How many of the students at these schools are applying ED?
Many schools are now using naviance or parchment or other software to manage college apps. I wonder if there is a setting that flags the student 's file if a student is applying ED somewhere, or makes sure not to send transcripts to 2 ED schools.
I agree there may be technology flags, which is of course different from suggesting GCs have the bandwidth to proactively monitor.
You can add at least some of the magnet programs, too. My kids went to a magnet, and their GC was not very involved (to put it charitably) in their college admissions process.
Here is the process for ED signatures on the Common App:
After all the rigamarole everyone involved knows you’ve signed up for an ED school.
Everyone involved “knows” you’ve signed up for an ED school does not mean everyone involved “keeps it in their head and monitors.”
Again, it’s like saying the bank teller “knows” that I withdrew $100 this morning when I walked up to her window. She knew it in the moment when she processed it, but she forgot it 2 minutes later because she’s on to the next business of the day.
How many students apply ED per college counselor at each school?? And how are the students required to advise/update the counselors of their applications, acceptances, etc? This might make a difference.
well someone was obviously paying attention to this at D’s HS, I agree that not every HS will keep track of this but obviously some ( non magnet, non private, non academic powerhouse) schools do.
Frankly, I’m amused by the term “college counselor”. Is that a certain kind of GC? Because, like @Pizzagirl says, we don’t have them high falutin’ special kinds of counselors at our high school. They’re usually more involved in keeping the peace than that college stuff, which is by far the students’ responsibility there.
@garland, yes, at most NAIS schools (and presumably at plenty of other privates as well), there is an entire office called “College Counseling.” The counselor may be a faculty member as well, but part of the appeal of independent schools is that they offer your student support and guidance through the college process from pretty early on. Theoretically this eliminates the need to hire a private counselor (although plenty of folks hire them too, I gather).
Actually I do know that. I was just being a little facetious, since for the most of the rest of us, neither special offices or private hires are part of the picture.
Oh, sorry. I missed the humor.
Yes, they’re a luxury in the grand scheme of things, but no more so for some of us than living in an excellent school district or the annual family vacation. Also, they offer no other “guidance” services in my experience and aren’t always the best-equipped to help students who are neither very wealthy nor poor. Nonetheless, I still appreciated the process as it was set up.
Not sure the semantics of a title for the person at school who is in charge of managing the college stuff (sending counselor Reccs, transcripts, etc) makes any difference. Yes there may me less hands on stuff with schools that use parchment, naviance, etc, but whether the contact person who handles the process is called a school counselor or college counselor is splitting hairs, and matters not.
People may not be aware, that separate from the “person at school who is in charge of college application related stuff”. (Whatever their title is) research show that one in 4 students also work with an independent college consultant. Times have changed! Many offer services pro bono or on a sliding scale. It’s not just for the “rich or high falutin’” folks. If there was humor, I guess I missed it too.
local HS had GC’s and a “career center” which was oddly named IMO b/c it was really for college admissions advising. the paperwork including the ED agreement still went through the GC’S.
BTW this is a regular Northern VA HS ( not one of the powerhouse ones, though). Mix of kids from SES levels.
At my kids’ school, kids were assigned to guidance counselors alphabetically, which meant that the same counselor was working with kids considering ED applications and kids who had serious problems with the law. I guess this was even-handed, but I always thought some specialization would have been better.
At our kids’ school, the GC knew about every single ED application. She wrote all the recs, so she needed to know who was applying ED so that those would be done first. And the English and math teachers also knew, since they were doing the majority of the other recs. Kids applying ED who wanted their materials in on time had to sign an agreement with the high school stating that they would honor their part of the ED bargain if they got in. No transcripts were sent until they did this.
All of these requirements cause kids and their parents to take ED very seriously. My oldest didn’t apply ED anywhere because she didn’t feel she could commit.
With a load of 200 or so kids each, and about 30% applying ED or EA that means there are 60-70 kids to keep track of. (Don’t know what proportion were just ED.) My kids applied EA, so it wasn’t an issue, but from what I could tell they were pretty good about following up with kids and figuring out where they were accepted and where they were going. At least for the high-performing kids this was as much about bragging rights as anything I suspect!
It wasn’t supposed to be haha, just the basic fact that, like Hunt says, for most of us, the same counselors are handling get them in college, and keep them out of jail. And I can guarantee that one in four students in our school system are not using independent counselors, not even close. I just do think that those who live in “excellent school systems” type of towns, don’t really get that most families, pretty much by definition, don’t.
We tend to think of all this for one hs only- the one our kids attend. We seem to forget there are others, all around us. What I see isn’t, “Johnny applied ED last year and backed out. Let’s redline this high school.” That would be pretty unsophisticated.
It’s occasionally more like, “None of the admits in the last x years matriculated and none of the candidates this year are so exciting. But just look at how great those kids are, this year, from that other hs down the road, that we didn’t pay much attention to in the past.” So maybe they take one (or two) from the other. And then someone builds this up into “repercussions” based on Johnny.
Nothing say they owe allegiance to your hs, when they don’t see what they want or need. There may be a pattern of accepting one or more kids, but meanwhile, there’s life down the road, too.
Is it a wonder that adcoms like to admit students from certain high schools? When there are limited seats at those top tier schools and they could fill it 100 times with well qualified students, why should they kill themselves in trying to work with GCs who are just rubber stamping the agreement? I don’t think anyone should get a pass by saying, “I didn’t know what I was signing, or I was too busy to do my job.”