<p>I’m not even sure that they define success as getting Johnny into Harvard necessarily. Success may be encouraging kids who are going to comm college to go to a 4 year college, or in getting money for kids who otherwise wouldn’t go anywhere. I think there is likely a small % of GC’s nationally who dream of the day that their students get into Harvard. Not that they aren’t happy and proud, of course - but if you’ve got 500 students, you <em>can’t</em> define your success based on abysmally low acceptance rates for the handful of kids applying at that level.</p>
<p>sybbie–I know you are thinking of the good GCs such as yourself, but I think you are over-defending some of them who do not deserve it. Unfortunately, that’s just not how it is for many of us and our children (and our wallet) pay the price.</p>
<p>I had the child whose Jr high ACT/SAT scores were put on the transcript and whose GC refused to remove any test scores because they only “helped” the child. The GC who didn’t know about score choice…You mentioned excuses for the scores could have been listed. NO. You are wrong in both circumstances.</p>
<p>I have met with several principals over the years. (they changed) They are adamant that whether test scores are listed is a GC decision. This is NOT decided at principal/superintendent level in my school corp. My principal, in addition to GC, also did not know what score choice is! The principal also did not know what a School Profile is!! The GC said Profiles were worthless and would not write one. Does this tell you something?</p>
<p>You stated the middle schools scores were put on the transcript by the middle school, and it wasn’t the fault of the HS. WRONG!! This is a K-12 school. The jr/sr high are on one side of the building. The HS is the one putting on ALL the scores, and this is after she gave a big show on how jr. high talent testing scores did NOT go on the transcript.</p>
<p>I understand your protection of your profession, but I was stating facts as they apply to MY school. I know what they are, and I know what she’s done over 11 years. She’s outlasted 4 principals. There’s no reason for her to think that won’t continue to happen and to do as she pleases.</p>
<p>Is the Junior senior high school one school or do they operate and function as 2 separate schools? My D attended a 6-12 magnet school and the middle and high school are 2 separate schools to the extend that students in the middle school were not guaranteed a seat in the high school. For example the MS may be coded as 01M123 and the high school would be coded as 01M223 where 01 is the school district, M would represent the borough (Manhattan) 123 would represent the school number. When you look at grades on the transcript, you can see the school that gave the grade. One school cannot change or remove a grade that was placed on the transcript by another school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nothing further. I believe that the NYC DOE is the largest public school system in the country.</p>
<p>I know in the NYC DOE system, there is a system of check and balances especially when it comes to grades on report cards/transcripts. GC’s do not have access/administrative rights to the STARS (HSST) system when it comes to changing grades, reading scores or adding/removing SAT scores from transcripts. We can submit paperwork requesting changes/modifications, but that paperwork has to be approved by an AP/Principal and the change is made in the system by a 3rd party. </p>
<p>I have seen PSAT scores on transcripts of OOS students transferring in the the NYC system. However, when we fill out the paper work for a to create a NYCDOE transcript for the student, we do not add the grades to the transcripts. As for test grades at my school, I cut the tapes, add them to the student file in the event that I have a student who cannot afford to send in scores, to have on hand to send to the college if need be, but they are never placed on the transcripts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve got a bridge that I can sell you.</p>
<p>I think you have principals who are willing to through GC’s under the bus on this topic. It is the principal not the GC who is living and dying by numbers; state test scores, SAT/AP test scores (for college readiness), graduation rates, 2 year/4 year college admissions rates, credit accumulation, etc. </p>
<p>I just had a meeting with my principal on Friday because s/he wants to ensure that every student who will not make graduation leaves for a transfer school so that s/he does not get the ding for having a non grad. I told my principal that I reached out to the parents in question and that the parents do not want their child moved to a transfer/alternative HS and the kid would just have to suck it up and graduate in January, and my principal went ballistic (no exaggeration). S/he wants the parents in next week to convince the parent that it is in the student’s best interest to leave. </p>
<p>Nothing, ever done in a school with out a principal knowing and sanctioning it. The the way I see it is that when a GC does something that parents do not like, it is reported to the principal. The face that the principal can put on to the parents is that they have taken care of it and everything remains in house. When a parent is dissatisfied at the principal level and takes an issue to the region/district superintendent the situation is no longer kept inside and there is more exposure to the principal.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, we are required to do an annual transcript review with the student. This consist of going over the graduation requirement, reviewing the transcript for credit accumulation and where the student is regarding meeting graduation requirements. The student has to sign and date that a review was taken place. The first week of school, seniors are given their transcripts for review. They have to turn in a form signed by both the student and the parent that they reviewed the transcript and all information on the transcript is correct.</p>
