At my older kid’s school, the counseling office fought that by giving the kids deadlines through November and December. Once ED/REA was submitted, you had to turn in essays for other schools from your approved list, about 2-3 a week depending on how many schools were on your list. They wanted to review them all before winter break started. There was still a bit of an issue since a lot of them ended up adding to their lists if the ED decision did not go their way, but the applications from the original list were mostly done.
4th form is 11th grade. My son is 3rd former and no counselor is assigned…
I think this is school-dependent. Confused me too. Figured it would be the same everywhere.
Assuming your son goes to my school (the only one I know of that calls juniors IV Form), he’ll get one in the winter of junior year. The CCO has a philosophy of intentionally not starting the college process until junior year.
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At Kent, 4th is 10th and 5th is 11th.
Since I’m here-I’ll make an update. We had a virtual introduction to the college counselor and after we finished all three of us firmly believed hiring him was the way to go-including my extremely reticent husband. So far I am glad we did-not only has he helped with course selections and pushing us to go on college visits already-he set us up with practice tests and tutoring and our child is gearing to the December ACT. Meanwhile; my daughter has had one quick meeting with her college counselor and they sent us a flyer about test prep over the summer. I was told by the school counseling office that it kicks into high gear spring of Junior year once the current seniors are basically done. In my mind if you’re eyeing ED schools, it’s a little late. Not necessarily a reason alone to hire a private counselor but for us it’s helpful for a first kid: we will know the ropes the second time around!
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Sounds like a great fit.
Being on the other side of it now, I am still fascinated by the process. We didn’t use an outside counselor, but I get why someone would. While there is plenty of time between Winter junior year and apps being due, it doesn’t feel like it. If your kid needs more structure in the search process, or is on a different schedule, or it feels like having a neutral person in charge will help bring down the tension, great! Sounds like you found someone who can give you exactly what you want. Good luck!
My daughter’s school strongly discouraged the use of outside counselors. I think one of the results of that policy is that there were clear boundaries between the parent and the student in the application process. I liked those boundaries; they kept the control freak side of my personality at bay. I shudder to think of how tempted I would have been to micro-manage my daughter if the boundary had not been there. But that is my character flaw. I’m not great at letting go.
At her school, the process began in the fall of junior year with some group webinars/zoom presentations with the junior class and their parents to cover general topics like financial aid, athletic recruitment, and the college application timeline. Then in January, students starts meeting with the college team. However, those meetings are between the student, their academic advisor, and the college team (parents aren’t included). Parents don’t start engaging with their individual child’s college advisor until later that spring. So my first and only meeting with my daughter and her college advisor was in February or March, but it was only one meeting. Some parents had more including meetings in fall of senior year, but I didn’t feel the need to do so.
My daughter did her research and crafted her list with the college advisory team and my input was limited to running net price calculators and making clear which schools needed to be crossed off because they were unaffordable. The whole application process, writing essays, setting up interviews, filling out the common app was done at school and while my daughter emailed me a copy of one of the supplements because she was curious about what I thought, I did not see any of her other writing or the common app itself. She attended fly-ins and some in person campus visits, but she set them up and arranged transportation on her own (maybe with the college advisor’s help?).
I felt like it worked out well for us, but I imagine that parents who wanted to be more involved might have been frustrated to not be welcomed into the process more and those are the parents who might want to hire someone outside. Also, parents who don’t trust the school’s team might hire from the outside. Still, it seems a bit wild to spend 50K+ on prep school and then have to spend more to outsource the college process. Anyway, my daughter seemed to feel good about the whole thing. Stressed at times, but she found it manageable and she likes being independent. I think keeping parents at bay probably helps kids make it their own process rather than allowing the parent to dictate. I am sure that there are outside consultants who also help enforce boundaries between parents and kids, but my guess is that some consultants feel obliged to honor the parents’ wishes over the student’s preferences.
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The general advice I’ve received from upperclassmen has been only to use an outside counselor in the last month or two as a person who can be an extra pair of eyes for your essays. In general, they’ve all found the school counselors very helpful for everything else.
We didn’t use an outside consultant and had a great expertise. I think the schools like to know if you are using someone so they know where ideas are coming from and can collaborate if necessary.
A friend who is an independent counselor says it’s really hard to work with kids who need to hide her from their school counselors. Especially because the latter are often submitting recs, etc.
I will say hiring someone for the full enchilada isnt necessary at this point (jr yr). You really need someone to just help or even provide another lens for essay writing (unless you are trying to access the athletic recruiting pathway and there are specialized counselors for that)
Otherwise i know people who have hired these counselors for their MS kids to be able to craft a long term plan of activities, interests, achievements. This costs $$$$$ (and works of course) and requires early planning.
I think everything else can be navigated by student, parent, CC or other advisors at school. My #1 just went off to college. A counselor wouldnt have changed her outcome or trajectory. And i def helped manage her process as her CC was completely useless as well as checked out bc she was leaving (and on top of that was gone for 6 wks in the fall)…
my #2 who is at boarding school (and a new jr to boot) will use the college counselor to help. the more time you can spend with them - the better list you will have
Standardized tests are the crapshoot that no one can predict