Private school here too, 85 kids per grade level. College counseling meetings begin in winter junior year (well there was one meeting for parents end of sophomore year but kids weren’t really involved in that one, mostly it was to tell parents what the process would look like). The process is very well organized, includes using the Scoir platform for data and stats. Kids take ownership but counselors offer guidance, support, advice, etc. Emphasis on fit rather than prestige, although there are many kids who end up at the highly rejective schools (my older daughter did, but younger one is focusing on likelies and good fit, prestige not really considered)
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D24 attends a small private school where she has both a guidance counselor and a college counselor. The college counselor holds a class a few times per month and meets with the family at least once junior year to discuss college applications. She did not really give suggestions of schools to apply to, but has been helpful in keeping D24 organized and thinking about the upcoming application season.
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At our large public each school counselors has about 400 kids to cover for anything and everything that falls under counseling. D22’s counselor started October of her senior year so never met her and just relied on a brag sheet to write up counselor
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LOR. D24 has had one 10min meeting with this same counselor and that is about all she will get. D22 did fine with me functioning as her college counselor. For D24, we all agreed that an outside person would be better so we hired a private counselor who is helping with school choices and will also help packaging her application.
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What type of music/instrument?
Classical orchestra woodwind
Loved this tip from today’s episode of “Your College Bound Kid” podcast: if your child is looking at public colleges and universities, pay attention to the politics of the state where the university is located.
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Yes! This is definitely something we’re looking at, especially as certain states pass laws dictating what kinds of words and concepts are prohibited on campus. Where I live, too, the legislature has been busy over the last decade replacing the people in power at our state universities with political appointees, who are in turn trying to shape the education offered on those campuses.
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Question for the group: my junior previously worked with a tutor (who is also a college counselor), and they’ve stayed in touch. Tutor knows kid wants to apply ED to single-digit-acceptance-rate school and offered to share the email address of an admissions officer tutor knows. (No quid pro quo; kid and tutor have great relationship, and tutor offers informal advice/guidance.)
Many schools provide contact info for individual members of admissions team online; the school in question does not seem to, providing a general address instead. Wondering whether outreach to this AO directly with questions (and noting that tutor provided the contact info) is a good or bad idea? Kid certainly does not want to overstep or do anything inappropriate, but we also assume the tutor would not offer the contact info without the AO’s consent.
Any experience/advice?
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I don’t have any advice, but you might get more feedback if you make a new post in the general parent forum, rather than the class of 2024 thread. A lot of people who have a lot of insight are on CC, but don’t necessarily read the year specific threads.
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Good idea—thank you.
We watch Sara Harberson and she does not recommend contacting AOs unless it’s an important question that cannot be answered elswhere.
This may be true if the school does not identify the AO for your state/region.
In our situation, when we visited Rice, we saw an AO (not ours) and had a question. She recommended contacting our AO directly (who was not on campus that day) and said she welcomes correspondence with prospective students so we did send her a question.
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D20 and D23 both built relationships with their AOs but they only contacted them with questions that couldn’t be answered via the website.
My suggestion would be to look up and see if your child’s target schools have assigned AOs to specific regions and make contact with you specific AO if your child has actual questions.
I don’t see any reason to contact an AO who wouldn’t be your child’s assigned application reader thinking that would give your child some sort of admission advantage.
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D24 has done the same with a couple of the colleges we’ve looked at. I had her look up the admissions officer for our state and then she emailed the person with a question or 2 in order to get clarification on different topics.
Plus, if a college lists demonstrated interest as a factor in admissions in their CDS, communicating with one’s admissions officer is an additional way to demonstrate interest.
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Agreed—kid would reach out only if there are legit questions they can’t otherwise find the answer to.
So looks like SCOIR just updated for the class of 2023. The good is that all of the match schools that we had picked are still showing 100% admissions rates for S24s stats and some that had not had enough data to show scattergrams now do, so that is very reassuring. Some of his reaches also look like they are possibilities so I think the list is going to work. The bad, the data points now show majors for each student so it is very very easy to know graduating seniors specific stats, yikes!!!
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We are planning to visit Rice next Monday, any recommendations? Thanks.
I meant next month.
If you’re not from Texas (or the south), you need to prepare for the brutal heat and humidity. Houston has a ton of mosquitoes and will be hot from morning to evening. We purposefully went during spring break and not the summer because it’s awful.
Second, you should stay close to Rice because traffic is terrible, especially the morning and late afternoon.
Third, you should go to some nice restaurants because Houston has an amazing food scene, one of the best in the entire country.
Also remember that Rice is not a very big school so the campus may be quite sparse when you visit.
Finally, if you have time, go to an Astros game. It’s very close.
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I second what CFP said about the weather.
It is going to rain on Monday and Tuesday (5/29 and 5/30) if that is when you are visiting, so yes it will be very hot and humid.
Next to Rice U is Rice Villagae, where you can eat and shop after the tour.
If you like Turkish food, there is a small Turkish/Mediterranean resturant named “Pasha Turkish” which we dined. It was good.
After lunch, go for a walk in Hermann Park.
I don’t know if the museums above Hermann Park are open on Monday since its a holiday.
If you have the time, go West and visit the Asian district along Bellaire Blvd.
“Kim Son” for better quality all-you-can eat Vietnamese and Chinese foods, “Ocean Palace” or "HK Dim Sum"for dim sum, and “Shaubu House” for shabu shabu. There are tons of places to eat along Bellaire Blvd between Hwy 6 and Beltway 8.
Man, I am getting hungry now…
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Houston has some amazing Asian restaurants.
We went to Bori for Korean BBQ. They have a cool vibe with a mini art gallery from a local Korean artist. Really great banchan.
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