<p>Pizzagirl, I really understand your question, living in the same vicinity. I live on the North Shore in one of the lesser powerhouse school districts. I’m a New Trier (and Northwestern) alum, as well. </p>
<p>So here’s my impression. Yes, your kids are at a disadvantage competing with students from high schools like New Trier, Stevenson, Deerfield and Highland Park which are already familiar to those colleges. Our HS college counselor said colleges seem to prefer “known quantities” and want to keep those high schools happy, so they accept those kids more readily. For example, our HS has never had a girl accepted to Wellesley. We’ve had many acceptances to every Ivy, top LAC, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvey-Mudd, UChicago, Northwestern, WashU, and other top women’s colleges, but not Wellesley. It’s not money, either. This HS is loaded with filthy rich kids. </p>
<p>Geographically, your kids are also competing with privates like Loyola, Woodlands Academy, North Shore Country Day and Lake Forest Academy.</p>
<p>I don’t know that you can assume that just because nobody from your school has applied to a particular college, that the college admissions staff doesn’t know the school. Some colleges seem to have pretty extensive regional networks. Especially with the small LACs I’d bet that it’s quite common for them to see no applicants from any given high school for several years running. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think that’s preferable to the situation we’re facing which is that for some schools, a few kids have applied and gotten in, but none has actually matriculated.</p>
<p>I think it IS fair to say that many adcoms are unaware of one’s high school. For example, only one college on my D’s entire list sent a rep to visit our high school. Compare that to some of my college counseling advisees who are meeting with reps from all of their colleges (inc. elite colleges) who visit their private prep school or competitive known high school. As well, the adcoms do not know our GCs and I can contrast that to how my advisees from known high schools have GCs calling up adcoms to discuss their students (as similarly described in The Gatekeepers). Still, I firmlly believe that students from any high school can get into very selective colleges as ultimately it is the student who must sell him/herself to colleges and have the requisite qualifications to meet what those colleges desire in a candidate.</p>
<p>It boggles the mind that a strong HS would hire a clueless college counselor. I’d be all over that. It does make a big difference to have a counselor who puts in the work to know the schools.</p>
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<p>I disagree. The power relationship between the HS counselor and adcom is one of total power on the adcom side. They do not have to keep schools happy. They do have to keep alum happy which is why you’ll see 15 from New Trier at NU–many are legacies and staff kids, or the kids of the powerful in the community that the schools want to be connected to.</p>
<p>Top schools are on a diversity mission that means limiting kids they accept from the usual suspects in favor of kids from new places. They have to take the legacies and ‘friends’ of the school, but for the unhooked slots left, a kid from a less affluent, new school who is qualified would have the edge.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing, though. From a candid discussion I’ve had with a GC at my kids’ school (not my kids’ own GC, a different one), he would LOVE to be sending kids to [insert off-the-beaten-path excellent school] instead of an endless parade of directional state schools, U of I for the top students, and maybe Bradley and IL Wesleyan for the occasional change of pace. But there is only so much that a GC can do to persuade parents who simply don’t see any reason to spend more than whatever the directional state schools cost or who don’t want their kids going (gasp) far from home. </p>
<p>And yk something? If you’ve got a parent who is living in a million-dollar house because he worked hard running a restaurant chain or somesuch, he may not <em>see</em> the “need” to send the kid to the fancy-schmancy eastern school or see that there’s a return on investment. After all, he didn’t go to some fancy-schmancy school and he’s doing well, right? So … the GC may indeed be itching to develop that relationship with whatever school, but he can’t develop a relationship if there’s no one to send, right? </p>
<p>I see holes in the profile (thanks to those who have corresponded privately!) but I don’t know how to address it (with the head of counseling? with the principal?) without being one of “those” annoying parents. Any thoughts on how to approach it without having them feel that I’m just handing them an assignment that they should want to complete?</p>
<p>I don’t know if it happens in your school but in our little, but excellent USNWR school, the parents that “want/desire” their kids to go to their NE alma mater or just want their kids to go to the NE pull their kids out and send them to boarding school which makes the GCs even less inclined to go that extra mile for the balance of the kids with the stats…they are for the most part going to UofM anyway. I want to believe that it happens all the time…that many small midwestern exceptional public high schools have kids that don’t feel like going to a college with 20,000 or more other kids. I want to believe that the small out of the region liberal arts colleges “get that.” Yes, and we have “gaps” on our profile, too, so I’m very interested in how others think it would be wise to approach suggesting changes. I’m very afraid that the answer will be "Most of the kids are going to blah blah blah and they “know” “our kids.”</p>
