<p>HarvestMoon1, we know about this stuff. Many parents do not. And many counselors don’t know how do handle it. I don’t know what the counselor actually said in his report about my daughter, nor how it did or didn’t affect her acceptances.</p>
<p>I am a home schooled student that only applied to lower level colleges that didn’t require LORs. That being said, I did my college search mostly on my own (at the urging of my parents basically to “do it.”) I had my own set of criteria and I found two that fit that. And I looked at A Lot of options, including the Ivies. The one thing I did need a rec for was my NMF application. Luckily I am a dual credit student at the community college, and I was able to use my Calc teacher as my recommendation. Do most students have a GC write those recs? Just curious…</p>
<p>I didn’t read the entire thread. I do agree that many public school GC’s are assigned way too many students and can’t be too effective when it comes to college admissions, due to not only the numbers they are assigned, but that they also are responsible (usually) for more than college admissions counseling. </p>
<p>My kids attended a public school. Each guidance counselor likely had about 200 high school students assigned to them (plus middle school students). We did not use our GC in terms of guidance with college selection or admissions. However, he was a wonderful GC who knew my kids well and had been their counselor since 7th grade. And where he came in very handy in terms of the college process was in writing the narrative report to colleges. We were able to read these recs and they were detailed and shed light on important aspects of each child. I realize this is not the case in all schools, but I would not do away with these letters because they can speak to things about a student in an overall way that goes beyond being a student in a specific classroom. I think what our GC wrote was invaluable and informative and an important piece of the whole picture. </p>
<p>My son’s HS has one counselor per grade level. Class size of around 400 students. I think his GC did a good job, but I did guide the process. My S was able to apply to three service academies and ED to Wash U. The GC was responsive and we were able to meet all required deadlines.</p>
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<p>It isn’t just this one thread; other threads have occasionally had other posters mentioned high schools being put on auto-reject lists when an ED admit backs out. The assumption by all posters was that the practice was common.</p>
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I’m still unclear as to whether the people claiming that are admissions office personnel, or parents who simply hold that perception.</p>
<p>The GCs at public schools are better than without one. They do provide some help but certainly not enough if you want to maximize the opportunity of your kids. My D’s school also has one GC per 400-500 students but for 4 grades combined. So each one need to deal with 100-125 seniors every year. It is impossible to write any personalize recommendation beyond the brag sheet and school profile. Not to mention to give advice on school list, ED strategy, etc. That is why some students will have private adviser and why we come to this forum. Nevertheless, the GCs still have a very essential role. </p>
Feeling blessed I guess. My Ds class of 500 is serviced by 8 GCs so approx 62 students per GC, plus a guidance office secretary and a registrar. They are with them all 4 years and have ample opportunity to get to know them personally. There is a great amount of effort on the department’s part on getting to know the students personally and this is fully supported by teachers and administration alike in our district (large public suburban hs, highly ranked).
I have always had prompt responses to emails and phone calls and she has made the whole college process very easy for D. My D waived her FERPA, so we did not see her recommendation, but I sleep easy knowing that it was an outstanding rec. I have no doubt in my mind about it.
It makes the exorbitant property taxes we pay worth it (or I keep telling myself…!) I feel like I should be living in a mega mansion for what we pay.
62?
That’s amazing. The national average is 500 and schools can do well with 250.
Does it show in results for your school’s students?
^ Yup, 62. I would say it definitely shows in the results of the school’s students. Out of last year’s class, approx 77 went to flagship state U, about 15%; the rest out of state, public and private, a few ivy etc. It’s fun to look at the map to see where the kids end up.
They just added an 8th GC last year. To clarify, it’s 62 SENIORS per GC, so multiply by frosh, soph, jr. and they have about 240 kids 9-12th grade.
At my D’s HS, each graduating class is about 125 students with 4 full time guidance counselors that provide only college counseling. Of this 125, at least 20 each year go to an Ivy League school or Stanford. The rest go to other top tier schools. The administrative staff made sure that all documents get submitted in time and it is folklore that no document has EVER been submitted late. They also begin second semester junior year in reading and critiquing essays and kids are expected to finish them the summer before senior year. This, of course, did not come cheap as her high school costs more per year than most colleges.
