You made the right decision to let Purdue go if your D has direct admission to CS elsewhere. ES is not a guaranteed pathway to CS or engineering and you wouldn’t know until after the end of freshman year. CS usually closes out and takes no additional students.
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Ok, thanks for confirming that. Rereading her letter I was feeling terrible that I encouraged her to not apply to ES. I didn’t realize they were (I think) saying she would definitely be admitted to ES, I thought she’d be applying again. If Purdue had been one of her favorites it would have been a tough choice. She liked the campus and likes the school but she swooned at other schools.
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They were saying they’d admit her to ES. The problem is that isn’t a pathway to CS, so she’d be forced into a different major after freshman year.
(Historically exploratory studies was for undecided students and could be used to transition to whatever major if a student managed a 3.2 GPA. Things have changed as the popularity in some majors have soared and the admins for the ES program openly tell students interested in CS, Eng, Flight, Nursing, and Pre-Vet to go to other universities where they have a direct admit to their preferred major. That shift has happened within in the last few years).
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It definitely wouldn’t be worth the stress for her. I’m glad she has other options. Where we live (suburb of Chicago) Purdue is a popular and rightfully well-respected school for smart kids who aren’t Ivy tier. I think she’ll feel better knowing she wasn’t totally rejected 
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Question for the group, as I have seen some comments on a different thread…do any of you have GCs that proactively work on you or your child’s behalf by contacting admissions officers directly?
No. Daughter asked her GC for a meeting to help narrow down her final list of colleges a few weeks ago and sent a follow up email. No response. I should add that she has met with the GC once this entire year. But they did get everything in on time, which apparently is not true for everyone on this forum.
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Us to so dissatisfied with GC, zero help.
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I love our GC, she has been an incredible supporter of my son. She has always gotten stuff done when asked. But as far as guiding him through the college process, helping select colleges, etc. — no. Nothing. She has too many other things on her plate and I’m not sure she has the training to do it, either.
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I assume GCs at all (or almost all) private HSs do this, so maybe better to ask if GCs at public schools are doing this?
My D goes to a public school - but it’s a specialized magnet school, so the level of GC involvement is between that of a private school and a more typical public school. They do not reach out to AOs on their own, but will help if requested.
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The GC admin assistant has been exceptionally helpful whenever my son asked questions on the status of things. She has done so much more than the GCs have for my son. She was contacting my S22’s ED school about his transcript possibly not being ready on time. (Our school GCs are all new to our district this year and only one has GC experience. They don’t know our seniors but are doing the best they can.)
Honestly, I think everything has gone about as well as can be expected at our public HS. They had to let the college counselors go a few years ago due to budget cuts, but we managed ok since this is our second kid (and we knew the process already.) Private college counselors have become quite popular around here lately for families going through this for the first time…
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S22 reached out to his GC (large IL public) and was told “no, colleges don’t want to hear from us, only students” 
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The school counselor (large public high school) did reach out to admissions for my D19 but it was due to an odd major and submission of portfolio pieces. My D requested assistance and the school counselor helped the same day. Definitely not the norm though.
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No, we have only one GC at our public school and she’s mostly busy dealing with behavioral, social emotional issues of the student body. (800+). But our school uses Scoir which seems to send things like transcripts and school reports automatically once the kids pick their colleges in Scoir. Can’t imagine asking GC for any sort of college admissions related help or questions. You’re basically on your own (not through any fault of GC’s.) Thank goodness for websites like CC!!
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I don’t know what our GC do on a daily basis. I don’t think it has anything to do with colleges or scheduling or helping the typical kids. I’m sure they deal with the kids needing more support for various reasons. But we rarely get replies from ours when asking questions. My son emailed a few weeks ago asking about the mid-term reports and never had a response. They do show up as sent in Naviance, so that is good. But, they don’t communicate to students or parents what their roles are, so it’s tough.
My D22’s guidance counselor has been really good. She emails students and parents in a timely fashion and has one on one meetings with the students and really reaches out to them.
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Big public school parent here with zero contact with GCs. I’m not sure what they do but helping kids get into selective colleges does not appear to be high or even on their priority list.
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Same - big public with 8 or 9 GCs for 3000-ish students. They are overworked, and there’s generally no bandwidth for help with selective college admissions. I’m told there is one GC who is really enthusiastic about helping strong students apply to top schools, so the lucky few whose last names happen to fall in her alphabet range receive meaningful assistance. For the rest, you are doing well if the required materials are sent on time (which ours were, and I’m grateful for that). We actually also have a “college counselor” on staff, but I think she mostly focuses on those who need help filling out the FAFSA and applying to local colleges. I emailed her last year to ask whether there were any services available or even voluntary parent groups that could assist with applying to more selective schools; I received a very polite response that essentially said, “Nope, good luck with that.”
D22 has had a new counselor each of the last four years. She has sent in transcripts and school reports on schedule and that’s about all we expect of her.
Taking on 300 new students every year, it’s hard to expect more. One you’re outside Pitt, Penn State, local CC, PSSHE schools, you’re pretty much on your own.
We learn/share most information from parent groups with other top students. There’s a lot of activity overlap and many have kids a few years apart.
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I don’t think our GC interacts with admissions people but I also don’t think the admissions people want to be contacted. It seems like every college this year had a “record” number of applicants. I can see in Scoir the mid-year reports went out. Unless there was an egregious mistake or something I would not expect the GC to contact the AO.
Unfortunately our GC was new this year and wrote a recommendation based largely on the parent “brag sheet.”
My D has made a concerted effort to meet with her gc over the years for various reasons. Since there are about 400 kids per gc in our public high school, it’s a lot for the gcs to juggle. D stopped in today to remind her gc of the US Presidential Scholar app due on the 24th, and it’s good she did because her gc had the wrong date written down. 
I did get to read the LOR the gc wrote about D for a different scholarship, and I felt that she really did know D pretty well, she wrote a strong LOR for her. It’s going to get repurposed for the US Presidential application; I hope she catches all the spots where she wrote down the other scholarship name!
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