<p>Unless they were rolling admissions schools, this was not an unreasonable time frame and why is it considered a fate worse than death? Have you ever worked at a a public high school at the beginning of the school year? Believe me when I tell you despite your good intentions of seeing the GC on the 3rd day of school, sending out a recommendation was not a priority at this time. Those first days are spent with programming issues, new students on your caseload, sending out records for students who have moved,etc.</p>
<p>Not letting myself get dragged into the annual bashing of the GC when the majority of the parents do not know what the role of the GC is (and no, college advising is not at the top of the list).</p>
<p>MizzBee–see, this is one thing I REALLY like about our GC. If I had showed up with all of that, she would have sent me out the door. She does NOT deal with parents for applications without the child present and even then only if there is a NEED for the parent to be there. Granted, she is very good and I wouldn’t have had to do any of that but still, I appreciate that they make sure this is the the direction the child wants. If we have a question about something we can email her, if it is something that the child needs to address, she will call the child down to her office and give them the information, sending a brief response to the parent indicating that. We are really lucky!!</p>
<p>Mizzbee–wondering what class (size) your school is? Just curious since I’m in Indiana too.</p>
<p>I could deal with our GC who does little for the college bound. What irks me is she routinely holds herself out as the “expert” (Yes, she publicly tells the parents this!) Then she says things such as "SAT II, don’t worry about it, no one needs them (this was said after a parent asked, she would never mention SAT IIs), Profile–she had no idea what profile was, she asked if non-custodial parents had to put info on FAFSA. I could go on and on with S1 and S2 stories. We are in a rural, undeducated area-parents do not know how inept she is and that they should be pro-active–or at least they don’t know until she misses their kid’s merit scholarship deadline…</p>
<p>D in hs now. They refuse to remove SAT/ACT scores from the transcript. “That would be stupid. It HELPS students to have them on the transcipt”. She didn’t know about score choice. Students took ACT/SAT for talent search in 7/8th grade–D just rec’d transcript–it has THOSE scores on it!</p>
<p>Yes, I am sure there are some very good public hs couselors, but there are also many who harm lots of students, and I find that sad. I have no doubt S1 wouldn’t have fared so well in admissions had I not found cc.</p>
<p>Then how is this the GC’s fault? The GC does not put the SAT scores on the transcripts. Those decisions are usually made above the GC’s head (principal, school superintendent). Did you expect the GC not to send in the transcript? </p>
<p>Where was the student and the parent in this process? Did they not review the transcript and see the scores there? If they are strongly discouraged, than this makes them the fool because it is their right and their responsibility to ensure that the information on the transcript is correct. They should not take no from anyone who was not in a position to say yes.</p>
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<p>If those scores were placed on the transcript by the middle school, the high school may not have access to remove the scores, so they will remain. You will most likely have to see if the middle school can remove the grade (since it is probably a couple of years old, it may not be able to come off).</p>
<p>My DS is a junior at a private day school, so we’re just beginning the process, but so far his college counselor (he has a separate advisor) has:</p>
<p>-Sent us 4 emails about the general process, including test prep and a link to Naviance
-Participated in the school’s mandatory college counseling night for juniors and parents
-Given us a 95 page book walking us through the college process (gen. info, fin aid, schools for LD students, SAT optional, interview hints, organizational grids for rec., visits, etc.)
-Had both student and parents do questionnaires both on what we want in a school and what DS offers a school.
-Met with DS one-on-one for a 1/2 hour getting to know you session. DS left with a list of 25 schools to research and consider. The NE schools on the list were spot on for son. The list also contained schools we didn’t know well from other parts of the country.</p>
<p>We’ll have our one hour meeting with the college counselor next week. He’s been doing this for over 20 years and according to DS has a good reputation among the kids. I hope things will continue to go this smoothly. So far we feel very fortunate.</p>
<p>Don’t think there is enough room on this page to describe my disappointment of GC at a private HS. I can unequivocably say that he has added stress to an already pretty stressful situation. No response to emails , minimal response to phone calls (the one phone call that I managed to get through, he was clearly quite aggravated that I called). My son can never find him in his office. All schools that he is applying for are on the common app…everything was sent at the 11th hour only after our prompting and then lied about it having already been sent (dates when school froms are submitted are clearly listed on line!!!). Mid year grades were available for 3 weeks…again, only at our asking were they finally sent, again with the implication that they already had been sent …once again date sent clearly seen online disputing his claim that it had been done some time ago. NMF info discovered in published news report , not from school…same with other national awards…the list goes on and on…as I stated on a previous post, there really needs to be an anonymous means of evaluating college counselors. Yes, some have terrible work ethic, but others, in addition to that, may simply feel totally secure in that who is going to complain about them when they are the ones writing you child’s letter and waive the right to see it. We have no idea what we are going to do with our upcoming child who will be assigned the same counselor!!!</p>
<p>lilypod-
If your school has more than one counselor you might want to preemptively request that child #2 not be given this counselor. You shouldn’t have to go through this twice and the school should know he’s incompetent.</p>
<p>GCs at my kids’ schools dealt with several hundred kids. College counseling was only a small part of their responsibilities. S1 attended a school with over 3,000 kids, and he could get a transcript within a day. </p>
<p>S2’s GC never met with us for college counseling; she met with him in the spring of junior year and again briefly in the fall of senior year. The GCs asked that students and parents submit in the questionnaires by the end of junior year, as many of the counselors spent a good part of their summers working on them.</p>
<p>I did note that the school system started the process with parent and student meetings a semester earlier for S2 than during S1’s time (and they were only two grades apart).</p>
<p>Both of my kids’ high schools had a three week lead time on the school profile/transcript/GC letter package that was to be sent to colleges. Seemed reasonable to me. It also left the GCs some flexibility in case someone decided to go ED (or switch from ED to RD) at the last minute. One important thing I learned in this process was that in our school system, only the GCs can assemble the school packages because of the sensitivity of the information. No clerks, no parent volunteers, no student aides. Therefore, this process took place after school hours when they could work without interruption.</p>
<p>The date that you see on line is not the date that the high school submitted the information, but the date that the college app/college accessed the information. For all you know, the GC did submit the information when he said he did and there could have been a lag in the other end accessing the information (especially if they were closed for winter break).</p>
<p>We likely will have no choice but to request someone else, it’s just that it’s a small office with probably 5-6 counselors and I have no dobt there will be “talk” about this. It is just this terrible aprehension that somehow it will have a negative impact on our child’s application…we are totally stressed that it already has from him being so inept for child#1
As another example, we had 3 letters of recommendation, 2 academic and one personal
He submitted one personal and one academic to all schools. Only after we noticed, was the third academic letter sent. This was to be by far the strongest and most impressive letter. Now, on most schools’ application checklist only the initial 2 show up and we have no way of knowing whether or not #3 got there or will even be looked at. It does appear downloaded when looking at common app…but yet I think another completely preventable added stress…and we are certain that it would be futile for us to ask that GC check this out for us.