When I graduated in 1978 (and went on to Yale), I don’t think my counselor knew my name because I was one of 1,200 graduating seniors. I am glad I was able to provide a better environment for my child (also blessed).
I can see how some of that GC time gets used. However, it’s not a bad thing as it should provide stimulus and motivation to underclassmen.
Ah, that would be essentially the same ratio we have, then. Although each GC follows “their” class, one of them turns attention to the more competitive Seniors each year.
“Without guidance, students can easily make poor decisions, especially if no one in their families has gone to college, yet the national ratio is almost 500 students per counselor.”
-Assuming that they have no parents, period. Parents do not need to have gone to college themselves, most know how to talk to others and how to use Google. Nothing else is required, period. Aren’t most parents paying? So, whille everybody is taking choosing the car ever so seriously (even if they have not gone to college) and spend ton of time doing so (well, for some it may be $100k investment, but for the most, it is about $30k), taking time on investigating your kid;s choices seems to be not so important…, interesting…
We went to counselor basically because he was also writing an LOR (as far as I remember). Mind you, D’s counselor had only 33 kids (tiny up-scale private HS). The counselor did not even know the names of the programs that D. was interested in. But we did not expect him to know that. We did not take a single suggestion from him, it took me about 2 years to investigate just for one child - my D. There is no way under the sky the counselor knew as much as we did at the time that she started applying. I have prepared a huge spreadsheet and presented it to my D. as my fun project, not anything else. She liked it though and used it and it worked perfectly. Again, counselor did not know most of the programs even existed (some of them had only 10 spots for incoming freshman). If we had waited for the counselor, D. would not have applied to the correct list of UGs at all.
Do not expect anything form the counselors, hopefully he will wright a letter (if required) and update the class profile correctly and on time. The rest is UP TO YOU, as well as buying that new car that will cost only drop in comparison to college.
D. ended up going to her #2 from my original list and looking back (4 years after graduation) still believes that she went to the best place for her and the tuition was covered by Merit awards (as a cherry on the cake). She ended up attending in the program tha had only 10 spots for incoming freshman and many families who actually lived in the city where D. attended did not even know about existance of this program, let alone some HS counselor)
@mfamum I respectfully disagree with your over-reaching comment.
You know, mfamum, I didn’t find my kids’ GCs particularly helpful (compared to what I could find out on CC and what I knew from having lived elsewhere from where I live now), but they dealt in good faith, it wasn’t their fault they were also expected to do the social-worker gig in addition to the college-guidance gig, and your snottiness about “some directional college graduate airhead” reflects worse on you than on them.
I’d try to argue with this, but I’m just a directional college graduate.
Given the number of questions asked on these forums, it appears that there are many students and parents who need a little help finding the correct clicks to find the information that they want.
Just joining this thread. I know I’m late in the game and the topic has changed direction. I just thought I would throw in that a student last year reneged on an E.D. agreement to William and Mary from our town. W and M told the school system that they would be taking a five year hiatus from our high school. Needless to say there was outrage from our Board of Education and a new contract was initiated from the town lawyer. All E.D. applicants this year had to sign an additional agreement with the school system as well as the traditional contract with the school. Not sure what leverage the town has with the applicant per this agreement but it’s in place.
In addition, it happened 8 years ago with Duke. A student had E.D to Duke an then was accepted to an ivy in the regular round. Duke also took a five year hiatus with the exception of one year taking and exceptional lacrosse player/scholar. It that case it was not a financial move to it was especially egregious.
Re: #59 and #60
Both W&M and Duke are behaving dishonorably here if they are putting an entire high school on an auto-reject list because a student backed out of ED. They are essentially punishing innocent third parties (students in the following classes) for the transgressions of the student who backed out of an ED commitment. Such punishment is no deterrent against an unethical student considering cheating on ED, since the punishment is applied to someone else.
If they really care about students backing out of ED, they should (a) have an ED clearing house with other schools, (b) require the enrollment deposit to be submitted with the application (refunded if not admitted ED), and © require a net price calculator run for all ED financial aid applicants, with the inputs and result saved – if the inputs match the actual financial aid application but the result is worse financial aid, then the insufficient financial aid release from ED is granted (and the enrollment deposit is refunded).