<p>Hopefully you read what I posted two posts above you. I have come to believe that the majority of his efforts ought to be with those students who have the geographic tunnel vision, not the proactive parents like us, who have self-educated ourselves on the college process. I gotta say, I absolutely LOVE it when a parent of a junior or senior high schooler from our local school starts asking me questions about the process (preferably junior, because there’s more time to explore options). But a lot of folks in our area can’t understand why any parent would let their child even consider a school in another state, much less some of the hidden gems that we’ve all become aware of on CC. I think this is even more significant when a student has an idea of what they might want to major in; less favorable when they go in completely undecided. </p>
<p>I would say the majority of top students in our school district have supportive parents who are encouraging their kids to think about college, way before junior and senior year. But this is the minority of students, and I don’t think the college counselor’s best interest is served by spending 90% of his time on 10% of students. </p>
<p>One thing that frustrates the hell out of me, though, is that I once told him about CC, years before I became a moderator and suggested he put it up as a link on his list of suggested helpful websites. To this day, he never has. For this, he loses big brownie points in my view.</p>
<p>sybbie–here they do start working with freshman, limited, but still meeting with them, figuring out their plans, making sure their class schedule allows them to get there, etc. No, it’s not, “what colleges are you applying to” yet, but it is still part of the process of “going to college”.</p>
<p>After reading all of these, I think I will be sending an edible arrangement to the GC office tomorrow!</p>
<p>This is the responsibility of the GC. I also a semester long teach junior seminar taking the junior class through the college process and financial aid</p>
<p>I have considered approaching the school board to create a parent committee to help with additional college planning activities. Even having a library of materials and more variety in our college fair would help.
This year we had a big push to offer both AP and dual enrollment classes, per state mandate. The dual enrollment classes were pushed over the AP classes because the curriculum was not as rigorous as the AP class, all students would “automatically get college credits” and there was no special expensive test. I had to show DS that none of his schools were going to accept this dual-enrollment credit and that any class that was touted as easier was not going to help him in college. Of course, I live in a state that wants our students to graduate high school in 3 years(making them less attractive to highly-selective schools) and then go year-round in college to finish in 3 years in order to get them out in the workforce. Too bad only 1 in 6 Indiana residents finish college in 6 years and we are in the lower half in the country in college-educated adults.</p>
<p>MizzBee–We have dual enrollment here, but the classes are through the University of MN and they are more rigorous than the AP classes and if you attend a school (state school mostly but some LAC too) in MN and most of them in WI, they will accept them, which is nice for kids going that route. I agree that if you are going outside of that the dual classes may not be the best option. On one tour of a highly selective college they flat out said they would not accept dual enrollment classes for credit or placement but when I inquired further, privately, I asked specifically about classes here and they did say that it was an exception to their policy to take these classes from our area because the arrangement is different here. They won’t take ANY AP or DE classes in your major, however. They can only count for gen eds–which is fine as it frees up your schedule quite a bit. This is only at one school but my guess is other’s are similar IF the classes are not taken at the community college level.</p>
<p>MizzBee–what does Indiana plan to do with these highly educated kids who end us with college/HS degrees in 6 years vs 8? Watch them go out of state, I presume. Outside of metro Indianapolis, there are very few jobs here for educated (or uneducated) citizens.</p>
<p>Our HS is also pushing the dual credit classes, although most of them are in ag. Great if one is going to Purdue to major in ag; otherwise, not so much. S2 had a horror story even getting his to transfer to Ivy Tech. It seems like they should transfer there easiest of all. From his experience, our school’s dual credit classes are a joke–there is no way they are actually representative of college level work.</p>
<p>srystress- I have been wondering the same thing. I know that the state would love to be a biotech center, and a high tech midwestern corridor, but I don’t see getting out of school as the answer either. Our dual credits are from Purdue North Central, and I doubt they are worth the paper even at Purdue main campus. We ave a fair amount of jobs where I live (near Chicago, but Indiana politicians like to forget about us except to collect the taxes from our higher wage jobs working in the steel mills or in Chicago). Of course, we are also the same state that wants a vote on teaching creation science in our science classes so I can’t imagine multinational biotech firms banging down our door.</p>
<p>Agree COMPLETELY. I’d RATHER the GC be figuring out how to get the kids whose parents don’t know squat to SOME school rather than on figuring out the nuanced differences between top schools for the privileged ones. It’s a better use of funds.</p>
<p>MizzBee-I think that would be a great idea to have a parent advisory council for college planning. It’s nice to get “real life” stories about the process/results, etc. I know for some of the presentations our GC office gives they have kids come in and talk but not parents. The only caution would be making sure you don’t get the “I’m better than you” parents on the board :).</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think jnm123 is basically on the same side of the equation as we are. I happen to know him very well, off CC. His kids were basically in the same performance and ECs category as mine were at the same high school, only in different years. He likely spent more hours researching things than I did, to be fair, but all of our kids ended up at schools that were excellent fits for them, even though they were all very different kinds of schools. I can’t say the college counselor had much to do with that. </p>
<p>I have heard, though, which is unfortunate, that he has expressed some disappointment (perhaps just implicitly) in some students who were accepted to higher ranked schools, but chose lower-ranked schools because those schools actively recruited them and were in the end, better fits for the student (size, major possibilities, etc.). I suspect that he saw those turned-down admissions as a personal opportunity to brag where our high school was sending its grads. There are just too many kids in our school for him to know each one individually and know which school would be the best fit. </p>