Have so much more to say…but better stop the ranting…this has been a horrible experience and I just have to somehow keep the faith that my son will shine despite all of this.</p>
<p>Sybbie: No, we know as a fact that this was not the case. We checked out naviance minutes before our requests to GC…noting appeared…only after us insiting did it show up and dates appeared on common app…the difference was not weeks or days…he implied it had been done some time ago…the very same day we made the request on 3 separate occasions, the date appeared…I’m probably not explaining correctly because my frustration level is at a max, but we have concrete knowledge that this has happened as I originally stated…have tried to give him the benefit of the doubt…but can no longer do so</p>
<p>My kids handled the interface with the GC, not me, but I told them to bump up any due dates (so if something was due 11/1, say it was due 10/15 or whatever). Who are we kidding – the GC wasn’t going to know the difference, and it provided a buffer.</p>
<p>I took a different avenue, PG. I told my kids to plan to submit at least 2 weeks earlier than when the guidance folks said THEY needed the “stuff”. That way there was plenty of notice from my kids!</p>
<p>Ok, finally got on Naviance. Fun site. It would be more helpful if everything wasn’t pegged as “data hidden to protect privacy” though. I’m assuming that is set at our GC level? I can see if there is only one person applying for various schools but one school had 86 applications and wouldn’t show the results on the graph to protect privacy??</p>
<p>It’s interesting to see which schools kids have applied to…at least the ones that were not “hidden to protect privacy”.</p>
<p>Look, mncollegemom, here’s the thing: GCs’ primary job is to help as many people as they can. The number-one way they can do that is to get as many as they can into the best colleges they can. Is it a definite coup to get a student into Harvard? Yeah, it is. What, exactly, can that GC do to help Johnny Poindexter, who wants and can get into an Ivy League university? Write a letter or letters of recommendation and recommend the hardest classes that suit the kids. </p>
<p>What irks me about your argument here is that you’re going far, far afield of “normal” kids and the topic of the original post. There are very few kids who have the ability to go to a highly or moderately selective college whose parents are as ignorant as you describe. Any “smart” kid worth his or her salt is going to broaden their horizons and get more opinions. With the Internet, they can find whatever they need. There’s this thing out there called Google that acts as a conduit of information for post-secondary education laymen. My parents were largely uninformed (though very receptive to information) about how college admissions had changed since one had been a National Merit Scholar and both had gotten their degrees, and yet I by some miracle managed to find this website and others.</p>
<p>The OP asked how much “your kids” were getting help from counselors. If you’re on College Confidential, you’ve obviously enough information to keep yourself and your kids afloat, and you don’t need the services of the guidance counselor. This is what my original message was meant to convey. We as students and parents shouldn’t be taking up much, if any, of the GCs’ time! See: gsmomma’s post. That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.</p>
<p>hkobb7–I have talked to the GC for a total of 5 minutes at a parent teacher conference this year…my son has had some major scheduling issues this year and has spent a lot of time with her getting this figured out…as is her job and they are the ones that messed up his schedule (or their computer did). I am not taking up any of her time. Everything we need to know is on the internet. However, we do have some upcoming things we HAVE to meet with her about…per her request…to get DD on track for some things down the road with her athletic recruiting. Like I said, I am thrilled to death with our GC’s.</p>
<p>MN…as the OP of this thread you have had 20% of the posts on this thread. I’m not sure why that would matter.</p>
<p>Let me give kudos for things my GC did do that were helpful.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They made sure the kids satisfied the state and school graduation requirements with the most aggressive courseload they could find in each year. Our high school is very small an sometimes the scheduling was very difficult to do. They made it work the best they could (DD’s GC did a MUCH better job of this than DS’s).</p></li>
<li><p>They made sure the kids and families were informed re: the deadlines for just about everything…course selections for hs, requests for transcripts/recommendations, local scholarship applications, etc. </p></li>
<li><p>They actually had a lot of information about colleges within our region and particularly those colleges that other students had attended from the school. They also knew the academic requirements for these schools. This was not particularly helpful to my kids (one went 3000 miles away to a school the GC had never heard of, and the other was a musician and the GC didn’t really know about music majors/college applications…hey, they can’t know everything). </p></li>
<li><p>They held parent information nights twice a year for multiple grade levels…had guest speakers to address finances, and discuss types of college choices. I have to say…the GCs gave up THEIR time to do this and we attended, but generally these were poorly attended events.</p></li>
</ol>