<p>I'm a junior and will be applying for colleges this fall, and I'm worried about the section my guidance counselor fills out on the Common App.</p>
<p>Until this year I had a different guidance counselor, who was really nice, knew me fairly well, and her daughter was even my 9th grade history teacher (I did really well in her class). Long story short, I wasn't worried about getting a good recommendation from her at all. Unfortunately for me, she retired at the end of last year. </p>
<p>So now, for my last two years of high school, I have a new guidance counselor. Problem is, my new guidance counselor doesn't seem that great, so now I'm worried (go figure, right?). It's already halfway through the school year, and I've only met her once so far, so I don't really know how she's going to be able to say anything about me. </p>
<p>My old guidance counselor would set up meetings with each of her students two times a year and was the type of person who'd go out on a limb for her students. My new one? My friend and I went to see her for something and my friend mentioned how she liked the poster on the counselor's wall and she just said, "Okay," with zero emotion.</p>
<p>Most GCs, especially at large public high schools, don’t really know their students. The GC will probably just evaluate your course selection and note any disciplinary issue-- colleges understand that GCs will not be able to know all of their students, or even a significant fraction, well enough to write a meaninful letter.</p>
<p>Our kids attended a large public HS where the counselors were overworked and didn’t know them. Most students apply to in state publics. </p>
<p>Even so, D was stunned a few months ago to learn the GC had not even heard of a single school where our D was planning to apply (Bates, Carleton, St. Olaf, Rhodes, etc.) To help the GC fill out the school report D presented the GC with a one page activity resume and very short cover letter explaining why she wanted to attend a small liberal arts college. You might consider doing something like that to help your GC write a better rec for you.</p>
<p>My dd attends a large public school. The counselors have a large student load and mostly deal with scheduling and transcript issues. My dd has had three different counselors in four years. Her current counselor has been at that school just over a year, she does not really know my dd. What they do is ask both the parent and the student him/herself to fill in an input questionnaire where they can give some context to the student and achievements in and out of school. That is the best they can do. May be you can provide them with something like that too if they don’t have it already in place?</p>