<p>Public school education in CT is heavily bureaucratic. In bureaucratic organizations, right & wrong, better & worse, reasonable & unreasonable … they have different meanings than are common in the general community. I won’t bore you with a litany of first-person experiences. But I will leave you with this question:</p>
<p>How do you “fix” student performance in a multi-school system with one school that consistently outperforms the others?</p>
<p>At least the powers here have figured out that shipping off “under-performing” students to other schools has made zero effect on that issue and are “considering” stopping that practice.</p>
<p>Thumper, there was a student on CC a few months back that needed to have their GPA changed from weighted to unweighted for a scholarship. The school was using the strangest formula to do that. Basically, this student had all A’s except 1 B. And they calculated his unweighted GPA of 4.7 to be 3.2. </p>
<p>NewHope, that whole scenerio is sad. Here, they are starting “magnet” programs in low scoring schools to attract some of the higher performing students to those schools and bring the scores up. To the detriment of the other schools. </p>
<p>I am with the parents that stated that they met with GC’s, then figured out it was all on us to figure out. She was able to give some guidance, but not mcuh. My son wanted to go out of state to school. She told him to apply for private schools, they have better merit scholarships. Do not apply to state u’s, they do not give merit schoalrships to OOS students, only need based scholarships. Also, encouraged my son to apply to some top tier schools stating that he was sure to get in. No mention of the whole unknown piece and randomness of the process. </p>
<p>Oh, and they are not really pleased that he did not apply to more schools so that they could add the school names to their list of “admission offers”.</p>
<p>“Answer: Close the high-performing school.”</p>
<p>That’s an attempt to bring up the average at the expense of the high performers. Is the priority to bring up the average (it might not work) or to try to fix the disparity in other ways (that might not work)? There’s no easy answer, and the school board will surely anger someone (we’re lucky someone agrees to take the job).</p>
<p>October of DS’s senior year…true conversation:</p>
<p>DS: Why did you want to see me?</p>
<p>GC: This is our meeting to help you select colleges and get your applications going.</p>
<p>DS: You may want to use this time with someone else. My applications are all sent.</p>
<p>GC: Where did you apply?</p>
<p>DS: named all the schools</p>
<p>GC: You will NEVER get accepted at those schools.</p>
<p>DS got up and left.</p>
<p>When he got his acceptances, with his very good scholarships (performance awards), we made copies so this incompetent GC could see them. She clearly had little knowledge of his field of study, which was fine. She should have, therefore, kept her big mouth shut.</p>
<p>True story with DD:</p>
<p>GC: So where are you applying to college?</p>
<p>DD: My applications are all done. I applied to (and she named the schools).</p>
<p>GC pulls up Naviance which was NEW that month: You need to pick a couple of sure things. These schools are not.</p>
<p>How much help have our kids gotten from our GC’s?</p>
<p>Zip, Zilch, Nada, None, Nothing</p>
<p>It appears (in our h.s. anyway) that they are glorified paper pushers. Administratively organizing the kids paperwork to send to colleges. Help in selecting colleges? Not at all.</p>
<p>A GC from our kids’ high school said that Georgetown would be a good choice because “it could really be a hook to get a kid from the midwest.” @@ Pardon me while my eyes roll out of my head; suburban Chicago kids are not “exotic” to Georgetown or to any school.</p>
<p>Upper-middle class suburban Chicago kids like my own are a dime a dozen at any highly selective school. They aren’t underrepresented at Georgetown. No Georgetown adcom is going … oh, wow, get a load of this Ernie, a kid from Chicago, that’s certainly unique, better not let one of those get away. It was a hickish, naive thing for the GC to say.</p>
<p>I want to go on the record as saying I KNOW there are some good high school counselors out there…in the public schools too. MY kids didn’t have them. I will say, the one my DD had was FAR better than the one my son had. At least DD’s was a good advocate for her while she was IN high school.</p>
<p>I’m quite sure the guidance department had a champagne breakfast to celebrate MY youngest graduating from high school:)</p>
<p>Not at all. All we needed from our counselor is the recommendation letter. We didn’t read the one submitted to common app, but we did read some other scholarship recommendation. In it she wrote something to the effect that my D would “bring honor to your school…” Well, I guess that’s why Harvard rejected D. Imagine two admission officers sitting some where in Cambridge reading our counselor’s letter. They then looked at each other, “well, these people must have never set foot to the outside world, bring honor to Harvard!!! <rolled up=”" their="" eyes="">. I guess we have to teach these southerners a lesson… there’s the rejection pile" LOL</rolled></p>
<p>Which is why I think the whole GC-rec thing is a shell game. Colleges HAVE to know that the vast majority of kids are having them written by GC’s who are filling in the blanks and wouldn’t know the kids if they tripped over them.</p>