<p>syrstress-our Indiana school is about 1200 students and 74% go to college-but 50% of those attend the local community college or the satellites of IU and Purdue in our area. Less than 20 students attend schools outside of the state each year and most apply to less than 5 schools. Our school is not known for its academics, but rather great football teams from 20 years ago. We have two GCs for juniors and seniors and two for freshman and sophomores. </p>
<p>mncollegemom-if DS had gone in alone, he would have just come back home to get a list of the addresses anyway. Not many kids apply to 19 schools, so cut us a litle slack. I wanted to make the process easy for the GC. I never expected that it would be the only time that she met with DS all year. She has yet to ask DS where he has been accepted. Guess she knows now that he requested the midyear reports for his acceptances. And yes, we made labels for those as well after the Northwestern response.</p>
<p>I successfully lobbied with our high school to remove the SAT scores from ALL transcripts. It took a lot of persistence but it did finally happen. I presented tons of information about score choice, SAT optional schools, and evidence of errors ON the school transcripts. </p>
<p>This was school district policy, not the decision of the high school guidance folks.</p>
<p>Sybbie-I originally thought you were from Vermont. I edited and removed that from my post. You didn’t need to be snarky.</p>
<p>Again, I am glad you/your school district do such a good job. That is simply not the experience many of us have.</p>
<p>Our HS has 2 hallways–1 jr high, 1 HS. Principal is principal of both. Principals (only 1, 4 over the last 10 years) are not throwing GC under a bus…hardly. They are simply being administratively weak. I said it before; if a principal and a GC do not know what score choice is, do not know/care about a School Profile, arggg, I can’t even go there. It’s a very small school system in a rural area. Principals are going to start here and move on, to a different system. I would bet there are very, very few similarities between a school corp. my size and yours.</p>
<p>I’m not simply guessing at what goes on in my system. I am on kid 3. I am very good friends with one of the former principals. Someone I am very close to has been on the school board for more than decade. My parents were life-long educators.</p>
<p>I am glad to know all the info about NYC being so large and how you have checks/balances. Good for you! Really. Our GC is the one who has complete control over the transcripts and everything guidance. </p>
<p>I don’t mean to be brash/rude, but you are 1000 miles from me and in the largest public school system in the country. I am in one with 700 kids K-12 in a rural, uneducated part of my state. Why do you keep insisting what I (and others) say is not true? Please realize that YOUR experience is not necessarily OUR experience.</p>
<p>You really think my principal is going to the mat over AP pass rates? We’ve had 3-4 AP classes for 9 years. We’ve had FOUR people pass–and those were with scores of 3…</p>
<p>Teaching the course to a level sufficient to pass is most definitely NOT a priority, for the administration, the teachers, or evidently, the parents. When S was a jr. I asked the GC and the TEACHER, both in calc and in English (sr. courses), which AP calc and which English course it was, and neither the GC nor the teacher knew. Come on, seriously?</p>
<p>Parents and kids are told (by same GC), we have AP classes! You will get college credit! Never, for any of my kids, has GC mentioned the small fact that there is a test and it needs PASSED for credit.</p>
<p>Back to the OP and help of a GC–do any of you know how your GC calculates the “goes to college” rate? I am curious how other schools do this. Our GC has a form, completed JR year, that asks, “Do you plan to attend any post-secondary training?” If they check yes, she uses that number as her numerator in the ratio. Doesn’t seem very accurate to me…</p>
<p>Syr, our schools base the post secondary school info on self reporting also. There really is no other way to do it. Yes the GC knows where students get accepted. But they really have no way except family self reporting to know if a student actually enrolls in the fall.</p>
<p>I don’t know “officially” how they calculate the rate but I do know that they take into consideration where kids are going and break down the percentages that way, so 94% are going to a 4 year college, 2% to a Community College (2 year school), 2% to the military and 2% into the workforce. We have a larger school (2000 kids). </p>
<p>Your comment about “we have AP classes” reminds me of something a friend of my Mom’s told me. She was going around to “top” schools in her state to try to recruit more girls to go into the sciences. She was trying to get the parents to understand that these kids needed to take harder classes and more math and science. The parents kept telling her that their kids were getting a good education because they were getting all A’s and B’s (insert head smack).</p>
<p>^^Some of our TEACHERS tell the kids they are getting a “good” grade, if it’s a B. Hmm, that requires 81%. Sigh. All school systems are not created equally…</p>
