Questions for Meeting w/HS Guidance Counselor

Parents Forum
1

<p>We have a meeting scheduled with DS' high school guidance counselor. He is a junior at small public high school (700 students). Looking for some suggestions from those parents that have been through this as to the questions that we should be asking. </p>

<p>We asked for meeting to get start on college process. DS is good student, in top 10 of class. Has a number of ECs(some w/leadership roles) , taken many APs already as well as college courses. For now, we think he apply to couple of Ivys as well as Stanford, MIT, state school, and then couple of to-be-determined competitive schools. </p>

<p>What things should we try to find out from the guidance dept? Is there anything that you expected them to do, only to find out later on they didnt do or needed to be asked to do so? Our HS does send 2-3 students each year to top schools, but not sure how much assistance is provided by the school.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for the help!</p>

2

<p>Seriously, you cannot get much good advice from a public school GC if you want your kid to apply to selective colleges. You may want to ask about the profile of the kids in the previous years.</p>

3

<p>Ask for suggestions for some good match/safety schools that fit his tastes and interests--fit is really a key factor and there is an awful lot of gray area between :"a couple of Ivy's, MJIT, Stanford" and unless it is Berkeley/UNC/ UVa caliber. There is so much more to this game than numbers in terms of both admission and comfort-level when you get there. (What will set him apart from other well-qualified applicants and and what will he want in the way of the experience once admitted? Big/little/urban/suburban/rural/close to home/farm from home/atmosphere on campus, climate, accessibility of faculty, and so on. Is need-based aid going to come into plau? willavailability of merit aid be a factor?)</p>

4

<p>Ask how the office handles the materials that come from the school in the ap process: transcript, school profile, recommendations. Do they have a paper trail for requests and when the materials are mailed and is that shared with the student? If not, you may want to plan to be attentive and check with the GC whenever deadlines are approaching.</p>

<p>Ask about the normal process: what the office usually does with students and when it happens. We found that the local GC got involved pretty late.</p>

<p>Ask the counselor about the colleges with which he/she is familiar and has the most experience and contact. If yours is not a school known to feed students into the more selective schools, the expertise in the counseling office may be limited to state schools and a local LAC or two. This is fine. But it's good to know, so you know where and when to get busy if your student's interests are outside the geographic area or are more selective.</p>

5

<p>Ask how the GC gets information for him/her to write his/her recommendation. Make sure that they have the info you want them to have. Some schools ask for "brag letters' from the parents, which is an opportunity for you to make sure your GC knows about your kid.</p>

<p>I'm not sure I agree with coolweather:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Seriously, you cannot get much good advice from a public school GC if you want your kid to apply to selective colleges.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's just not necessarily the case. You need to assess the GC yourself. Some are good and some are bad.</p>

<p>You may also want to speak to your school's parents of the kids in previous years who were accepted at top schools and find out what they did and how they took advantage of what the GC had to offer. They will be familiar with your school's advantages and disadvantages.</p>

6

<p>My advice is to be very careful and respectful of the GC. Our experience (at a much larger public school, with only 5 GCs for 2400 students) was that the GC was well-meaning, but bureaucratic, and very touchy if he thought parents were trying to push him. The culture of the school was really that the top students self-counselled, although the GCs were happy to lend them copies of college guides or to suggest LACs they might not have thought about. (At a high school that sends only 4-5 kids to selective LACs each year, all of the GCs' kids had gone to selective LACs.) The GC's most important role was to make certain the school's material was complete and would be received by the colleges in a timely fashion, and he did a good job of that. The GCs were also used to dealing with students, not with parents. They were respectful of parents, but regarded them as somewhat irrelevant if they were not being obstructionist (e.g., refusing to fill out FAFSA).</p>

<p>It's his (or her) show. From the GC's point of view, he knows what he is doing, and you don't. So you need to listen carefully to what he is saying, and to adjust your expectations (and questions) to what his role really is.</p>

7

<p>Ask how you can help make things go smoothly and easily. Also, in our area, the career center does a lot of the heavy lifting of processing information, not the GC. You need to check if there is another person also involved and again how you can help. </p>

