HS Guidance Counselor's Application Deadlines to Submit applications

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I was wondering what the application deadlines are at different high schools or if other also counselors have early deadlines.</p>

<p>DS is in HS with 1 counselor 200 seniors located in NYC.</p>

<p>10/24 is deadline to request teacher recommendation.</p>

<p>11/14 deadline for CUNY applications. The CUNY deadline is 2/1</p>

<p>11/21 is deadline to submit SUNY apps. The SUNY deadline is 2/1</p>

<p>12/5 for private colleges.</p>

<p>ED and EA to be submitted 2 weeks before deadline.</p>

<p>Counselor seems to have a handle on all the processing. </p>

2

<p>To my knowledge, my sons’ GC didn’t give them deadlines at all. Our GC has approx. 200 students but only 50 seniors. The GCs follow the students all 4 years. In the fall of Senior year we met (son & parents) with their GC about the process and where they were applying. My first son was emailing his GC on Dec 30th or 31st (Jan 1st deadline) for the GC to electronically send the final teacher recommendations/ report. My sons asked for teacher recommendations at the end of their junior year and followed up in September of senior year.</p>

3

<p>Early deadlines are good. Gives teachers times to right recs, kids are well done before holidays and finals. Also gives cushion for those that will inevitably be late. Gives counselor time to nag everyone and triple check everything is in on time. Nice Christmas for all that way.</p>

<p>But what doesn’t make sense to me is, we have deadlines for all the recs and info they need (already needed to be turned in). But kids have to follow the application deadlines themselves----since they submit their own applications (except for the recs/school docs), the early deadlines your counselor is giving are just hopes and dreams aren’t they?</p>

4

<p>Our HS strongly encourages kids to be done by mid-November but they are also very good about doing whatever needs doing later, if a kid adds a school last minute, or procrastinates. They require recs be requested at least 3 weeks before due, 10 days for transcripts.</p>

5

<p>I can see it for the teacher recs, but the rest seem ridiculous. Now our kids needed to tell the GC’s office WHERE they were applying with a fair amount of lead time. They would take an adjustment to that list, but I think they wanted to get on sending transcripts, etc. But also know that colleges don’t usually penalize students if the GC is a couple weeks late with their portion of the app. So I think it is mostly ridiculous, not even sure what the GC gets out of it.</p>

6

<p>At the college night, GC framed the deadlines to be a win win for everyone. Students finished their applications before christmas break and he had time to submit transcripts, etc before the college deadline. He talked about how he was a glad that students are notified when he uploads transcripts, etc onto the common app.
He said he loved using common app, because he remembers how it used be when students applying to colleges would always ask him if he had mailed their transcripts to the school. Now, according to GC, the student can check online and see for themselves that everything was uploaded. He said this makes everyone, including himself, more relaxed. </p>

7

<p>It’s a nice thought to be done with it all before xmas break but in our experience, my daughter was incredibly busy with midterm exams and projects and also a college final exam and she would not have been able to put the same effort into the essays if she had to get them out during that crunch.</p>

8

<p>Are these deadlines only for colleges where services from the high school counselor or teachers are required (e.g. recommendations)? Don’t see how they would matter for colleges where no such services are required.</p>

9

<p>I am surprised deadline for requesting teacher rec is so late. My kids requested for LORs in Sep, and for very popular teachers in before end of junior year. Some teacher limited number of LORs they would write, so it was good to get on their list.</p>

10

<p>My daughter’s high school gave out a table with the GC dates for all the typical application dates. Basically it was 3 weeks before. This was the date you needed to have already applied via the common app and then the GC and teachers had 3 weeks to use Naviance to send the rest of the information to the school. This seemed excessive considering all they had to do was hit a button in Naviance. My daughter’s GC (who was a maternity leave sub not the regular one) was very flexible with these dates (did not hold the students to it). Not sure how many seniors each GC has but it was a very big school (over 500 seniors) so I would guess the number was fairly high.</p>

11

<p>D just got her transcript and GC LOR uploaded to Naviance yesterday. She submitted the request about two weeks ago. She asked her English teacher for a LOR the second day of school and she’s planning to, uh, ask how it’s going on October 1st if it’s not upload to Naviance by then. </p>

<p>I’m going to take the GC/school side on this. Depending on the size of the class, verifying and uploading dozens of transcripts take time. You don’t want to find Susie’s transcript was tied to John’s Naviance. It takes time to write LORs if you want the GC to write something remotely meaningful. (cut-and-paste is not meaningful). D’s GC called her in for a short interview while writing up a draft of her LOR, looking at her questionnaire responses on Naviance. It takes time. D’s GC has 85 seniors almost all college-bound. It’s probably like one’s taxes - everyone does them at the last minute. The school is just making sure that ‘the last minute’ is feasible for each GC to complete his or her task. </p>

12

<p>They also need to take into account of possible technical glitch, which often happens when there are a lot of users. D2’s GC told us that she had a hard time sending transcripts to certain schools via Naviance one year.</p>

