Yes, that may continue to be an unfortunate consequence of what has happened the last few years.
Hopefully fewer will be starstruck by prestige, as the odds of admission/likelihood of rejection to these schools sinks in.
I also hope more students spend most of their time identifying targets, and highly likely or rack and stack schools they would be happy to attend. The students who have this mindset tend to experience the admissions process in a less stressed way (not saying it’s not stressful) and are relatively more happy with their outcomes.
Conversely, one could argue that public school counselors could do the same thing as the boarding school counselors. However, we all know that doesn’t happen because of the sheer numbers…upwards of 800 students to 1 high school counselor sometimes. And when you have numbers like that, the only thing that the HS counselor has time to handle is the students with major issues.
My kids attend a public charter school. I think that their HS counselors are probably equivalent to what a boarding school counselor does, since the senior counselor told all of us parents in a “Rising 10th graders” presentation last year that she used to work at an elite boarding school and did exactly all the same stuff for students that she does at this school…the only difference is that we don’t pay heaps of tuition for it.
However…
there’s, on average, 40-75 students in every senior class. The senior counselor teaches a M-F 1-hr class which all seniors attend and the sole purpose of the class is to help them get admitted to college. They spend time in that class working on their college app essays, refining where to apply, etc., etc. The counselor also told us that when she writes up her guidance counselor recommendation, she also includes a detailed school profile of the school which provides an overview of the curriculum, level of difficulty/rigor in the material taught, etc., etc.
Compare that to my HS counselor interactions way back in the Dark Ages, when the HS counselor said, “Are you applying to college? Good…good luck.” That was it. No advice, no help, no nothing.
The hardest thing to do is to come up with a list of targets and safeties. And even though our DD22 got all her targets and safeties, it still “feels” bad because does that mean the targets were “too easy” or “just right”? We’ll never know.
Those are great results, and not sure it matters whether the target were too easy or just right. If she likes the schools (and presumably she does because she put them on the list) that’s what important. I hope she has a great experience whichever school she chooses.
When dealing with a familiar feeder high school and counselors they know, The AOs don’t have to dig deep to analyze the letters of recommendation and history of students coming from the high school to try to determine if this unknown counselor is exaggerating rigor or this teacher is a particularly poor letter writer.
Instead, they can rely to a high degree on the school counselors to appropriately rank and categorize the applicants from the feeder school, to discourage poor matches or students unlikely to attend from even applying, and to provide a thorough, accurate, and personalized picture of each applicant.
There is more guesswork analyzing the applications from unknown schools.
I’m just responding to someone who posted that their private school GC picked up the phone and got a student of the WL at a top 10 school. That seems like quite an accomplishment these days.
Regarding counselors getting students off waitlists, etc., there is an anecdote in Selingo’s book about a kid who was waitlisted at Tulane because of a perceived lack of demonstrated interest (despite visits, etc.). Tulane was concerned that the kid had not attended when the Tulane rep visited the school. The school counselor called up the AO and forwarded attendance records to show the student was absent that day.
Tulane admitted the student.
Compare that to my kid’s public school, where I doubt the counselor knows where anyone got waitlisted or where they even applied. The counselor just automatically uploads a midyear report to every school on a student’s Coalition or Common App and calls it good.
My college counselor actually made things worse. Zero help on anything college related but when I wanted to sign up for some AP tests (our school didn’t offer any AP classes but you had to go through the counselor to try and sign up for the test), he talked me out of it. He said they were a waste of time and would be of no use when I got to college. (Comparing notes later, he did this with anyone who asked.) I remember arriving at UCLA Freshman Orientation some time later and them giving a speech about how the average Freshman was already coming in with 32.5 units (basically a full year done) due to AP’s. I had zero, I knew I had been severely misled…
Our Dark Age experience is not all that different from my kids current one. I asked the HS guidance counselor if they used Naviance or similar, and he clearly had no idea what I was talking about. They didnt even keep their own database of college acceptances. He was like, “Yeah, I think we had a kid get into X university, once…Can’t hurt to try!” Well, ok then!
Do guidance counselors also help with grad school? After grad school? In real life? A person can only be propped up for so long, and the real cream will always rise to the top. That begins to happen in grad school and accelerates after.
I am not sure applicants are being “propped up” as much as networking is calling attention to them, just as professors make calls for grad schools and people rely on friends and family for jobs
The professors aren’t calling because the parents are paying or they are whomever they may be, they are calling because of performance. Some kids on both sides of the privilege fence will succeed and many on both sides will fail. And this accelerates later, if one works in a competitive field. You’ll see.
The same is often true of high school counselors as well-they believe strongly in the merit of their applicants.
I have worked in competitive fields for 30 years. Calls happen all the time
You are right. There is a lot of informal word of mouth recommendation process that happens. And the recommender is very careful because they have their reputation on the line.
Well, ok then!