<p>Pizzagirl~Like you, our DD attended a large public hs-too many students per gc-I think by the time our DD was a senior it was a ratio of like 600:1 AND her GC of 3 years was transferred out and she had a brand new GC! Ideas: Have your kids(twins, right?) write up a resume of activities/jobs/summer school classes since freshman year, copy every award they have received-give copy to GC. Most likely they will have a form for you & your kids to fill out-make sure they are turned in ASAP—it will make a positive impression on the GC.
Let the GC know which teachers have offered to write recs-as the recs may be mailed directly by the teacher to the college-this way the GC knows which teachers know your children best in case they have questions about your child. I also provided an addressed & stamped manilla envelope for the GC to each school for their recs & transcript inclusion-GC thanked me for that as it helped her get it out easier. She was not really familiar with colleges outside the states colleges and needed some support.</p>
<p>Your suggestions are great, APOL, and I do appreciate everyone’s thoughts. You don’t think it would come across as, well, “uppity” (for lack of a better word) for my kids to hand a GC a resume with activities / jobs / summer school classes, etc.? </p>
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<p>And this is the thing that gets me, the thing that makes me scornful that this isn’t just an incredibly stupid busy-work piece to befriend someone who doesn’t even know anything about where they are potentially heading.</p>
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<p>Right, but I don’t see how a 30 minute meet-and-greet really rises to the level of “getting to know” someone. It just all seems so fake to me. Maybe it’s my Myers-Briggs INTJ talking here, but it just seems so unnecessary. Teachers will authentically know their students. Mentors or bosses will authentically know their students. If a better GC rec can be “bought” (for lack of a better term) by just some occasional schmoozing and hi-in-the-hallways, then how is it genuine? And doesn’t that seem to reward the more outgoing pleased-to-meet-you kinds of kids unfairly?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl~DD turned in the resume-by explaining it was a copy of her worksheet she used when writing up her applications, and thought it might prove helpful to GC as well.</p>
<p>Our guidance counselors ask for a resume from the student as well as names of teachers whom they can talk to regarding the student. They are incredibly overworked and do a great job of writing the best recommendations they can.</p>
<p>Right, and I can totally see how it would be helpful to a GC who isn’t going to otherwise know that a given kid did X, Y, and Z. (For example, my D has held a summer job, volunteers at our local hospital, and volunteers at the planetarium in our city. No one at school would otherwise know that.) But again – it begs the question to me – if Kid hands GC a piece of paper that says that she has done X, Y, and Z, and the GC dutifully repeats those things in a recommendation, I just don’t see the value or why colleges participate in this charade.</p>
<p>Frankly it also seems that that’s where things become unverifiable. Because what prevents me (other than ethics, of course) from telling the GC that kid held the job for 30 hours a week instead of 10? Or ran the hospital volunteer program instead of just volunteered? Or created some new program at the planetarium? See where I’m heading? Because really, wouldn’t a statement from the head of the volunteer program at the planetarium be more genuine and more authentic about kid’s character, work ethic, genuine interest in science, etc. than the GC copying something off a resume? So why not require student to get someone outside of a teacher (whether it’s a mentor, boss, coworker, etc.) instead of forcing this faux relationship with a GC? </p>
<p>I don’t know. I just need some convincing that there’s a reason colleges make kids jump through these hoops by forcing them to involve someone who is tangentially involved in the kid’s life.</p>
<p>Our large suburban public HS has about 1750 kids in three grades, with 5 counselors. Colleges know that in this situation the counselors may know very little personally about the good students. They send a profile of the high school (student stats, test score ranges, AP classes available, etc) along with the student’s transcript and counselor letter. </p>
<p>Very few students here go out of state to college. My S will be applying to a number of schools that have received MAYBE a handful of apps from our school ever, so the admissions counselors at those colleges will not be familiar with our HS. We will hope that the GC’s recommendation and the profile will give enough info that the AdComms can get an idea of our school environment.</p>
<p>They know that the bulk of kids coming from public schools will have these bogus and superficial recommendations (which is not to say that the GC’s aren’t doing their best with what they’ve been handed, but it’s going to be based off a resume and some superficial meet-and-greet impressions). So they KNOW they can’t take it seriously, but they persist. What a big fat waste. What a stupid game.</p>
<p>From the admissions officer standpoint, though, it would be extremely difficult to go through applications in which every student had a letter from every EC organization with which they had been involved.</p>
<p>I see that - and I wasn’t advocating that.