<p>For us, large public school, GC was not that helpful except getting the info out. If you wanted help finding a school, career center had the resources to do that. However, neither were any good for the arts :)</p>

8

<p>The only things that we counted on GC to do for D1 was get to know her, her accomplishments, and talk to her teachers, so that she could write honest, informative recommentations. Our school is >2000 kids, so to expect much hand-holding through the college app process was unreasonable, IMO. Our school has a process for handling the paperwork requests: transcripts, etc. that seems like it works fairly well. D1 established a good relationship with GC junior year, and better senior year....but usually through pop-in hellos, to drop things off, etc. She also sched a meeting with the principal (who did not know her, even though she was val.---not the most personable principal). D's taking charge of the school side of things paid off in scholarship awards from various civic organizations, as well as high placement in honors/scholarships at several schools. Otherwise, we (D1 and I) did most of the research, D2 kept files to organize, I made spreadsheets to compare schools, and to map out due dates, when it got too overwhelming for D1, while at the same time trying to keep her grades at the top. H and I offered advice, D1 made the decisions. And MOST OF ALL, I learned the do's and don'ts by becoming a CC junkie. It really helped. I strongly advised D to stay far, far, away......the competitive school threads would put any student over the edge, but passed along especially good tips as I came to them. It worked out well for us.....and D2 and I are ramping up for this game right now.</p>

9

<p>You can inquire about the stats of applicants and where they were accepted/rejected. My kids' HS had a notebook listed alphabetically by school and the stats of the kids (no names) who applied to that school plus the outcome - accepted/rejected but no info about matriculation. Anyone could ask to see it.</p>

10

<p>Yes, LittleMother, my school had the same. Very very helpful. Of course it doesn't tell things like ECs, recs, Legacy, athletic recruit, etc., but it was a real blast of truthfulness to know who got in where.</p>

11

<p>I think it's great that you are trying to form a partnership with the GC - drawing the GC into your d's college process is an excellent idea (at my kids school all the juniors and their parents are required to meet with the counselor in the spring to map out their college plan).
Only thing I would add is discussing with them about early action applications - so they are aware of the earlier than normal deadline for materials. This was a big issue at our school this year - a higher number than normal decided to apply early and the counseling office was caught by surprise and had to scramble to get everything sent out early. Not sure if they made it on time in many cases - 2 out of 4 counselors were new to the school and on a fast learning curve.</p>

12

<p>If the GC mentions Naviance, pay attention and ask if you can get access to the information. (Not every school belongs to Naviance.) Sometimes, they give the passwords to the kids, who don't share with their parents. Lots of folks don't know anything about it, and how useful it is. </p>

<p>The scattergrams show how kids from your school did in getting acceptances at colleges. Shows their gpa and SAT so you can get an idea on the kids chances of getting in.</p>

13

<p>Naviance is a very helpful tool. The charts are really fascinating E.g., Stanford seems to hate our school, but you can see on Naviance that the one person they admit annually has a fairly low GPA/SAT relative to all they reject. Always an athlete. I am not complaining, as I think athletes tend to work very hard (our S had higher grades when he was a varsity athlete!), and test scores are, IMHO, not the best indicator of success (our kid has very high test scores and GPA that is lower than you'd expect, just in case you are wondering). It's just interesting. But don't take it as gospel. And understand that Naviance is completely stats based--you have no idea about leadership, etc. Our son applied to a couple schools where he was in the stratosphere for Naviance but he was applying for vocal performance, so that's an entirely different kettle of fish. No word yet on acceptances, so I shouldn't be posting, really!</p>

<p>Our school also shares its own stats for the last five years, online--lowest GPA applied, lowest admitted, average applied, average admitted, etc. Very very helpful (doesn't stop a kid from magical thinking, where he thinks could possibly be the lowest GPA admitted in next year's stats...). And we also have access to a book that shows GPA and SAT of every student admitted to every school--no names but of course you can tell who some of them are. You can see how many times kids took the SAT. Ask to see that book, if you have one. We have a huge (2500-plus) school, though, and 15 guidance counselors.</p>

