My husband and I both went to Cornell and our son refused to apply ED, he didn’t want to commit yet, but he did apply RD. He is very happy to have both Michigan and UVA as choices, we really can’t complain!
Our son’s GC definitely wins on both accounts, and not for our lack of trying. We’ve been very impressed so far.
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D was told she could not EA and ED because they were the same thing you can only pick one school. After we insisted she was wrong, and found documentation to back ourselves up, she realized that EA and ED are in fact different, and you can EA to multiple schools. Apparently we were somehow the first family to do so from our school (which graduates 350-400 kids a year).
D was told that there was no way to send quarter grades, only semester and that we were misreading the email (which clearly said her ED and one of her EA schools wanted “quarter” grades). I found out from a homeschooling mom how to submit them on the GC portal and we walked her through it.
There are more examples. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I know more than she does. This is at the LPS, which my oldest 3 attended. Words cannot express how much I hope that I am done worrying about their system in 2 weeks.
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Haha. When I was at USC undergraduate my car was broken into seven times. I was too poor to afford on campus housing so I lived in a building off campus filled with extremely poor foreign PhD students. On the plus side I had a good student friend who was living in his car because the financial aid office refused to help him because no one who attended USC could be living in their car. Living environment makes a real difference in college
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WOW @dadof4kids - good thing you educated that GC! Our GC suggested a school to my kiddo without even knowing where it was located - be we knew where it was because Grandma lives in that town. So kiddo has been there regularly for 17 years. When kiddo told the GC that it is a town well known to our family and is not a place that would be personally desirable to spend 4 years (or even one), the GC said “Kiddo, you need to really do better research on the school environment”
I cannot even begin to list all of the errors and misinformation in our GC office without completely hijacking the thread. They are good for kids applying to most places in state, which are near open admission. Anything selective they are no help, just this year I know of a few kids that should have Ivy or slightly lower level acceptances but will probably go to the in-state U with open admission (not their first choice) because they got no advice and were on their own. If I hadn’t stumbled across CC several years ago my family would be in the same boat.
I know BS college counselors still aren’t perfect. But I am looking forward to D25 getting help from someone who knows more than me, not significantly less.
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GC may have confused these terms with SCEA (single choice).
Public school GCs are no doubt like other public school staff and resources - overworked, underpaid and under-appreciated. Parents with the background or knowledge to facilitate the college search process are well-advised to get involved.
But with kids at BS, I personally am much more cautious to take a substantial role in the search process or lock horns with the GC. And at out school, it’s effectively locking horns with all of the GCs, since they work together.
For one thing, my statistical experience in placing a kid in college is n=0. My follow-up on how that process worked is n=0. My colleagues who have done so is n=0. You get the point. While I am certainly observing the process, what I think I know is nowhere near trumping the wisdom and experience of a BS that must have a solid college counseling office to maintain its reputation and matriculation track record. And while the latter may be impressive, the office clearly states that they are not a placement office…they’re a counseling office.
Also, I’m not convinced that knowing more information makes a better GC. There is clearly a minimum requirement (like knowing ED vs EA), but knowing nuanced information is not helpful. I don’t want my kids having a GC that can spew information at them that is readily available on websites. I want a GC that enjoys getting to know my kids and our family, encourages my kids to take the lead (and accountability) and leverages relationships to gain information not available on websites.
Lastly, I do not subscribe to notion that we all (kids, GC, parents, etc) must work very hard to find just the right school or list of schools. There may be few schools or types of schools to avoid, but the idea that any or all of the participants (again, the kids, GC, parents, etc) know exactly what is best for a particular teenager is ridiculous. At that age, many of the most formative experiences are the ones that happen by accident or chance.
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GCs experiences obviously vary and their interests aren’t necessarily aligned with yours perfectly. Personally, I’d take all their inputs, but I wouldn’t rely on them completely.
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That is definitely what happened. But I’m serious when I say no one ever applies EA, only the occasional flyer at a SCEA school. Rarely ED, so our kids give up that bump.
