Aaaaand S22’s HS college counselor just quit (or that’s the rumor anyway). At perhaps the worst time, from the perspective of her students. Hoping that she at least penned S22’s counselor recommendation before she skedaddled.
Do they have more than one?? How awful!!!
Yes there are two others who are working hard to pick up the slack, but not a good time to be understaffed.
1 Like
We had a similar situation. I asked whether my D’s recommendation would be written by the old or new guidance counselor. They said both, as the new counselor would be incorporating the information from the Parent Survey we had to fill out on Scoir.
Our college counselor retired last year. Luckily he wrote LOR before he left and the new counselor can just add to it. The new one does not seem to know much.
1 Like
Our school system has one set of counselors for the Junior HS (9th and 10th), another for the Senior HS (11th and 12th), and another for the cyber component of the school system.
D had a temp/new Counselor last year as the one she was supposed to have was on maternity leave. This year, temp is gone, but existing counselors have been reassigned through the system and shuffled (assigned by alphabet), so she now has a person who was a counselor of the cyber school component last yet.
So her Counselor’s recommendation, which is due in about 5 weeks for 7 schools, is from someone new to the in-person school, with ~200 students she had never met as of four weeks ago. I know she hasn’t met my D as of now.
I somehow doubt it will be insightful.
As D prepares her to do list, it surprises me how many schools want the counselor letter over 2 teacher letters. Some only require the counselor letter, but most want 1 teacher and 1 counselor. I suspect this is because the counselor can put the academic rigor of the transcript in context and describe the school environment.
The 2 schools in our area that I know best use Naviance, so the GC gets the actual letters then chooses which to submit to which school. The students do not see them, ever, but they also do not control which goes where. The system works, but it is definitely different from what you are describing.
1 Like
My kid said that the GC at our school said something similar–if a school wants 1 letter the GC just sends the first letter on the list (i.e., the GC doesn’t read them and choose the best, but just blindly sends the first one they find.) We’re at a school where only 40% go to 4 year colleges, and the GCs have many other things on their plates beyond college apps.
The more I read here at CC, the more I realize how much the inequities are just hard baked into the system. I knew that some families hired private counselors to improve their kid’s applications, I knew that private schools had a different type of GC system, but I didn’t fully appreciate the gulf even between public high schools.
16 Likes
My son has a new counselor (new to school) as well. Our school gives the students a packet with a bunch of essays they have to write (like they don’t have enough essays to write)+ they also have a page full of questions for the parents to write- tell us a time your kid was xyz, etc and cite examples. A whole bunch of those. Does everyone else have this as well? We have been trying to get this done quickly as early action deadlines are coming up and the counselors want these packets by the end of the month. The counselor uses this to write the letter. Makes sense because our school is very large and I don’t think my son has spent more than 5 min with a counselor (1-on-1) in the 4 years he’s been there. All our counselor-kid sessions were always in groups.
3 Likes
Ours is a large, public HS. There are 3 counselors. Most kids don’t have a lot of 1-on-1 time with counselors. We haven’t had anything like the essays and questions that you describe, though. While it sounds like a lot of work, this does seem like a good basis for a rec letter- esp. the list of questions!
3 Likes
My son got a 1 page questionaire to fill out for the counselor so she can write the letter. My older daughters had the same counselor and I got to read the letter, and I have to say I thought she did a pretty good job for never really meeting the student!
2 Likes
Yes, parents at our school were asked to answer those questions in detail too for the GCs to base their recommendations on. Her class is around 470 so it’s understandable the GCs need some help with specifics about the kids.
They eliminated class rank this year because the top of the class has a 4.0 GPA. My older child was in the top decile (no numbers then), which meant getting As and A+ in the hardest classes.
1 Like
We also have “self-evaluation forms” – one for the student and a separate one for the parents. The school counselors requested they be completed by the last day of school in junior year. These form the basis of the counselor’s recommendation. We cannot get transcripts without the self-evaluation forms being submitted. We are supposed to have everything submitted for transcripts requests four weeks before the college deadline.
Our school is also very large, where each school counselor has roughly 70 seniors. (There are 10 high school counselors.)
1 Like
I wish ours were done by the end of junior year- or perhaps something to do over the summer if the student had a job or experience that might be compelling. That would be so much less stressful! I think we have 6 counselors for the 600+ kids
1 Like
D3 is likely. He had some conversations with D1 but felt it was not for him based on his planned studies and time requirements
If you pull up College Navigator and input the school. Click on Programs/Majors and you can see the most recent data (usually prior year)
Here’s CMU’s
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=carnegie+mellon&s=all&id=211440#programs
In the common app, the counselor report is more of a formality, and not as much a letter of recommendation.
2 Likes
I am not sure how many of the kids really had their evaluation forms done by the last day of junior year. 
I am sure not as many as the school counselors hoped for!
1 Like
That’s great! I do wonder why the colleges want these GC write-ups, as they don’t reflect actual first-hand knowledge of the student. S22 had to do the same thing, fill out a survey on SCOIR that the college counselor uses. Because she doesn’t actually know the seniors, which is not a surprise. How would she?
What do colleges think they’re getting out of this?
5 Likes