<p>From personal experience, the two I've talked to at my school are terrible. Last week, I had this conversation with mine over forecasting classes ("" around counselor replies)</p>
<p>Will the Spanish IV class prepare me for the AP Exam?
"if you like the subject, then take the AP test!"
Well... I want to do fairly well, and I know Spanish IV isn't counted as AP here
"do you enjoy Spanish?"
Uh, sure, it's interesting, but will the class be enough to do well on the exam?
"so you enjoy it! then take the AP test!"</p>
<p>Last year, my counselor understood even less about classes, but she changed my schedule around so I could be in the same electives as my friends, so I guess I preferred her. </p>
<p>Plus the counselors at our school are RARELY in their office, and when they are, there's a line of other kids waiting to talk to them. When you finally get to talk to your counselor, you get some generic pep talk and walk away even more confused. They also hate seeing students challenging themselves with a rigorous courseload (though all faculty at my school are like that...). Ask a counselor about any AP class and you get some condescending scare-talk about how it's a COLLEGE-LEVEL class with 30 HOURS OF WORK PER WEEK and you'll have NO TIME FOR EC'S!</p>
<p>Bottom line: Are the counselors at your school knowledgeable/helpful/accessible? Things a counselor should be?</p>
<p>I only remember my counselors of junior and senior year. Both ladies were great conversationalists. </p>
<p>One time, my junior year counselor casually asks if I didn’t mind being nominated for a scholarship to a private OOS college. I said that sounds interesting, and the school sent me a certificate of nomination within a month.
I even had talks about my weekend plans with my senior counselor. </p>
<p>The counselors at my school set up at table during lunch (for a week) to answer questions about next year schedules.</p>
<p>To help juniors/seniors deal with college issues, the counselors invite HS alumni to visit for a private Q&A meeting with us.</p>
<p>The counselors know next to nothing about anything that deviates from applying to either of my state’s flagship public schools.</p>
<p>Not that there’s anything wrong with UT or TAMU (I’m applying to the former, myself), but it means the burden of researching schools is placed exclusively on students who don’t plan to go to either.</p>
<p>I generally think it’s a problem that they only cater to the less ambitious students in virtually every aspect (my favorite is the official school recommendation of 2 or less APs per year, a recommendation that required getting written permission from the science and math departments of my school in order to bypass), especially considering that there are actually a lot of intelligent people at my school.</p>
<p>I suppose that is what the internet is for.</p>
<p>Okay. I HATE that my GC is the go to person for rec’s. She doesnt even know me!!! It’s like theatre of the ridiculous. I applied for my dream school at the end of junior year, after visiting and being advised by my admissions counselor that “you can never be too early” (RD school) my entire application was complete except what was needed from my GC. (Of course they are not available in the summer) So, when school began and I approached her about it - she said " Oh, I didn’t think you’d actually need that letter yet, there’s still plenty of time." REALLY? I keep finding myself thinking, “Isn’t this your job?” But I am stuck with a cookie cutter GC, and I am just not a cookie cutter kind of student. Bah, humbug!</p>
<p>They’re not particularly knowledgeable, but (academically) they let me do pretty much whatever I want, testing out of classes and stuff, so I don’t mind them.</p>
<p>My GCs are okay. They’re pretty bad at scheduling though. They accidentally scheduled me into a study hall rather than an art class in freshman year, and couldn’t change it because of scheduling conflicts. Because of that, I couldn’t take honors art this year (prerequisites). They’re really nice though.</p>
<p>I haven’t started the whole applying-to-college thing yet, so I don’t know how knowledgeable they are about that.</p>
<p>I have two counselors (a honors one and a general one). I like the honors one, she is knowledgable and helpful. She also has experience with students applying to top schools. I don’t really like the general one though. I have had the same errors on my transcript since the end of freshman year and they are still not fixed (I ask him at the start of every semester to fix them). He also doesn’t really know much about summer programs… They both think I freak out too much, but that is fairly accurate.</p>
<p>My guidance counselor is awesome. He has helped me with everything I’ve needed. Going into the college admissions process I had no clue what was going on as I’m a first generation college student. He explained everything and always encouraged me to ask questions even if I thought they were stupid. In years prior he also put up with my constant schedule changes and other problems.</p>
<p>At my school, you have a freshman adviser, and then another one for the rest of your time. Unfortunately, between sophomore and junior year they changed the alphabet range for the counselors so I had to get a new one. My counselor is nice, but he (and the others) are always busy with problem students and disciplinary meetings. Plus, they only really know about colleges in NY, so I didn’t go to them for college search advice. I can’t complain too much though because my counselor gave me an excellent recommendation.</p>
<p>I go to a large religious school so there is one counselor assigned for 170 students, plus some two counselors who only do college things. My own counselor is a nice guy, sort of awkward, but doesn’t seem that great at really preparing people for top colleges. For some reason an AP exam comes up that I earned a 4 on, and he says he’s never heard of someone disappointed by a 4. He also gives me generic, crap advice like “join your language club” that is a complete waste of time. I got pressured into doing some state-sponsored summer program for KY that is supposed to be binding. 5 weeks long… I won’t have much time for my internship or for research at that rate. </p>
<p>However, I’m glad I can basically talk to him whenever I feel like it and that my school gives everyone so much attention. I don’t want to take it for granted, although I will admit that public schools have some administrative advantages. For example, many private schools don’t release class rank because it can hurt applicants in the bottom half who are, really, paying customers for a hand-holding process. However, some public schools don’t give a hoot and give the true rank, which would at least be very, very good for me.</p>
<p>At my school, there is about a 12:1 ratio of students to senior counselors + 2 more general counselors that help everyone. We only have 100 people per class as well :)</p>
<p>The guidance counselors at my school are VERY discouraging about us taking a rigorous courseload (we need to go through an application process for APs or courseload increases, and they tell us that they’re pointless and we shouldn’t do them), but that might be since my virtually everyone at my school over-achieves, and ends up being really stressed out (one year a girl ended up being hospitalized due to complications resulting from stress). They also discourage us from applying to highly selective schools in the US (e.g. Ivy League), because so few people end up getting in (I’m international).</p>
<p>Ours are pretty awful, but then again I go to a public high school with ~2500 students. Trying to switch around classes is a nightmare, under no conditions are we allowed to switch from a small sized class to a larger class. Need the credit to graduate? Too bad, in their opinion. Plus they have no knowledge of any universities outside of our state, and argue that going out of state is just a waste of money and unnecessary. Let’s just say I’m dreading when I need to get a counselor recommendation, as it will take everything I have to be civil with mine after all he’s put me through during the three or so visits I’ve had to his office in the last few years…</p>