<p>D had one GC her first two years and then was reassigned when a new GC was hired.</p>
<p>The first one was 6. useless. We (D & I ) met with her at the end of soph. year, she assumed that D was going to major in dance (based on her EC’s) and kept talking about a school D had no interest in. She kept talking about some girl at that school and we had no idea who that was.Total waste of time.</p>
<p>At that point I decided that we were on our own, so we did the research. Actually the second GC turned out to be really good and D liked her. She wrote very good rec’s for D.</p>
<p>D1 went to a private school. Her counselor worked hard for her, but we came up with D1’s college list. </p>
<p>D2 is at a different private school. She has her own counselor. He will help with her college selection and application. We will see how it turns out.</p>
<p>S1 went to well-regarded local public high school when 97% of the kids are college bound. The GC was clueless regarding athletic recruitment and admissions. Also clueless regarding PG years. Essentially clueless as far as my son’s needs were concerned. His PG college counselor, at a boarding school, was extremely clued in on the recruiting end – in his previous life he was a coach at a D1 college in son’s sport and handled a lot of their recruiting from the college side. Nevertheless, it was essentially a done deal by the time S landed on his campus. He helped us as parents understand the admissions process relative to an athletic recruit and also shepherded the ED application through the hoops. </p>
<p>S2 attended a local private K-12. I won’t say his counselor was clueless, but IMO she consistently encouraged the kids to shoot low, and aim at a specific type of school. So 80% or something of the seniors were admitted to their ED school. She didn’t really seem to tune in to just what my son was looking for in a college – and strangely, he had much better results than she anticipated. I don’t think any of his applications or admits were schools she’d recommended – they were all above her recommendations. The school graduates fewer than 50 kids – so it’s not like she was overwhelmed.</p>
<p>I will say that I had a short consult with one of the very high end, very well known, very well regarded professional college counselors after my son was deferred from his ED school. His take on S2’s list was that it was shooting pretty high. And S2 was admitted or waitlisted to 6 of 8 schools on his list, with merit aid at one.</p>
<p>A combo of 1 and 3. I think our GC office does an excellent job in terms of informing everyone of deadlines, how FAFSA works, running Naviance etc. If you go in and give them some general parameters they’ll spit out a list of suggestions (around 25 I think) with a range from safety to reach. In my older son’s case I think all the schools he eventually applied to except WPI and Harvey Mudd were on the list. For my younger son he had no idea what he wanted and his counselor wasn’t nearly as smart as my older son’s counselor. There were a few schools that were on both lists, but she had way too many large OOS publics for his taste. I wasn’t looking to them for advice about where to apply, but was happy that they made the rest of the process run smoothly. We also have a college career center. I don’t know much about it except that when the college reps came to the school the kids met in her part of the library.</p>
<p>FWIW years ago at my exclusive girl’s boarding school the GC was useless at suggestions too. She kept suggesting women’s colleges and I kept saying “No way!” (Four years was enough.)</p>
<p>Our private school has a full time 3 person college advising staff. </p>
<p>The 2 counselors hold annual meetings for freshman and sophomore parents which are meet and greets and a great opportunity to calm the spastic parents (that would be me with DS1). They also meet the freshman and sophomore students in small groups for questions and pep talks. </p>
<p>The real fun starts after Christmas break for the Juniors. There is a formal kick off meeting where all parents are given a 10 page questionaire about their students and their objectives in the college selection process. Also parents are requested to write a paragraph or two about their student. Much of the highly individualized guidance counselor recommendation comes from this information. Each of the 70 students is assigned one of the 2 counselors and they have several meetings to craft an application list. From the middle of junior year until the middle of senior year, each student is scheduled a weekly seminar to advance the application process. They examine Naviance, fill out the common app, work on their essays, and garner teacher recommendations. These advisers promptly return emails and phone calls and are delighted to talk with parents. Once the application package is complete it is submitted to the full time clerical aide in the college counseling office where she makes hard copies for the file and sends off the applications return receipt requested.This process is usually wrapping up around Christmas time for the seniors. Then after break they start with the juniors.</p>
<p>These advisers are great advocates for the deferred and waitlisted students and have long standing relationships with dozens of college admissions offices.</p>
<p>There is plenty “not perfect” about this school, but the college advising program is a well oiled machine. You’d almost wonder why I spend so much time on CC !</p>
<p>In defense of high school GC’s, the OP’s #6 descriptor is way over the top, IMO. As others have said, public school GC’s have too many students assigned to them with too many real time problems to have the time to 1) do the in-depth research needed to help high performing kids; and 2) to hand-hold them through through the college application process. If the GC’s can get the recommendations and transcripts in on time, they are doing a great job. Parents should be thankful for anything extra a GC can provide, consider it a bonus, and leave it at that. </p>
<p>As well, if most kids really are going to the state flagship, why should a GC become an expert on a bunch of elite schools on the off chance a few kids may apply here and there? It would be a poor use of their time.</p>
<p>I have often said I wish my D1’s college counselor could be rented out. She was fabulous. This was a small private school and was a “well oiled” machine. The “fit” factor was a particular talent of his counselor. She filled out a million requests for scholarship apps, had surgery during the app season and made sure my daughter had full coverage from her department. I REALLY think the public schools suffer in this area and I wish everyone could have a terrific counselor for college apps. This school had a dept. just for college counseling so they could concentrate on this area. Invaluable. I would pay all that tuition again just for the college counseling - it was that good.</p>
<p>Now I will see how D2’s school performs (different private) - I have heard there’s a lot of pressure to aim high - and I am hoping for a fit focus. We shall see.</p>