<p>Ask about Rugg's majors book. Or check your local library. Son's GC printed out the list of Music Major schools with levels of selectivity. Say your kid is interested in linguistics--ask for that list, too. Of course, it has its quirks: it lists Curtis in the 3rd tier of selectivity when it's the most selective music school, but there may be academic criteria involved. In any case, it is useful, especially if your kid likes two subjects and you can cross reference.</p>

<p>In the end, we--son and parents--did all the research, and the GC did the paperwork, and of course the GC letter.</p>

<p>But here's what I wish we had done differently: S wants to go into music--singing and choral directing. He wanted to drop Spanish and take Italian or German and the GC pointed out that he would be in AP Spanish and that would be good--four years of Spanish and an AP. So far, not so good--he hates it. He is sorry he didn't take Italian, as he's going to sing in Italy this summer! (Younger S put his foot down and said he wanted to take French for two years, who cares if he doesn't have 3-4 years of Spanish?) Don't worry so much about what you THINK the colleges want. Gently allow your kid to do what he really wants to do, as long as he understands what his ideal colleges expect. E.G., Vassar recommends 4 years of science but does not require it.</p>

<p>Overall, I suggest respecting the GC. Ours has been doing this for 20-plus years and while I had heard some stories about how she steered some kid the wrong way, I chose to believe she would be fine, and she's been great. She truly wants her kids to get into the best school for them.</p>

14

<p>Make sure you get a timeline from the counselor about when they expect certain things to be done. Then make sure your child is done with those things BEFORE the deadline. Getting your stuff to the counselor the day before winter break is going to mean your stuff does not get to the admissions office by Jan. 1.</p>

<p>Another area where our counselor was helpful was in helping my sons choose who to ask for letters of recommendation. My son went with a list of people he was considering. The counselor was able to indicate who wrote really excellent letters. She knew this because she had read so many of the over the years.</p>

15

<p>If the GC will be writing a recommendation, ask if the student should submit a self-description of his EC's and interests outside of school. ONe page resume, just to give her some facts that will bring him to her mind as she writes the letter. </p>

<p>If she has no such system in place, ask if he can hand her such a page, anyway, before she writes the letter; if she'd not mind. Some might regard this as interfering, while others might welcome it.</p>

<p>If you've not yet read it, plow through the current thread, "l0l things I wish I knew..." how people would do differently if only they'd known..</p>

<p>Ask how early next fall he can begin to ask teachers to write letters of recommendation. Early bird gets the worm, sometimes, as teachers run out of time and start capping who'll they'll write for.</p>

<p>Ask what is her deadline next fall or early winter for receiving all the copies of applications, essays and so on. That is the "real" deadline your kid must shoot for, not the college deadline which might be a month later than the high school's! It'll help you plan. Big difference when the h.s. has a drop-deadline of Dec. 1 for applications due at colleges on Jan.1. They need their 2 weeks to shuffle papers before they go onto winter break.</p>

<p>I always took a respectful approach to GC's even though we did most of the research from home. They have many tasks, including course advising for the h.s. career. </p>

<p>I concur with JHS' outlook on public GC's. I suggest you use the meeting this week to identify which pieces she will do, but don't ask more of her than she's used to. INstead, assume you'll be doing/guiding S to do... the rest of the research yourself from home. Even so, try to get a way to keep the GC updated and listen to some feedback; for example, what they say is a "match" you might think was a "safety" because you have a high opinion of your own kid (as we all do and should). Sometimes the GC is a reality check against overestimating your kid's chances. Other times, they underestimate your kid, so just try to consider the GC's opinions a VOTE not a VETO on where to apply.</p>

16

<p>Should have mentioned that our school requires kids to fill out a really detailed form with all the things payint3tuitions recommends--a really good idea if your school doesn't have such a setup. And our school asks parents to write a detailed page or two about their kid. Also a good idea.</p>

17

<p>The above responses beautifully detail why I love CC --- so many fabulous insights and suggestions!</p>

<p>IMHO, the most important thing you can do with the first meeting is to get acquainted. If you can get some idea of how the GC sees his/her job, then you can devise a college search and application strategy that best utilizes what the GC can provide.</p>