high school goes there..."</p>
<p>Ours is competely useless. She does nothing of worth. I have to figure out my shedule each year, and pretty much prod and prod and prod to get her to send forms that I need places.</p>
<p>RUGHS:klgnas;dg. I dislike that woman immensely. It's not like we have a huge school either - only 400 kids in the whole school! <em>tears out hair</em></p>
<p>We have just over 200 kids in the entire high school, and the university counselors (there are two of them) only really deal with the upperclassmen, so that's 50 kids each at most... yet mine acts like it's an enormous hassle everytime I ask for concrete information. If I'm supposed to research every minor technical aspect of the process on my own anyway, what's the point of even having a college counselor in the first place? If it weren't for CC I'd be so lost.</p>
<p>My school is fairly organized. We have 12 Guidance couselors for 1500 kids. Each duidance Counselor gets a little over 100 kids and helps them throughout High School. This is a way for you to get to know your guidance counselor since he or she will be you're little helper for 4 years.</p>