13

<p>My kids need to request their teacher rec’s before they go off for summer vacation after their junior year - that way the teachers have the whole summer to write them. Other than that, we don’t have any hard and fast deadlines, but it is highly recommended to have your Penn State app in before October 1.</p>

14

<p>My Ds GC wants everything in before Thanksgiving break.
For those doing EA on Nov 1, she wants everything in by Oct 1.
She has 75 seniors.</p>

15

<p>Our GCs request that kids have everything done and submitted by October 31, but that has been the request for decades because of UofM. Of course there are kids that have other colleges that don’t require such an early deadline so it generally stretches to December for the kids. The reality is that for many, December is the deadline so pushing them ahead to get things done by end of October is not unrealistic. Also senior year is a busy, busy time so kids that procrastinate are caught in the business of all the senior year activities. I also side with the schools that push the kids to pull it together early and think those are the GCs that “have it together.” They will always be the procrastinators and stragglers but if they can get a big chunk of the kids pointed in the right direction in the fall it’s to everyone’s benefit.</p>

16

<p>The SUNY/CUNY seem kind of mean. It’s been a while, but teachers told people their personal deadlines. My younger son spoke to both his teachers in the spring of junior year. The history teacher had a list of what he wanted to know about you before he wrote the letter. (He wanted a copy of your best paper, your AP grade, a paragraph about what your favorite text in the course had been and why, what you were thinking about majoring in and I think at least a draft of your main Common App essay.) Then he said come back to me in September senior year. I think he scared a lot of kids away! Our GC wanted a few weeks notice, but I’m pretty sure they accommodated the procrastinators or last minute additions to the list. Our GC had a similar load, which means they had about 50 seniors each year.</p>

17

<p>Perhaps I misunderstood the question. It’s entirely reasonable for the counselor and teachers to set a deadline weeks or even months before the actual application deadline, whatever they feel is necessary to get everything done in time. These people have to deal with many applications and I’m sure they don’t want to be responsible for messing up a kid’s application or to spend their xmas vacation frantically filing papers every year. But I don’t see that it’s their business when the student’s portion of the application is submitted. </p>

18

<p>My son’s private high school requirements. He graduated in '11 but it is still the same. Students go to the GC office where their online apps are checked thoroughly and they hit the send button from the GC office. </p>

<p>From their handbook:</p>

<p>All completed college and scholarship applications will be submitted to the
Guidance office.
.

  1. We will check to make sure that the application contains all the necessary parts
    (transcript, essay, recommendations, application fee, activity sheet, etc.) The
    student’s letters of recommendation from the teachers are kept on file in the
    Guidance Office.</p>

<p>2) Each senior will be asked to bring in money for a postage account.
We have found that fewer problems arise if all the application
pieces are mailed together as a package.</p>

<p>3) Please submit applications to the Guidance Office at least a week before their
deadlines.The Guidance Office deadline for completing ALL applications is
December 1
.</p>

19

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<p>Keep in mind that both sets of systems are rolling admissions, which is first come, first served. While if you have your application in by 2/1, CUNY/SUNY, will give you a placement, it may not be your first choice school or program because you are late. If you are looking to get into a highly competitive school or program, it is very easy for seats to fill up fast. IF you are applying for the McCauley honors program, there are a recommendation letters and essays.</p>

<p>There is more competition this year to get things done early because the State is giving free tuition to SUNY/CUNY for students who:</p>

<p>graduate in the top 10% of the class from every high school across the state
major in a STEM field
and commit to work in NYS for 5 years after graduation. </p>

<p>Students want to make sure that they get picked up for their desired program.</p>

<p>For example; there are only 325 seats in the Honors program at Stony Brook. We are talking about selecting 325 students across the state. If you are low income, looking to get admitted through EOP, we are talking about 160 seats across the state. Stony Brook will have enough candidates to select students for both EOP and the Honors program from by the end of September (and our students are advised to have their application in to Stony Brook/ BIng by the end of september). </p>

<p>The admissions rep from SUNY advises counselors to make sure that their students apply ASAP if they are looking at these 2 programs. Some schools (Bing) only want students to submit transcripts through the SOAR. We advise families to set up a SUNY account at freshman year, so that they can begin uploading their information into the SOAR at the end of every term vs. waiting until doing all of it at the end of junior year. Because we have to meet with every student twice a year to review transcripts (once in the fall to review spring grades and once in the spring, to review fall grades), we remind them that if everything is correct to put their grades into SOAR. Students at my school are advised to the complete the SOAR over the summer (we give every junior their transcript over the summer so that they can accomplish this). </p>

<p>Yes, there are students that do not submit their transcripts through SOAR, but these are uploaded to SUNY, once the GC sees that there is an live application in the application manager. We have a large number of students who have these applications already done by first day of school. The only thing that has to be done is upload class ranking and letters, which are done before the end of the first week of school.</p>

<p>When it comes to recommendation letters, our process is that each student fills out a brag sheet and a brag sheet is sent to parents to complete. Once these are done, a one on on meeting is scheduled with the student, to ask more probing questions and to find out what the family is comfortable disclosing (if there are non custodial waiver letters that need to be written, we call the parent in or may have a phone conference for families with extenuating circumstances). </p>