Poll:how helpful was your GC in your college search?

Parents Forum
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<p>DS was a music performance major. The GC at his school was no help at all and actually told him not to bother applying to the school where he GOT his bachelors degree (when he was accepted with performance merit aid, we copied it and sent it to her).</p>

<p>DD’s GC was a different one. He was pleasant enough but since DD was applying to schools 3000 miles away from home, he was less than helpful. He told DD that she probably wouldn’t get accepted at the school where she got her bachelors degree with two majors.</p>

<p>From what I understand from other parents, DS’s GC wasn’t helpful to most parents we knew. DD’s GC was fine with colleges located closer to home.</p>

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<p>From a survey standpoint, you’d divide it into several questions anyway:</p>

<p>What was the amount of input you received from your GC?
(none, minimal / basic, moderate, etc.)</p>

<p>And for those who received at least minimal / basic input …
How customized to your needs was the input you received?
(not at all customized, only a little bit, etc.)</p>

<p>What was the quality of the input you received?
(poor, fair, ok, good, very good, excellent)</p>

<p>Because it’s very possible than some GCs / systems are set up to give only basic info but it could still be well-organized and helpful (testing dates, resources, etc.). Or, some GCs / systems could wind up giving a lot of very customized advice to a student’s needs – but it might not be good advice (for example, erroneous notions about musical theater programs or architectural programs). </p>

<p>Our kids spent last year making nicey-nice to the GC in hopes that they would stand out enough to have something other than a generic recommendation, and we just received a letter that she’s going to be on maternity leave. Ouch. So, the GC rec will be written based off an info sheet they supply to her replacement and a 15-20 minute session with this person. Why the schools continue to engage in this farce is ridiculous.</p>

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<p>What you need from the GC is how they check off the questionaires, not so much what they write, unless it’s very personal and glowing.</p>

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<p>Do not despair; this might actually be beneficial. </p>

<p>Since this new person does not have much information to rely on, take the initiative. Gather as much information before the meeting, including (if possible) the LORs of the teachers, prepare a detailed activity list of ECs and coursework, and present it in a folder with all the out-of-school information. Do not hesitate to present the information YOU would like her to focus on in the form of bullet points. Also, do not forget to present your OWN evaluation of the difficulty of the curriculum. It is important to discuss this with the GC as people tend to err on the conservative side. If your children took the hardest classes available, the GC HAS to mark “hardest” or whatever term is used in the application. Fwiw, the same folder could be use to approach the teachers (minues the LOR, of course.) </p>

<p>The new person will be most thankful to use your well-crafted documentation, and be free to spend more time chasing the information to help students who were not as proactive.</p>

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<p>I wonder if one of our CC “archive” specialists can post links to the numerous other threads which have discussed hs guidance folks in the past. This subject has been hashed out at least several times before.</p>

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<p>And isn’t it wonderful that U.S.N.W.R.'s rankings now include the opinions of guidance counselors?</p>

47

<p>Ours was no help at all, except that she did get all of S’s paperwork in on time :)</p>

<p>I had one meeting with her & S; I stressed how he needed to find some academic and financial safeties. The schools she recommended did not have his major, and one of them was an OOS public that would have run us $45K</p>

<p>She was in and out of the room the whole time because she was also supposed to be supervising a mediation session.</p>

<p>CC was may more helpful.</p>

48

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<p>Sure, they can do all that, but it still strikes me as a pointless waste of time to prepare this to hand over to some third party who wouldn’t know anything about them if she tripped over them, and have her write a rec. I mean, I might as well just go grab some random stranger from Starbucks and hand them the same info. Pointless, pointless, pointless. Not her fault at all – but still pointless. Their activities are all well covered elsewhere in the apps and their teachers are the ones who can point out the more qualitative aspects of them. I still have no satisfactory answer as to why colleges engage in this complete farce – they KNOW that the kids from the elite private schools have counselors who know them well, and they KNOW that the kids from most public schools have the generic “Johnny seems like a nice, hardworking young man who is interested in (checks sheet) chemistry / math / history / languages” generic recs. So why don’t they just stop?</p>

49

<p>Interesting question. We’ve had two kids go through the process. And we had a pretty good working list for both before first meeting the GCs in the spring of their junior year.</p>

<p>K1: GC acted like we were starting at square 1. We weren’t but we listened anyway . Her advice was way off the mark. She suggested an out-of-state public that she had a connection with that was considerably beneath K1’s ability. We ignored her and she did not return for K1’s senior year, thankfully. The next GC was better and was also K2’s GC.</p>

<p>K2: GC knew we had been through the process and just asked if we had stated a list. We shared it with her and she didn’t have much to add. She did provide an assessment of K2’s chances based upon recent graduates. She was smart enough to realize that K2 had done her homework and didn’t need to add much, if anything.</p>

<p>IMO what you should expect from a GC is the ability to get the school’s part of the application done. By that I mean making sure the transcript is correct and gets to the colleges a kid applies to. Basically these are the things that the student can’t do. Good advice is gravy.</p>

50

<p>I don’t know if the OP is still reading, but hopefully that provides some perspective as to why so many of us see the hs GC’s as not very helpful and why it’s not a good idea to generalize the experience at one of the best public hs in the country to most!</p>

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<h1>50, see my post 32</h1>

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<p>To be fair to the GC: At least in my area, many of the kids ARE starting at square one. </p>

<p>I do know that the GCs really are more knowledgeable about “better” colleges – but they don’t often get the opportunity to use that knowledge, as so many parents are either hampered by money or just wouldn’t ever think to send their kid more than a few hours from home. They (the GCs) could talk up the elite schools all they like to the smart kids, but at one point it gets tiring for them. How much headway can they really make with a family who just doesn’t have anything on the horizon outside the state, or who see good enough as, well, good enough? You can’t make families be willing to spend $50K a year when they don’t want to!</p>

