Parents: Are school counselors better now?

<p>My own guidance counselor (many years ago) was terrible. He used to be a shop teacher and couldn’t cut it so they put him in the guidance department. He gave me information that was flat out wrong (like majoring in economics and accounting was exactly the same). And he couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go to the local community college. Fortunately my parents and I were able to do our own research.</p>

<p>My two kids had very good deans (guidance counselors) at their school. My kids high school was much more college focused than my HS was. The same dean followed them through the four years of HS and they both had a good handle on each one of my child’s needs/strengths/weaknesses etc. We also did a lot of research about colleges so we were a pretty informed and realistic group going in which I’m sure made their job easier. IMO no matter how good the deans/guidance counselors are, it is important for a family to do their own research.</p>

<p>The best thing about my kids guidance counselors is that they were so useless they probably helped them become more involved in the process than they might have otherwise.</p>

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<p>Given how many financially needy high school seniors show up in the “College Search and Selection” forum with lists of colleges that are unlikely to offer them enough financial aid (e.g. out-of-state publics other than UVA, UNC-CH, and the large merit ones), it is not all that obvious that their counselors are telling them to check the net price calculators when making their application lists.</p>

<p>There are approximately 1300 kids in the school (9th-12th grade)and two GCs. There’s no way they could be good, even if they wanted to be.</p>

<p>ucbslalumnus, no doubt true at many schools, but the guy who heads up college counseling at our school from my experience, stays on top of these things. I’m confident that even though I don’t have a kid in the school any more that they are keeping up to date.</p>

<p>To the person who was disappointed in the GC editing abilities, that wasn’t something I expected a GC to do. Most kids asked a teacher to look over essays. I do know that both GC’s read the essays, but they aren’t trained as English teachers.</p>

<p>"Are guidance counselors expected to edit essays? " - Not sure. English teachers will sometimes do that. But what my DS needed was help on topic selection and tone (not too modest, not too braggy). We ended up hiring out for essay help.</p>

<p>Large public school with >2000 kids with four Counselors. A school where about 75% of the kids used to go to community colleges. In recent years, more kids are applying to UC’s but the school hasn’t implemented new resources to guide these kids.</p>

<p>My son has never met with his counselor.<br>
Those who were planning to apply to private colleges had given a deadline (back in November) to submit a reference from a friend along with other test information to the GC.<br>
Now my son is thinking about applying to at least one private school, and I am not sure whether the GC would give him a reference as he hadn’t submitted the required documents back in November. We will find out soon.</p>

<p>My school has around 550 students and 3 guidance counselors who mostly only work with seniors (and juniors in 2nd semester when most of the seniors are done with college applications and what not), so we can pretty much just walk into their offices and talk. Also they have good relationships with a lot of colleges so 70+ colleges visit our school every fall. So after talking to my friend who went to a school with 2100 students and like 4 counselors I realized we’re fortunate to have the situation that we have at my school.</p>

<p>I think it’s a good goal for every parent to know enough re the admissions process/landscape that they feel confident advising their child ~ using the school counselor to fill-in-the-gaps, rather than the other way around.</p>

<p>Our counselors seem risk aversive -encouraging the sure thing (which is certainly needed as a safety choice). They drag their feet on anything out-of-the-ordinary or reachy and don’t show much enthusiasm.</p>

<p>Our DCs had a strategy based on timing ~ applying to a few rolling, a few EA, etc. Again timing was important since it meant we could visit schools on our timetable as acceptances came in, and acceptances to some schools meant other schools fell off the list.</p>

<p>Even with plenty of lead time, counselors just were not use to submitting the paperwork (and there really wasn’t much of it) in the Fall. They kept wanting to put-off till closer to the due date all of DCs requests. Push-push-push was needed which shouldn’t have been the case. It wasn’t their busy time, it just wasn’t on their schedule - our states’ u’s schedule which they are conditioned for.</p>

<p>Our GCs don’t do college planning/counseling per se. They are responsible for scheduling and beyond that they send transcripts/recommendations on request. I am incredulous when I read what other schools offer. To say the least, playing fields are not level…</p>

<p>Large public school where the GCs were overwhelmed. My oldest met with his GC once during his junior year. She knew almost nothing about him. No advice at all about colleges, despite his potential (he was 2nd in his class). When he asked about whether he should look into scholarships, she told him to go “google scholarships.” Nice person, but clueless. </p>

<p>Both of my kids caught a lucky break because she was transferred out due to budget cuts, and the guidance staff were even more overworked. As a result, the gifted teacher wrote his LOR, and did this for my younger son as well. She did this for all of the kids in the gifted program to help out the guidance office.</p>

<p>College Confidential and other information helped educate our family about what our children needed. The school was worthless.</p>

<p>My high school had one guidance counselor for the whole school and she didn’t help at all with college applications, but this was back in the day when there wasn’t much to applying to college. As such, anything today is an improvement.</p>

<p>I have a D who is currently a sophomore in college, and I was unimpressed with her guidance counselor in terms of college assistance. I felt that I knew more about the whole process than he did, based on a whole lot of current research. I didn’t think that the schools he suggested to her made much sense for her, and he actually had some negative things to say about one of her choices, which is the school she is currently attending. I wouldn’t have minded hearing negative things about a school if he was speaking with first hand knowledge, but he had never been to the school and had no real familiarity with the school; he was just repeating some reputational stuff that was outdated. He complained that she had too many safety schools on her list and no reaches, which D and I didn’t regard as a problem since she didn’t want to go to any reach schools, and he also told her not to worry about finances in deciding where to apply. Since he knew nothing of our financial position, I thought that was just plain stupid advice. We went to the one required meeting with him junior year and then proceeded on our own. He did get any school information (transcripts, counselor letters, etc.) necessary in connection with D’s applications to her schools, so I can’t complain there. In any event, I don’t know how a guidance counselor with hundreds of students (3/4 of whom aren’t seniors applying to college) can be an effective college counselor.</p>

<p>Uneven. Ours is a big public high school with a half dozen GCs. They have to do scheduling and state testing as well as college counseling. </p>

<p>We got one of the good ones, and I was even luckier in that older son handled everything for himself, so he had a relationship with her going into college app time.</p>

<p>My D’s public school counselor was horrible. She knows nothing outside of the state U’s and even gave incorrect information to an auditorium full of senior students and parents regarding the common app. I had to constantly e-mail her to remind her to send things to colleges (D was an exchange student her senior year so I had to take care of things for her). I can’t help but wonder how her incompetence might have impacted the decision for the only reach that my D applied to. Fortunately, most of the kids apply and are happy to go to the state U’s, but not mine.</p>

<p>Personally my HS counselor didn’t help much because I did everything on my own - got all the necessary forms, etc. But for people that were clueless about college she did hound them about getting everything in, so IDK.</p>

<p>Our HS had a retiring GC and a new one at a private school with about 200 students per graduating class. The retiring was very pessimistic about our S because he had lower grades due to extended absences. The young one was much more encouraging, especially since S had done well in his many APs and was a NMF. S applied to many of the Us that younger counselor said were likely to offer significant merit for his high scores and lower GPA. He told D not to apply until she had completed 2 years of CC (which she ignored). </p>

<p>S did get into several Us with great merit awards. D transferred with no help nor support of her HS (which she left after JR year) and none from her CC, who had never had anyone apply to the U she wanted and transferred to.</p>