<p>Haha, also, she wrote that my D is a model citizen, setting up a good example in her own community. Well, I am an immigrant alright but the whole county where I live has one other family that comes from my birth country and we don’t get along with each other! So funny as I am writing this.</p>
<p>D1’s GC took care of 40 kids, and she was also D1’s advisor since 9th grade. Needless to say she knew D1 really well. When D1 was WL she was willing to speak with someone from adcom face to face. That year she got all of students off their WL. This counselor was in her mid 20s. She really went over and beyond for all of her kids. </p>
<p>D2’s counselor has 200 kids, but we made a point getting to know her. We met with her very early on and we told her D2 was working with a private counselor and she was fine with it. She got all of D2’s paperwork out on time, she nominated D2 for many awards (even for some college’s merit scholarships). She kept me informed of everything that was going on. When she heard D2 was accepted ED, she became very emotional and called all of D2’s teachers. </p>
<p>We have been very fortunate. We had to be more proactive with D2’s GC, but only because she had a lot more students to look after.</p>
<p>Agreed…the school counselors had SO many students they didn’t even KNOW what my kids had done in the school, never mind what they had done outside of school. My kids handed them a nice list of their activities both in and out of school that included all things from grade 9 on.</p>
<p>My son had given that list to his GC in September, right when school started, so she could send his counselor letters in…which made the above referenced conversation even MORE ridiculous. She had already done his counselor recommendation letters…when she invited him in for his FIRST meeting with her.</p>
<p>After my daughter graduated they asked me to be on an advisory committee for the guidance department. The very first suggestion I made, was to move their timetable up by at least ONE semester…see kids during the winter term of their junior year…not fall of senior year.</p>
<p>Unless the SAT scores are on the transcript, how did the counselor send SAT scores to an SAT optional school? Do they have access to your child’s college board account? Did they recommend to your child that even thought he school is SAT optional, that they may be better served sending in their SAT scores?</p>
<p>Did they send in the little tapes with the scores that are sent to the school? On face, this is not a plausible story. Perhaps the student sent in her own SAT scores.</p>
<p>On the 3rd day of school I set an appointment with the GC. I had created a spreadsheet for her of all the schools DS had already applied to, created labeled envelopes (school won’t send anything electronically) and provided her with a brag sheet that I had “borrowed” from a thread on CC. Ds had already solicited 3 recommendation letters from various teachers that had uploaded the recs to the common app and the universal app. the vicep-principal had already written a LOR for both common and unversal, which she had been given a copy. All she had to do was anser a few questions and mail the transcipt and GC form. It took over a month, until DS went in to ask if she needed help licking the envelopes. He only applied to 2 schools that were not on the common app or required a GC letter.
In October she told a few students that it was too late for them to apply for early decision (she has a 3 week prep time I guess) and our school routinely misses out on competitive merit at at IU because the guidance office does not nominate a top student. This year, DS decided last minute to a reach school on his CA list. When he went in to get the docs sent, the GC said she needed the address. DS just stood there open mouth-trying to figure out why she was too lazy to look it up, when he remembered my embarassing labeled envelopes. There in his file was Northwestern’s mysterious address.
I would love to say that she has her hands full with other issues, but they reworked the gc office so that she is to dedicate 75% of her time to college applications for her 1/2 of the seniors until after winter break, and they have the other GCs handling discipline, etc. The other GC, however is really wonderful. I have threatened to change DS name so he could trnsfer to him. However, we made it through-even though midyear reports are due.</p>
<p>Just a shout out to all of the excellent school counselors out there. I know there are some who are really wonderful. I’m whining about my own experiences…but I don’t want folks to think that ALL school counselors are not good. That is not the case.</p>
<p>And one thing I will say…I do believe our public school counselors have FAR to many kids to deal with. PLUS they are not dedicated to college searches only…they also have to help students with course selections, and some actually deal with disciplinary issues.</p>
<p>In a perfect world these folks would have the time they really need to do everything that is asked of them. In some cases, they simply do not.</p>
<p>sybbie - Yes, it was on the transcript. And in anticipation of your follow up question, students/parents are (let’s say) strongly discouraged from reviewing transcripts in our public school system. I got my D’s by appealing to the Principal’s Office. As mentioned in my earlier post, my D’s friend’s family was very trusting … well OK, not pushy.</p>