I’m just saying, if my kid is involved in X, Y and Z activities outside the school (as in the example I gave), the GC parrotting back “Pizzakid is clearly a hardworking young lady because look, she does X, Y and Z, I know these things because I am dutifully copying them from the resume, and I am sure she does a good job at those things and would be an asset to your school” simply isn’t value-added. The value-added would come if Pizzakid put down that she does X, Y and Z and then her supervisor at Z writes a recommendation that is authentic, meaningful, and based on real experience with HER, not a few lines on a resume. Where is the value added for my kid to say she works at the planetarium leading tours and for the GC to say, “Why, look, this young lady works at the planetarium leading tours”?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl:</p>
<p>We were so green about what colleges looked for (having been internationals, both of us) we had no idea what extra-curricular activities meant, the distinction between school-based and non-schooled based ones, what having ECs added to an applicant’s profile. But when S1 was a sophomore, the GC recommended that he take up some community service and she suggested some possibilities. He chose one that turned out to be a wonderful experience for him, and he eventually wrote his winning essay about it.
She may have asked S what he did in the summer, or may not.
Despite the fact that S2 was constantly hanging out at his GC’s office during the first 2-3 weeks of school and the last 2-3 weeks of the previous year in order to figure out the most appropriate schedule, the GC would not know what S did on weekends or summer, just the ECs that were school-based. In both cases, putting together a resume was very helpful to the GC, I believe, but since I did not get to read their letters, I would not know.</p>
<p>“Right, but I don’t see how a 30 minute meet-and-greet really rises to the level of “getting to know” someone. It just all seems so fake to me. Maybe it’s my Myers-Briggs INTJ talking here, but it just seems so unnecessary. Teachers will authentically know their students. Mentors or bosses will authentically know their students. If a better GC rec can be “bought” (for lack of a better term) by just some occasional schmoozing and hi-in-the-hallways, then how is it genuine?”</p>
<p>One can be a teacher or boss and not know one’s student or employee. Just because one teaches or supervises someone doesn’t mean one knows them well. Many high school teachers have 100 or more students. They don’t know the students that well, and may not even remember what grades students got or what the students’ papers were about or how good the papers were.</p>
<p>That’s why if someone is asking a teacher for a recc, it’s a good idea to also give the teacher copies of excellent tests and papers one has written, and it’s a good idea to talk to the teacher about one’s goals and what one wants out of college.</p>
<p>Pizza, I hear you on the phony factor, but to the Adcom’s the GC is the only quality control in the entire process. Even the most harried GC is not going to outwardly lie about a kid or situation if he/she has material facts. So a kid who has been suspended for cheating, a kid who was sent for counseling for bullying other kids, a kid who is on every administrators list of “we will drink champagne the day he graduates” is only going to get flagged as a behavioral issue by the GC.</p>
<p>In some schools the teachers don’t get pulled in to meetings with social workers and the districts shrink. So they can still write their “Johnny is a charming young man and his essay on War and Peace was the most insightful piece of writing I’ve seen in ten years of teaching AP English”. They just may not know that Johnny has an anger management issue and was asked to fulfill his gym requirement by working out privately since he can’t be in the locker room when younger kids are around.</p>
<p>Or whatnot.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is a guidance counselor. No, she does not know the vast majority of the kids who she has to help get into college (most of them don’t need her help- they’re going to an open admissions type college or a CC.) She has passing familiarity with the ones who need her help with recommendations and tries her best to get a feel for the kid by talking to teachers (not just the two who write the other recommendations.) But if there is a kid who is on her radar due to behavioral or anti-social issues she knows about it, even if the teachers are sort of clueless.</p>
<p>So how else do you warn the Adcom’s that you’ve got a potential sociopath?</p>