<p>And if my client base was 80% the in-state publics, 15% the private colleges that are within a day’s drive, and only 5% elsewhere, I sure wouldn’t spend my time becoming an expert on the 5% elsewhere. Learning about the finer points of Williams vs Amherst vs Swarthmore vs Middlebury when you might only have one or two kids a year applying to these places and they are long shots for everybody – what’s the incentive for them? Indeed, * they wouldn’t be doing their jobs * if they focused on analyzing the fine points of W/A/S/M and not on how to best get financial aid out of Eastern Illinois or Western Illinois Universities, which will serve far more of their student base.</p>

53

<p>Son’s GC is a very kind hearted person who works endless hours and tries very hard. Here comes the “but”…he has too many “other” jobs to be able to put the time into learning about so many schools. I think that he does put a lot of time into writing the counselor’s report for the applicaition. I do think that at a minimum a high school counselor should know quite a bit about the instate public Us and instate private colleges. I asked my son’s GC if he knew if an instate lower tiered public U had an honor’s program. I was told that this by the GC that this school does not have an honor’s program, but this was not correct and is an important piece of information for a family! I found out about the honor’s program and the merit aid that goes with that program through an open house event. At the end of the day my son did not apply for personal reasons, but that is not the point.</p>

54

<p>Absolutely useless. At one point she refused to help me with my applications because I was applying to more than a few schools and many were out of state. It took a very stern confrontation and getting my transcripts directly from the school secretary to make any progress.</p>

55

<ol>
<li>Public school gc’s don’t have time and/or resources in our district.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Both S’ knew very specific degree programs they were interested in very early in HS, and that really defined and limited the search. Yes, I realize my guys are the exception to the rule when beginning college search. And I am very grateful they both have stuck with their degree choices, quite happily, I might add.</p>

56

<h1>6. My counselor ignored every meeting I set up with her for three years, and then lost my papers for a $60,000 scholarship. [I got it back after transferring schools, thankfully.] I actually never met that counselor just because she never once showed up to a single meeting, answered an email or phone call, or anything else. When it came to submitting transcripts, I’d have to call each school I applied and let them know my counselor wouldn’t answer any of my messages, so I couldn’t get anything from her. A few schools wouldn’t accept my application, but two of them were nice enough to let a teacher submit an unofficial transcript for me. If there were an option for being detrimental to college applications, I would choose that one.</h1>

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<p>LOL! Something way off this scale. College preparation are two words that are not in my high school’s vocabulary.</p>

58

<p>Hahahahahaha … two kids, two schools. One private, one public. GCs at both schools useless in the college search. They should have paid ME.</p>

59

<p>Yes, the subject has been beaten like a dead horse. Yes, again it shows that unless your scholl has a dedicated college counselor, at the public high school level the guidance counselor’s main job is not college counseling or advising.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/847689-advice-inital-mtgs-followup-gc.html?highlight=guidance+counselors[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/847689-advice-inital-mtgs-followup-gc.html?highlight=guidance+counselors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/264556-high-school-guidance-office.html?highlight=guidance+counselors[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/264556-high-school-guidance-office.html?highlight=guidance+counselors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/931463-does-your-gc-read-cc.html?highlight=counselor[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/931463-does-your-gc-read-cc.html?highlight=counselor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I said this 4 years ago and I still stand by my words.</p>

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<p>Previous post</p>

<p>I think that the main reason that GCs get trashed is that parents and students really are uniformed as to the role of the GC. Most parents here on CC think that the GC does nothing (or is supposed to do nothing) but the college counseling and college related services. In probably a small handful of schools are there dedicated GC’s as most GC do cover soup to nuts. </p>

<p>This has been an overview of my week…
This includes being mandated reporters for child protective services, running groups, related service counselors for special education students (these students are required to see you so much time during the week, so no matter what is going on you must see them at their appointe time), case conferencing with teachers, administrators, social workers, city agencies, mental health officials about the child. </p>

<p>It is about tracking attendance, coming up with intervention plans, redirections (whether it is a GED program, alternative high school, work program). </p>

<p>In NYC public schools, if you do not have grade advisors (we don’t) you register students for regents exams, program students (do program changes) for the current and next term. you send promotion and graduation in doubt letters (and have to hear the fall out and tale of woe after they are received), select you incoming class of 9th graders and plan orientaion for those student, drop everything when one of your students is in the deans office (for many of the kids on the case load, you are the closest thing they have to a caring parent) or you are called to the nurses office because one of your students has just slit her wrist in between classes and is getting ready to be taken to the psych ward. </p>

<p>You come into the classroom and pull out the student to let him know that his mother just had a hear attack and died this morning, then you come back and let the class know what happened. In NYC public schools you deal with Bloods, Crips, DDPs and all other gang infractions and keep the peice when cell phones are stolen, people are shot. You are the person who has to sign off and conference on transfers in and out of the school (transportation, medical, safety). You are the go to person when your student is called to the dean office or is about to be arrested. </p>

<p>Are we trained to to college counseling? No, we are trained as mental health professionals, as the Masters Degree is in applied psychology - School Counseling a 60 credit masters (where the masters for teachers is 32 credits) and one year internship for initial certification, and additional 30 credits(if you ever want to see a bump in salary) and 3 years work experience with in 5 years for permanent certification. Most GC in NYC are trained as K-12 Guidance Counselors so our recommended internshps are 1 term in elementary ed/middle school setting and 1 term in high school setting (I knew I wanted to high school so my entire internship experience was in high school) courses are in psychology. It was the 15 years in corporate life doing HR (Training, Adult Ed and Workplace learning, and running a tuition aid program is where I learned the college counseling piece. I have a Masters in this area too.)</p>