That is my one concern with a BS GC. They will definitely know more than me about the overall process. But I probably know my kids better. So even though I had to learn all the technical stuff myself, I think I did a pretty good job of steering the first three towards places that fit their personalities and their goals.
That’s the way I am hoping this college process will work. It is a collaboration. I know my kid, and contribute that knowledge. The CC knows the interplay between the bs and the colleges, and where my kid fits in the array of kids coming from the school. The kid has to do the work to figure out what they want. It is an iterative process, but combined the result is solid.
Two comments- (1) the more unusual your child is, the harder it is for the CC to figure out where they are in The array. If they trend toward atypical college picks, don’t expect the CC to be a deep well of help.
(2) I am starting to wonder if I still know my kid so much better than the school. But for him being home so much bc of the pandemic, they would have spent more of his formative teen time with him than me.
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We definitely experienced this when ChoatieKid decided that service academies were his first choices. Choate was excellent ensuring that they did their part in a timely manner with transcripts and LORs but could be of no help on any of the other many (many) moving parts of the year-long application process. There is no “chancing” for SAs because congressional nominations are handled at the district level and are the gating factor (no nomination=no appointment), and Choate had no insight into how competitive CK’s home district was or who was in that pool the year he applied. Also, academics play only a part of the WCS (Whole Candidate Score) used to determine appointments. I often joke that we got only “CC Lite” from Choate for the SAs and probably should have gotten a bit of a refund. Right?
We knew our 14-year-old better than Choate but, hands down, Choate knew our 18-year-old as a student way better than we did. How not? He spent the bulk of his personal time at the school and 100% of his academic time under their supervision. We’d be in denial if we thought we had better insight than either the school or our very driven and focused son on his college choices. We did not own a Fiske guide or spend any time at all on college lists or tours other than raising him such that his first intelligible words were “Go Boo!” (true). We spent all of his app season praying he didn’t get either of his first choices but, in hindsight, that was very selfish. He knew what he wanted, he got it, and he is very happy and fulfilled in his current life. We’ve adjusted.
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I also have to add that in some cases the CG is great. We have had so far some great info from the CG and the guidance dept in general. Do I know my kid better than the CG? Yes, but the CG knows the pool of students, the broad array of who has been accepted at which colleges and also how to position kids for maximum success. The CG has even stepped to to suggest courses for Senior year that will maximize impact.
My kid said the other day that CG is worth the price of BS. We won’t know what the entire process looks like until it plays out. But I do think there are engaged and smart CG’s who can really add value. I’m hoping kid and CG do the heavy lifting and as a parent, I can just help weigh in later in the process.
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@Happytimes2001 , you know that I have said the same here-- our family felt that our CC was worth every penny of tuition, at least for senior year. So totally got him. Provided good direction to make his app stronger. And made us comfortable as parents doing little more than handing over the credit card and driving to visits. Her additions to his list were spot on. And when I found out that he – not the demonstrable type - hugged her when he told her about being accepted to his top choice, well, I knew she was truly amazing.
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I do believe some schools vary as to the commitment and responsibilities of college advisors. For example, some schools have college advisors that are dedicated ONLY to that job - they are not balancing other jobs on campus. I remember during Revisits to schools that some parents asked about the ratio of students to GC’s. There are many nuances in advising. One of the things I have heard from parents about advising disappointments is that they don’t feel the GC knows the student. Here is what I have done to help facilitate the process:
- Sent a detailed profile provided by the school to the GC
- Sent sports highlight videos and stats
- Other supplementary materials that the GC may not know about - like awards & honors - community service recognition for First Tee, is one example - carrying the bag for our wounded warriors is another.
- A list of my expectations of the GC as a parent, That’ s right! Call me a prep school “Karen”, but when I am paying this amount of moola for school, I want to be clear about expectations and to also manage expectations for my student. We discuss expectations from the 3 different points of view.
If your student is an athlete and is hoping to get recruited, that is a whole other story and worthy of it’s own thread IMO. Pull up a chair and I will pour. 