<p>^Well, a B isn’t a “bad” grade…but did they LEARN anything??? I know people hate standardized tests but for some schools…they need to learn from the results of those tests.</p>
<p>I realize that there are good and bad people in every profession.</p>
<p>For the same reason that parents on CC have the annual ritual of railing on GCs (the teacher bashing thread should start soon). When it comes to head counts, many administrators do not believe that GC’s are necessary and would not pay for them if they absolutely did not have to. When administrations are doing budgets and they have to choose between allocating a salary for a classroom teacher and allocating for a GC, guess who gets the allocation? High school teachers teach 5 periods a day and classes are capped at 34 students (if you team teach with SPED, or teach self contained SPED, resource room, etc. the count is lower). The configuration in my building is that no class has over 25 student (on average there are 22 students in a class). There is no max # of students for GCs and we must service every kid in the building.</p>
<p>For those of us in the trenches, it is often a thankless job and your are always living with "what have you done for me lately. </p>
<p>Parents and students should expect not a guidance counselor to do it all for them – they need to be pro-active about gathering information on their own, even at the best of schools.</p>
<p>If you do a CC search there are over 30 threads about uncooperative GC, Problematic GCs, concern over GC, importance of GC’s etc.</p>
<p>I am not going to reinvent the wheel, I am simply going to repost.</p>
<p>thumper1, regarding comment #65 - you mean to tell me that your child’s guidance counselor essentially did not remember that they wrote or contributed to a secondary school report / guidance counselor’s recommendation? They did not know where your child applied to school? And the GC otherwise rendered a well deserved and high quality guidance recommendation that likely contributed to your child being accepted to all those schools that the GC predicted would deny? </p>
<p>My wife and I have our third child heading towards college. At the beginning of the second semester, freshman year, we have begun the process with a meeting with each one of our children, right about now actually, with the guidance counselor, at high school & during school hours. The idea is for our child and the guidance counselor to get to know each other. During the school year, they may have some interface on things like ECs, career interest inventory follow-up, or community / art accomplishments going into their respective guidance records, newspaper clippings etc. With our oldest, h.s. grad in '09, when it came time for the SSR and guidance recommendation to be completed, the letter that the GC provided was a tour de force - I never expected such a complete and detailed letter that amplified all our our daughters strenghts, in such a knowledgeable and authentic way. We check in with the GC with a face to face meeting joined by our child, at least once a semester. An extra meeting during April, before the May 1 deposit date to discuss all acceptances. My experience is that guidance counselors are there, they love to help, the love to get to know the student, and they have some creative ways to get input from parents, besides meetings. One example is that our high school’s GCs send out a request in Sept. of the senior year, to parents to provide them a description of their child with insightful questions like: "Do you think standardized testing is a true reflection of your child’s academic abilities? Why or why not? Our guidance counselors, each with a caseload of about 240, have compiled a hand book about applying to school, that provides detail for every step along the way with some best practice suggestions for parents. It is a very helpful document, and even provides details regarding student athletes who desire to gain NCAA eligibility. It seems like you are not asking enough of your guidance counselor, while the fact that the two children you have got all of their acceptances, was in spite of SSR reports and guidance counselor recs? Am I missing something here? Your guidance counselor should be closely involved with the betterment - repeat, the betterment of students. If not, your high school principal should be held accountable. In Massachusetts, education laws approved in 1996 articulate that by statute. The principal is essentially held accountable for the delivery of all aspects of a students education in their building. Ask more from your school employees. They work for you and your tax dollar. Respectfully, Mr. VC</p>
<p>I had “two sets” of children and my oldest ones were in college back in the early 2000s. Although we lived in a very affluent area back then, there was little help for my children from the overworked counselors. I therefore hired a college counselor for them and have recommended her countless times to others–that is, until this year. My son and daughter’s present high school is about 500 miles from the one the older children attended and has a college counselor whose sole job it is to help the students and parents navigate College Inferno. She served as an admissions officer at a select university in our state and therefore really understands everything. Although the “regular” counselors have a heavy load, they also know their charges personally and my son received additional personal attention from her. I cannot thank them enough.</p>
<p>Our high school has two separate departments; one houses the guidance counselors, and the other comprises two staff members who are college counselors.</p>
