After retirement last year, I started volunteering as a college counselor. I most enjoy helping talented aspiring STEM students from low-income backgrounds. I met one such rising senior on Zoom today. She had straight As, had taken numerous AP classes, and had an extensive list of impressive extracurriculars.
And she had a 1200 SAT. Why was her SAT such a mismatch with her grades? Because her counselor told her there was no point in preparing since colleges are now test-optional, so she simply went and took it cold.
I get it that school counselors can be overloaded. But the counselor could simply have said to her “You should spend a few weeks preparing for the SAT before you take it”. She would have taken that advice and ran with it, likely leading to a higher score, possibly much higher.
And the other thing is that her profile screams Questbridge applicant. But my mention of it today was the first time she ever heard about the program, and the application deadline is soon approaching. It would have taken her counselor another 5 seconds to have mentioned this to her by the end of junior year, given that she is the top student in the school.
It’s not wasted potential. She could go test optional.
If she is the top student in her class, she’s probably aiming high. What would her SAT score have to be that would match her grades, rigor, ECs and rank? Would she submit a 1400?
How much work would it take for someone who took it cold as a rising senior to go from 1200 to 1500?
She wasn’t aiming anywhere. She’s never been given any advice from school on what colleges might be a fit for her, and as a first generation student with immigrant parents, her parents don’t understand either. I will be helping her to develop a college list.
I don’t know what her score could rise to. And I think that the real tragedy is that her counselors didn’t put in the slightest bit of effort to see what she was capable of. Given her demographics, if she got a 1400, I would advise her to submit it.
Personally, I dont see how a 1400 would help but test optional would hurt.
Im not disagreeing that the counselor may be giving bad advice. However, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. She didnt have to waste countless hours studying for an exam that most schools dont really care about (unless she wanted to go to MIT).
Let’s be candid. 1st generation, low income, #1 in class, lots of APs, good rigor, ECs. She probably has a decent shot at almost any school in the country.
You may be annoyed at her counselor for many things but I’m not sure test optional is going to hurt her. And it’s probably better to find out that her counselor is no good now than for her to discover this later in the process.
The bigger question in my mind is what are you going to do about the GC recommendation letter? I wouldnt trust this person to write a great recommendation.
That’s a good point regarding the counselor letter. I will tell her to flesh out her “brag sheet” to the point that the counselor can pretty much copy and paste.
I agree with you. Taking a few practice tests and studying the format of the questions (particularly on the EBRW/verbal section) and/or a few minutes each day watching the Khan Academy videos over the summer should have been easy doable. The EBRW is definitely where being familiar with the types of questions and the curveballs that are sometimes thrown can make a big difference.
I don’t know much about Questbridge, but she sure sounds like it would have been something possible for her.
I’m not sure that counselors are trained to be college advisors. They may get basics but are likely not into knowing all the nuances. I think it’s more to get the kids to CC or the local regional college. In our school, they stressed the service requirements for the state scholarship.
Very much agree that most counselors, especially at public schools, are not trained to be college advisors with a lot of nuance.
My kid is in a public, and has had two counselors. When the kid was younger, we kept asking for assistance in finding out more about taking college classes (another student had apparently done so since 8th grade and ended up at a tippy-top STEM school), but was, for all intents and purposes, not very clearly assisted in this matter.
Figuring things out has been confusing. But a path was found, almost by fluke (AP Calc was dropped from the school, replaced by two CCAP dual enrollment Math courses, and the path to an Associate’s degree - not common at our school - emerged).
Fortunately, college confidential posters and threads have been able to fill in some of the gaps.
My kid was actually advised to graduate early. This would have not been a good decision for my kid. Admissions to schools in our state is a bit of a game of chance. Having four years of high school to build up a transcript and ECs that interested our kid and allowed them to stand out is a huge part of their college application.
It’s very apparent that the kids with great counsellors (either at school or hired help) generally have a much better shot at achieving success as they navigate the admissions process.
I think this is the issue. A friend who worked as a GC at our LPS, which serves a community that sends most kids to college and is mostly middle/upper middle class, has an MSW. She is assigned to a class, so does college counseling once every 4 years. Most of her time is spent counseling students with issues, whether mental health, concerns at home, etc. It’s not clear where the time comes from to do this junior/senior year nor how she has any real expertise.
Exactly. The counselors are mandated reporters for abuse and neglect; have to work with pregnant students to access support; testify in court for a teenager seeking to be emancipated; work with a non-violent offender who has entered the criminal justice system to find a program which won’t end up in incarceration… etc.
Parsing the difference between Vanderbilt and Emory starts to drop to the bottom of the to-do list.
OP- these kids are lucky to have you, and better to know now that the counselor doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t know…
It is too bad that most students don’t have adequate college counseling. It’s more than just MIT that requires test scores…it’s all the Florida and TN publics, the selective GA publics, Purdue, Auburn. And some schools really prefer scores like U Michigan.
Average student:counselor ratio is around 450:1, give or take. Most counselors have double duty as a social-emotional counselor (with the requisite educational credentials) and college counselor. And as tsbna points out, most counselors who do have responsibility for college counseling have had no training in it. None.