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It was our experience that our CC actually helped our unusual kid looking at unusual schools (or out of the New England ordinary, anyway) a lot. And he actually had had other kids before DS who had looked at similar schools-- so he suggested many that had the same attributes. Again (I’ve mentioned this way, way, way upstream of this thread), DS ended up applying to some of the schools the CC suggested and dismissing others for his own reasons (read California).
There are many factors into what make great CC’s stand out from average CC’s. But I do think the best CC’s are at the BS’s. And I COMPLETELY agree with the statement by @Altras - unless you have been through this process multiple times with multiple different
kids looking for a multitude of different things…you should be sitting in the back seat with your headphones on, waiting to be asked your opinion on where to stop (ok, maybe a bit extreme, but you get my point).
The thing I love most about BS parents, is for the most part, we have gotten off the helicopter and the snow plows and we let those that have the expertise do their jobs in helping our kids do theirs.
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I’m always in the trust but verify camp. I’d consider myself a " tough customer" Mainly because I expect excellence and expertise and wouldn’t stand for excuses. But I usually stand back. If I see the expertise and excellence is there… then the person will NEVER hear from me. Not even once.
I’ve had experiences with coaches that I barely spoke to, though my kids might have been involved in something for years. I never asked for extra time/special treatment or the like. But I was watching. And we did coach our kids to be collaborative, not to back down, to embrace excellence.
I think CG activity also falls into this category. I want my kids to work closely with the CG and find their way. But I am watching closely ( from a distance).
Maybe a lot of other BS parents feel the same.
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I couldn’t agree more @buuzn03! I’ve now had 3 kids go through the process at two schools. I am noticing much of the angst expressed on this thread is coming from people who have not yet been through college counseling at a boarding school. We are trying to tell you that it will be more than OK!
I’ve found that the schools completely run the process, and thank god for that. You as a parent won’t have to nag to get the next draft of the essay done, or worry about deadlines. I did find that we had to do some leg work to figure out what type of college would be best for each kid. For example, we knew my middle son would not want a big school, but it was only after visiting a school with 4,000 undergrads did he, and we, realize he wanted a much smaller school, definitely one under 2,000 students. I would not have expected the college counselor to know that off the bat.
Their knowledge and access is unparalleled. The schools have been doing this very successfully for a long time. Their interest is the same as yours – to get kids admitted to schools they are happy to attend and where they will flourish.
As I’ve written before, if you think about it, you can understand why they can’t really be tremendously helpful with athletic recruiting early on. There are so many sports! and you have to double that number to account for girls’ teams and boys’ teams. And double it again to account for D1, D2 and D3 teams. No college counselor can know the ins and outs of that many programs. And to be helpful with recruiting you really have to know each sport/program pretty well. Plus the timelines are very different for superstars and more average recruits. The D1 stars are discovered by sophomore year, and committed around this time junior year (at least for men’s soccer). But at the end, when you have an offer, you can be confident that the school will verify the level of support and also be confident that the college will not treat the BS student shabbily – it would have repercussions for the college with that school. My son’s college counselor could also get the inside scoop, for example, on Williams over the summer – the fact that Admissions told all coaches to suspend recruiting, and no coach was able to make any offers. That’s pretty useful inside information! And then when my son had a last minute offer after committing, the CC spent an hour on the phone with me helping me think through this decision. (Me, because my husband and I were the only ones considering pushing my son to decommit after another (better, in some eyes) offer came along. So in the end the counselor offered tremendous value to us.
One more story: my oldest was waitlisted at GW. No other kids that year were going to be going to GW, the CC knew. The counselor offered to have the Head of School call GW admissions and get our son off the waitlist. Doubtful that happens at most public schools. (We did not take the CC up on the offer).
You are getting tremendous value for money from the boarding school college office.
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I, for one, am definitely interested in hearing this. We aren’t even through BS admissions season yet so I’m not ready to wrap my head around college. I know that it’s going to come more quickly than I’m expecting.
At this point, I’m just waiting for M10 to see if the various coaches’ positive mumblings during the fall actually translate into offers from her chosen schools.
Whenever you’re ready, I’ll pull up my chair. I’m a heavy pourer.