<p>I had an awesome phone call with a friend yesterday, whose son is graduating this May. I started a thread about him last summer, looking for engineering schools within a couple of hours of our area, for a kid that had certain stats. Two of the three schools he ended up applying to were schools the mom had never heard of or didn’t know they had decent engineering schools, Valparaiso and Bradley. We had not spoken to each other in a while, I had no idea which schools he ended up applying to, etc. She told me yesterday that he had been accepted to both Valpo and Bradley and it was basically going to come down to who offered the best financial aid package. But she thanked me profusely for steering them in the direction of both of those schools and said if it hadn’t been for me, he might not have two such awesome choices. Heck, neither of my kids EVER entertained the idea of either engineering or either of those schools, but I knew enough to know they would be good fits for him. Why the college guidance counselor wasn’t there for him, I don’t know. Such a shame.</p>
<p>OK, teriwtt, I guess you’re right in that our college counselor should be concentrating on the–I’m going to say–60% of those attending the parent info sessions, the ‘tunnel-visioners’, as you say. However, remember that there is also a whole subset of parents at our high school who don’t give a hoot about college for their kids, and wouldn’t show up at these sessions if there was free candy. And the other 40% of parents attending likely had started their own investigation, and were ahead of the game. </p>
<p>That being said, I don’t think that the college counselor was doing the 60% a service either, save for maybe explaining what a FAFSA is. He should’ve been saying there is life out-of-state, but beware of the TOTAL costs involved and means of financial aid to make it happen. I think far too little time is spent at these sessions on the tertiary costs beyond tuition. And not enough time is spent explaining the ‘fit’, as you say.</p>
<p>Well, he would defend himself by saying he’s explaining ‘fit’, but his definition of ‘fit’. Which I don’t necessarily agree with. But to be fair, one or two people trying to determine fit to the 70% or so of students who will go to college is an impossible task. I like the idea upthread that someone mentioned about having a volunteer parent group willing to form a committee to help mentor these kids through the process. Of course, you know that you and I would likely be the first ones he’d call on to head up that committee! But I do think this is a note-worthy proposition and one that could really make a difference in lives of college-bound students and boost the school’s overall reputation. </p>
<p>However, FAFSA never got us anything, so when it comes to financial aid, I’m of no help whatsoever, unless it’s merit-based scholarship. I wonder how open he’d be to parent volunteers, or would he want to micro-manage their time. I do think one of the gifts I have is to really listen to a student and hear what’s important to them, something I think he’s been accused of not being able to do.</p>
<p>My oldest is only a freshman, so I haven’t been down this road yet, but am starting to do a little research. She goes to the same large suburban public school that I went to several decades ago.</p>
<p>My expectation is that we will get no help from the gc beyond doing the minimum paperwork that must be done. And I’m fine with that. The school has over 2,200 students and 4.5 gcs. </p>
<p>I’m quite familiar with what goes on the guidance office on a daily basis. They have far more kids than is reasonable, and 90% of their time is spent dealing with at risk kids, kids with disabilities of various sorts, kids from abusive and neglectful homes and kids with discipline issues. And this is a fairly affluent, well ranked district. Given the current emphasis on hs graduation rates, what choice do they have?</p>
<p>Her gc is lovely, but is madly overworked. I’m confident she’ll have info on the state schools. I’ll do as much research as I need to do, and there are private consultation services in the area. If we need to pay for one, it will hurt, but we’ll do it.</p>
<p>Well, Esme, you’ve come to the right place. And time is definitely on your side.</p>
<p>While I do sympathize with the plight of guidance counselors & career counselors, especially at large high schools–ours & teriwtt’s is right about yours size-wise–the LEAST they can do, as teriwtt said, is to have an active website available with updates, current links, etc., so that parents & students can investigate on their own time, because there is a LOT of stuff to absorb.</p>
<p>Or they can just come here & be done with it… :)</p>
<p>Our public HS does a pretty good job, I think. 600-800 kids total, 3 GCs. We have the same GC for 4 years (sorted by letter of last name - so in multi-kid families, longer than 4 years).</p>
<p>The guidance office and school do a LOT of parent info nights on everything from course selection to college (choosing, paying for, testing, etc), and the college-specific stuff begins sophomore year. There is a web site with weblinks, rec/transcript request forms to download, powerpoint presentations given at the parent nights, class descriptions and so on.</p>
<p>Students meet with their GCs about their schedules, ours always promptly answers emails. She wasn’t a lot of help with college selection but honestly we didn’t ask her for it. We have Naviance, which has a wealth of info (and allows the GC to do a lot of stuff electronically).</p>
<p>She gets transcripts and letters out in the promised timeframe (2 weeks), and there is no limit on the # of schools nor is there any charge. She does this for younger kids too, for example D15’s summer pre-college program app.</p>
<p>My own private HS had a college counselor and he was much more involved in my school selection, but my HS was tiny, about 150 kids total in the HS.</p>
<p>We had an excellent gal who devoted herself to creating a research room at the high school - she was not a counselor but a classified employee, so she didn’t have to deal with the issues that suck up counselor time. It was AWESOME - unfortunately, she was cut at the beginning of the senior year.</p>
<p>We used College Karma, who is part of this website, for some college counseling at the last minute. It was all by email, and was pretty reasonable - I want to say $200 for first two hours-ish. DD had received 3 deferrals, so we were worried that we had shot too high, or she needed to improve her “package.” She suggested a few new safety schools, reviewed and tweaked her essay, and was generally encouraging. One of her safeties was DD’s second choice, but she ended up getting in to her first choice, so all is well. I would recommend this as an alternative…</p>