<p>I graduated in a class close to several thousand, and while we were split up among several guidance counselors, mine had everyone with a last name beginning A-L for the entire 2000 some people in that school. I knew my guidance counselor very well. Your students need to make the effort to get in contact with her, not the other way around. I made an appointment to see my counselor or sent her an email to discuss scheduling, potential colleges, potential college majors, extra curriculars, stuff going on at home, disputes with teachers-- anything that I needed a school knowledgeable adult for. Now that I am a junior in college I still email her periodically, they like to hear how you’re doing in college and what troubles you’ve run into because your stories can help current students-- for example I was devestated that I had to go to community college but because I did I get to go to University of Michigan now, which is beyond even my wildest high school dreams. She was glad to hear that so she could use that story to console other students who were also disappointed come senior year. I’ve also emailed her to ask her how they set up job shadowing for high school students to see if I could get in on that now. My experience with my GC was that she was very helpful and wanted very much to know me, but I had to seek her out to give her the opportunity to do that. Because you’re right, there are too many kids for her to go out and get to know all of them if they aren’t putting in an effort to be known.</p>
<p>My GC also knew a fair amount about me from talking to my teachers. She had access to my entire transcript, where my teachers did not necessarily, to know my strengths and weaknesses-- not to mention interests, more fully. And it was not uncommon for her to touch base with teachers to ask how various students are doing. At least in my situation, my GC had a much better
“big picture” than any one teacher did.</p>
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<p>Understood, but still, there’s a difference between having someone in a classroom 5 hours a week for 9 months straight, and the meet-and-greets. I don’t have any objection to the meet-and-greets; I don’t have any objection to the idea that the GC might have some interesting info to offer (“here’s a college you didn’t think of”, “here’s a community service opp you may not be aware of”). What I’m disputing is the ability of the GC to write much more than a generic “Johnny is a fine kid, hard worker, and to my knowledge he hasn’t blown up the school.” I see how the GC can “screen out” the sociopaths, but I’m not sure how they add value.</p>
<p>And for the “naive” ones, who are mostly focused on getting kids into state schools that are a function of having a certain GPA or test score, how are they going to know the level of sophistication that it might take to get into a better school? They might indeed think “Johnny is a hard worker and his teachers appear to like him” is high praise, not getting that the kid from the elite prep is getting a thoughtful analysis of him as a person.</p>
<p>In most cases, the GC won’t know a great deal about the student. But the GC is more likely to know that the student transferred into the school halfway, that the parents have limited English and work double shifts, that there have been family problems, medical issues, etc… than the teacher who is in front of the class with 30-35 kids for 50 minutes then leaves (or the students leave) for another class.
I don’t know that the GC’s rec added value to S1’s application though her advice throughout the years were crucial to his success; but S1 had no problem that ever needed her intervention (except in the case of the teacher who needed to be transferred). What she may have done is to compare S1’s record with that of other students: class rank, rigor of courses, and the little she knew of his personality (shy, thoughftul, caring) and the types of schools that were most suited to him (LACs). So, and I’m guessing here, she may have done a nice job suggesting that he was a great fit at the LACs to which he did apply. And he was quite successful, despite a great though by no means stellar record. He only got one rejection and this was from a super-reach that he was ambivalent about anyway.</p>
<p>Ironically I think both my son’s have gotten better college counseling that I did at a well regarded prep school with a graduating class of 80. I remember going in and the GC said how about Smith or Vassar? And I said I don’t think so four years of girls was enough and I’d like to be in a city. I’m sure she wrote a nice letter though!</p>
<p>“And for the “naive” ones, who are mostly focused on getting kids into state schools that are a function of having a certain GPA or test score, how are they going to know the level of sophistication that it might take to get into a better school? They might indeed think “Johnny is a hard worker and his teachers appear to like him” is high praise, not getting that the kid from the elite prep is getting a thoughtful analysis of him as a person.”</p>
<p>Such GCs are likely to be at schools that don’t have many students apply to top colleges. The top colleges realize that because the top colleges make a point of finding out about high schools, and the top colleges also will make follow-up calls to high schools and look more in depth to other aspects of the app.</p>
<p>When I took my regional adcom for Harvard around to visit local high schools, she made a point of talking to GCs, and when a GC told her that she basically just checked off the squares on one student’s app for Harvard because the GC thought the recc wasn’t important, the adcom told me that the adcom planned to follow-up and talk further to the GC, including telling the GC what kind of info to include in a recc to a top college.</p>