<p>Both my kids had the same guidance counselor because they are assigned by first initial of the last name. She was absolutely awesome! But my kids were solid students and were motivated to do well. In other words, they were low maintenance; but she knew them, and always addressed me by Mrs. teriwtt when we’d run into each other in the school. Both my kids actually ended up applying to Penn State, which is where she went to school, although neither one picked it. I’m sure she had her hands full with students who required more maintenance. </p>
<p>Our college counselor is overworked, although he tries. I think he’s trying to get more students to expand their geographic tunnel of vision, but there’s not a lot of support from parents; many of them grew up around here and think there’s nothing wrong with the 1st and 2nd-tier state schools within two hours of home. The parents never left the area, and they don’t dare want to see their kids actually venture out too far, like it, and never return. </p>
<p>Of course, that’s exactly what happened to us. We encouraged our kids to leave all options open. As of this coming fall, I will have one kid living on each coast. But they will be happy and doing what they want, so that’s what’s important… not whether or not momma can survive without them.</p>
<p>Agree completely with this observation, and frankly - the kind of GC that I’d ideally want – it would be a waste of time for someone to develop that knowledge base for the handful of times she’d actually get to use it. What’s the point in having the GC become the leading expert on the fine distinctions between Williams vs Amherst vs Swarthmore vs Pomona when chances are the smart kids in the class are going to want to go to U of I, you can’t really argue that it’s not a good choice esp in these economic times for them, and their parents don’t really have anything invested in them going further afield? I mean, why push water uphill? I don’t blame them at all for focusing their efforts on – well, then, let’s push U of I over Eastern Illinois, or let’s look at how to get outside scholarships. Having the luxury to sit and think through the fine distinctions of top colleges is just that … a luxury that few of their client base has anyway, and those who do (such as myself) will do it themselves.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I had to sit through the HS College Counselor’s spiel to parents a couple times before I realized that for my daughters’ purposes, he was one step above worthless. At the same time, thank goodness, that’s when I discovered CC…:). Once I read everything I could here and began to understand the structure & nuances of the college selection process, there was no need for the college career center except as a vehicle to process paperwork to be sent to the prospective schools. </p>
<p>Our neighbors have a daughter in HS who will be entering the process within the next few months, and they recently heard this same talk given by the same counselor, and what they related to me made me realize that this guy’s spiel has not been updated over time. With all the changes that have taken place since the '08 recession, spewing out the same shtick with pie-in-the-sky generalities about massive amounts of merit aid available might be instant gratification but is not serving these parents well. They need to know that aid is drying up more every year, they should aim to seek value more than prestige within the selection process, and loan-wise to realize what you have to pay back.</p>
<p>I told my neighbors to start sifting through the CC forums because these threads by definition will keep one current.</p>
<p>My dds HS had 4 GCs for a combined JHS/HS of less than 1,000 kids. The GCs do both general GC and college. I think all are knowledgable, caring and concerned and certainly my DDs was. </p>
<p>Kids were spread out by last name, so during the heavy application season, each GC was only dealing with 40 kids. They were familiar with private and public schools, IS and OOS. </p>
<p>They cared about family situations, not only sending parents a quesitonairre, asking about legacies, etc, but sitting to to talk to parents. MY DDs spoke to me privately re was I abolutely.positively sure my ex would pay for whatever DD wanted. </p>
<p>My DDs first senior english class first semester was basically how to write college app essays. Her english class was 15 kids and the teacher was recently hired from a leading private school and had experience in admissions. </p>
<p>My DDs GC did push us to apply to one safety I didnt think was necessary. I humored her because I wanted to stay on her good side. In one way, that safety wasnt necessary – DD got in at her first choice. BUT who knows???</p>
<p>kayf–I’ve told a couple of the kids’ friends that were worried about getting into college to just apply to an “easy” school to get into, a lower tier state school that has rolling admissions. You hear back quickly and often the application fee is nothing if you apply on line. By doing that they had at least ONE acceptance in their pocket and that took SO much stress off their shoulders. Of course they ended up getting into every place they applied because they applied to reasonable schools for their abilities but they don’t know that going into the process. I think it is good advice to apply to a safety–and for us the safety is more about the cost vs getting in somewhere.</p>
<p>These were 3.0 type kids that really had no issues getting into college, just didn’t realize that you don’t have to have a 4.0 to go to 99% of the colleges out there :).</p>