<p>I hope we can all agree that the parents and child must take the lead role and do most of the research and decisionmaking. As the GC poster said, it is a $200,000 decision and should be treated as such. The reference to the $200,000 amused me, however, because when my son’s GC told me he thought my son (who refused to visit more than 3 schools or take the ACT or a second SAT after a poor first result) should not be urged by him or me to change his mind, my unspoken reaction was that I bet the GC would not allow my son to make a decision concerning $200,000 of his money, so why should I?</p>
<p>CC, like all web forums, does draw many more complainers than those who have had satisfactory experiences. And I certainly sympathize with the burdens of GC and the unrealistic expectations of many parents of what the GC should do for their individual child and where their indivbidual child should be admitted.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, many of the parent complaints posted are reasonable and, in contrast to the GC who has a 70 page FA paper, most of deal with Guidance Departments which fail to do many easy but invaluable tasks, such as soliciting feedback from recent alumni about how they like their schools, or compiling 1 page papers of good regional schools for B students; schools with are generous with aid, helpful websites such as CC, etc.</p>