Even if they did, when would they stay up to date on happenings in the industry when they are seeing students all day long? For the last 6 years or so when I was an independent counselor, every day I was attending zoom sessions with admission staffs, or going to their local presentations for counselors. It’s uncommon HS counselors are at these sessions.
My point is that staying up to speed on the industry takes a lot of time and effort, and HS counselors can’t do that when they are doing social emotional counseling, and any of the other numerous duties they might have (planning/running SAT/ACT/AP testing, writing hundreds of rec letters, helping students with accommodations, putting out fires, etc).
Well…another POV from me. Some kids, even with great prep don’t do better on the SAt. One of my kids was top 5% in her HS class. Excellent grades overall. Took the first SAT sort of cold. Did a op rep course plus practice tests on her own. And used the Xiggi method (remember that?). Second SAT was exactly the same score as the first.
My other kid actually DID improve on the second taking with some prep…but he was a music performance major and his SAT score really didn’t matter very much.
Adding…their school counselors both told them that they wouldn’t get accepted to the colleges they both attended and graduated from. But that’s a whole other story.
School counselor here, yes counselors are overwhelmed. Caseloads are too high. There is often a focus on just making sure students graduate. Many schools do not have social workers, and counselors are responsible for any crises and social emotional well-being. Many schools do have some sort of of college counselor or advisor.
That said, I’ve been very disappointed in my own kids’ counselors and college counselors at one of the top publics in our state. They don’t seem to know or care what classes students take in terms of college applications.
Friend of mine with three kids. Kid A was an academic star- parent complained bitterly what a “moron” the GC was, never told the kid that a Penn legacy needed to apply early for the legacy to “count”, GC never suggested trying both the SAT and ACT to see which one scored better, etc. “useless” GC.
Kid B had some learning issues- different GC at the same HS was “an absolute moron”. Parent had to advocate for everything; took too long to connect the dots, impossible to schedule meetings with the right people in the room; GC got the kid the mandated accommodations but “nothing extra”.
Kid C is now in a residential treatment center for significant mental and physical health issues- thanks to the original “moron” GC who identified Kid C as struggling (parents completely unaware), got the parents looped in to the right medical providers/referrals, encouraged the parents to join a local support group which the mom says “is saving us right now”, takes frantic phone calls at all hours, even on Labor Day weekend.
Somehow the “moron” tag has not been mentioned; GC is no longer “useless”. The GC may have saved the kids life. I guess my point is that so much depends on what a particular kid needs at a certain time, and not every GC is going to have the expertise or the bandwidth at any given moment. But since NOBODY becomes a HS GC to get rich quick- one can assume that the ones that aren’t that helpful with college admissions, are fantastic getting a social work team in place for a kid being abused by a step parent. Or in the case of my friend- has DECADES of experience identifying cutting, eating disorders, suicidal ideation even before the family realizes it.
@hebegebe re counselor letter, just a word of caution. My kids’ school is a good suburban public BUT has one counselor for 650 students. We were told by an admission rep from the T50 my D22 attends that this particular HS has a history of the counselor letter just saying “refer to teacher letter of recommendation”. So, maybe find out if this student’s school’s counselor does something similar, then the teacher’s rec becomes so much more important.
I think that many people have brought up some great points with respect to the work that public school counselors do.
@hebegebe, a couple of things you might want to do:
Reach out to the school counselor. Ask if they would like you to draft a student-specific rec to “inspire” them which might also assist them in seeing what a strong rec letter looks like for other students.
Think about offering a bulleted snap shot of things that might really benefit counselors at this school that they may be unaware of. For instance, I think there’s a good chance the counselor doesn’t know about Questbridge. Or Posse. Giving them a 1-sentence blurb about each might give them a clue. Maybe they don’t know that fly-in programs exist, or how they work. Maybe they don’t know about good, free resources for test prep, so give them some relevant links. This could be a 1-pager that could be useful for the counselors, but they could even just send it on to all their seniors (and maybe juniors) with minimal extra effort on their end.
Thank you for doing this. I know that you make a difference in these students’ lives.
Had similar experiences with our big public HS counselors. They had too many students and their primary job was to keep the kids out of trouble and graduate. The state schools and community colleges are generally accessible and affordable, so the assumption they work with is that the college bound students won’t need much help. When I realized that, I just jumped in, and we hired a private counselor for my oldest. Not all families have the experience or resources to do this.
I understand budgeting issues, but it would seem logical and not cost prohibitive for there to be a GC (or 2, depending on size and number of HS seeking college) for each HS to just focus on college preparatory guidance. There are so many moving parts that having a few GC’s really understand and stay up to date is more efficient than having a bunch barely understand it at all. The specialists create more capacity for the others to handle the non college stuff.
Our school counselors were pretty good with college counseling for schools they knew in the area. Where they had trouble was colleges not nearby, or majors like music performance (which they knew nothing about but weren’t willing to admit they knew nothing about).
My kids fit both of these things.
In both cases the school counselor told my kids not to even bother applying where both were accepted with merit aid, and subsequently received their bachelors degrees.
Fortunately we had other resources to help us (not at any cost). The one kid’s music teachers knew what they were doing…and they knew him. The second kid got a LOT of help from this site, and particularly from one poster turned friend.