<p>Can y’all be specific about what the gaps are?</p>
<p>Also, coincidentally, ds just got in the mail the letter from school outlining graduation plan deficiencies, and it included a transcript. I now see a glaring problem with the profile/transcript combo. We have two levels of honors classes. The profile indicates that, but the transcript has no designation differentiation between the two. All it says is H next to the course name. No way for a college to know whether it’s the more difficult level of the two. My thought is ds could just add this to his 300-word answer to the question “Is there anything else you want us to know?” Sound like a good idea???</p>
<p>My husband recently attended an alumi meeting for Dickinson College, PA. While the college president was speaking he was asked about the high number of Dickinson grads who attend top graduate schools. This man is very, very passionate about his school and said that HE personally goes out to visit with the top admissions folks to “sell and promote” his students. The president said that since he has begun this program that the number of Dickinson kids gaining admission to these grads schools has dramatically increased.</p>
<p>We actually thought about getting a group of parents together and sending the president of our kids HS out to a few top colleges to perform a similar task. By doing so, we would hope that this enthusiasm would filter down to the GC’s. If you are in a public HS, I don’t think this would work.</p>
<p>I am so very frustrated with our GC’s. They believe that if the kids do their homework and locate a good match school that they only need to apply to ONE college. Personally I think they just don’t want to do the extra work. My younger son is interested in going to the London School of Economics. He was told by his GC that there are many local universities with good econ programs and going to Europe is unnecessary. (and maybe it is) The point is that my son has high aspirations and she is basically trying to convince him to take the easy way out. I let it slide until they had career day and my son had filled out the form that he was interested in econ, engineering or architecture. He came home and told me that they group they put him with was a court reporter, a parole officer and a UPS guy. There is nothing wrong with those careers, but…I got a little upset and while I was standing toe to toe with her I asked her what she knew about my son. She went over to her computer and pulled up his records. Oh, she said I had no idea that John scored 100% in every category on his PLAN test. How would you not know that? How would you not make a mental note of that? </p>
<p>Okay - I got way off topic, but thanks for listening!!!</p>
<p>(by the way - months ago you recommended Carthage for my older son and he was accepted! Thank you)</p>
<p>YDS – we had a similar issue. Post-AP courses were listed on the transcript as “Advanced” without any explanation as to where they fell in the honors/AP continuum. S addressed this in his Additional Info section.</p>
<p>You mentioned speaking to one of the GCs in your school who understands your frustrations and would like to build relationships with ad coms in universities/LACs in other parts of the country. Why not approach him–mention the profile would benefit from some changes and ask his opinion on how to go about doing so. Offer to volunteer your time, if that would help to get changes/corrections to the profile. I found that offering to assist when you identify a problem often undercuts annoyance on the part of those you’ve asked to correct the problem.</p>
<p>I don’t even know the guy’s name – and I’m afraid of having it sound like I’m going beyond my kids’ counselor’s back! I’ve gotten great suggestions, so I think I’m going to ask to meet with them and volunteer my time. I’m afraid an email with all my suggestions is going to be too much :-)</p>
<p>Volunteering your time sounds like a great idea. </p>
<p>I find that if you make an appointment and go in with the assumption that everyone has the same goals (making the school look good, improve a program or whatever) things usually get done.</p>
<p>I think I´ll need to help my GC write up a specific school profile for me, as I took a vocational program one year, and I know it will not be explained at all if I do not ask specifically for it. Plus, my school phrases our maths courses weirdly. Instead of Algebra I, II, Geometry…it’s Maths 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. </p>
<p>My GC’s only care about the State schools and the CCs. Everytime someone asks for help for OOS schools the answer is “I don’t know, you should look it up. We can’t tell you.” So I’m anxious about this whole idea of a school profile…</p>
<p>They’ve also said that about 40% of the kids go to State schools, and another 40% go to CCs. My state also has a particularly high drop-out rate overall, so will my attempting to be one of the few going OOS be looked well upon at all? Or is it just: “Oh, this is just the break down.” ?</p>