<p>She is very nice, but wasn’t helpful at all in the college search. Now I can adjust my expectations accordingly for S (two more years till it is his turn) and, with resources like CC, can have more confidence in the guidance that I am giving him.</p>
<p>GC and College school counselor both think local community college is the best fit. However, my son does not want to attend the local community college. He wants to attend a 4 year university. I am a bit anxious that I would like to see more support at my son’s high school for him to attend a 4 year school. Am I being anxious for nothing? My son has Asperger’s and staff thinks best to stay close to home. I can see their point, but I think I have to back up my son’s preferences. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Let’s see - they had never heard of Questbridge and thought it was a scam (I had never heard of it before either, but did some research). Their school email blocked the Common Application they had to do the paper version for their references.</p>
<p>We attend an urban public school.</p>
<p>Now my D is literally the poster child for success (they interviewed her this summer for a school brochure). </p>
<p>I have a good friend who is a GC at a local private school and she volunteered to help my D with her essays, etc. We started kind of late but it all worked out perfectly in the end.</p>
<p>S is going to be a junior in hs and we are much better prepared now. But I’m not relying on the GCs at the hs to be taking the lead.</p>
<p>mdcissp - I can see an advantage in your son attending a 4 year school. Once the initial adjustment is over, he stays in the same school from start to finish. If he attends cc then change comes after only two years, just at the time when course work becomes more challenging in and of itself.</p>
<p>I think the more important questions are which 4 year school and what steps can you take to ease the transition. It might be helpful if your son could attend a summer bridge program at the school before the regular school year begins. The school itself need not be small, but it would be nice if his department or college was of a size that seems welcoming instead of overwhelming.</p>
<p>You may need to take extra care with move in to the dorm and perhaps securing a single room, but if this is doable for you I see no reason to limit his options.</p>
<p>My kids attended different highly-ranked public schools in the same county.</p>
<p>Oldest kids’ guidance counselor was an idiot. She was a very sweet idiot but I always thought she should have been hired to help 3-year-olds with their crafts projects. She forgot to give daughter important paperwork, didn’t know school policy and my daughter (now at a top 25 school) almost didn’t graduate because of her bad guidance. </p>
<p>The other kids all attended a different public school and all had good guidance counselors. They did not help with financial aid and their college recommendations were often too conservative (cc helped with those) but they explained everything, got paperwork off on time, wrote recommendations and one wrote the only recommendation for my kid that earned her a major, national scholarship. I will always be indebted to her. </p>
<p>(Some of this is just luck. One of my kids who ended up with a good guidance counselor senior year had a different one freshman year-- they had to adjust the alphabet so daughter was bumped to someone else-- who was, like GA202 at least 100 times worse than #6.)</p>
<p>We didn’t need the GC to find colleges (having been on CC and having gone through the application derby with an earlier child). But we did work hand in hand with her in the application process…making sure everything got done in a timely manner and keeping her in the loop with results. It was a pleasant experience.</p>
<p>If there weren’t SIX choices, one could approach this as the SAT: safely elminate all answers that sound alike or are very similar. So let’s look at 2,3,4, and 5:</p>
<ol>
<li>xxx they were pretty good</li>
<li>xxx they were excellent</li>
<li>xxx they were pretty good</li>
<li>xxx they were excellent<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Leaves you with 1 and 6. Funny, how those two answers will represent exactly 91.34% of the CC population. Or that is what ETS would tell you! </p>
<p>On a serious note, despite the obvious attempt by the OP to let us know that the GCs at one of the best --if not the most recognized-- public high school in the country are pretty good, one should expect that the universe of the parents who frequent College Confidential will be wide ranging. The only commonality would be the higher than average attraction to selective schools. However, despite this commonality, parents and students come from the book ends of the SES distribution. If their EFC is wide ranging, so are the schools they or their children attend. </p>
<p>Fwiw, another commonality is that people come here and STAY here because they realize very quickly that they can learn a lot from others, and later on can teach a lot to others. </p>
<p>All in all, this is why this community is also pretty hard on those poor GCs. ;)</p>
<p>They GCs at my kids school are all over the map. Some are excellent, the one my kids are alphabetically assigned to is one big 6. Not only did the school block the Common App, he didn’t know how the Common App worked. The whole process seemed to be a surprise to him. His delays nearly cost my D her admission.</p>
<p>“the OP to let us know that the GCs at one of the best --if not the most recognized-- public high school in the country are pretty good,”</p>
<p>TJ though a governors school, etc is administered by Fairfax County Public Schools. Its GC are hired by FCPS, paid the same as GCs at other FCPS, and transfer to and from other FCPS schools.</p>
<p>I know a few - some are excellent. Some are pretty good. At least one in an important position, managed to royally screw up my DDs senior year class schedule. They are NOT the elite of the world. They may be slightly better, on average, than the average for FCPS, because TJ is a desirable place to work. They certainly have to spend less time with kids who are about to drop out of school completely. They have to spend a lot of time though, with kids dealing with the stress of TJ.</p>
<p>Despite all that, they seem to me to be reasonably well informed about a range of national universities. </p>
<p>The poll was not rigged, it was what I came up with on the spur of the moment. I did want a two by two for the ones who were helpful - in terms of amount of input, and quality of input - as otherwise I felt those two factors would be confused.</p>
<p>I did not think such nuance was required for the other two answers.</p>
<p>By the way, you have accused me of rigging the poll. And of using this as an attempt to talk about GCs at TJ. </p>
<p>I hope you are more polite IRL, or you will have difficulty succeeding, whatever the rank of the school you attend is.</p>
!</p>