So often I read advice on CC about consulting with school counselors on the college application process in a way that makes me realize the huge gulf that exists between counseling at private and highly ranked public “feeder” schools and everybody else.
Just to give a snapshot:
Our local school has about 400 seniors per year with one school counselor assigned to all of them for ALL counseling needs, not just college advice and assistance.
The school is diverse, with maybe only 50-60% going on to college, but it offers over 20 APs, has 4-5 National Merit Scholars each year, a few winners of prestigious scholarships like Amazon’s Future Engineers, and sends a handful to Top 20 colleges each year. These kids come up with their college lists on their own. There is no Naviance or other historical college data (or Scoir or any other app to upload info to colleges other than the Common App or Coalition App).
The counseling my D22 received was as follows:
Once a year, the counselor walked through the classroom full of students as they filled out their schedule requests for the following year and signed off on them. The only thing she ever said to my D22 about her proposed schedule was, “Are you sure you want to take that many APs?” When D22 said yes, she shrugged and signed off. There was ZERO mention of the value of course rigor to college applications.
Each student had access to online career aptitude/interest quizzes and searchable profiles of colleges. There were zero personal meetings or conversations or input about what schools or majors might be a good fit.
Each student was responsible for completing a “beyond high school” plan and resume as a graduation requirement. This was reviewed and either approved or sent back for revisions for each student — all communication via email.
In response to a student’s online request, the counselor uploaded a school report, transcript, and midyear report indiscriminately to every school applied to via the Common or Coalition apps (whether required or not).
Our public HS is very similar to that profile, only a little larger - I believe there were about 2850 students and 9 counselors this year, with counselors assigned to alphabetical last-name groupings across all classes. We do have Naviance (though with limited functionality compared to others on CC), but no one is required to do even a perfunctory “beyond high school” plan. Otherwise, this is spot-on. So the parents who have time and resources become de facto college counselors for their own kids (and friends’ kids), and on the whole, things have turned out surprisingly well in this very challenging admissions cycle. There were at least two ED Ivy acceptances, and several of the top students will be attending T20-ish schools (Rice/Emory/WashU/etc.). Perhaps on some level this validates the school’s choice not to devote resources to college counseling?
Yes, our high school is very different from most here. 4 guidance counsellors serve roughly 1300-1400 students. Freshman classes are 400-500 and graduating seniors are 200-300. Therefore keeping kids IN school and getting them across the stage is the #1 priority, not the college bound kids. I would guess roughly 50 kids go to college each year.
Never heard of Naviance or common data set before I came here. I would have never known to even google for something like the common data set. We were lucky that H stumbled across an old Fiske college book at goodwill. We loved that thing, but had never heard of it before. We used that a lot.
Picking classes? The college bound kids get together and see what everyone else is doing. Then, they drop off their pick lists with guidance. There’s very little interaction. They might see their counsellor if they go to the office and search through the scholarship drawer. I believe mine also went down to let them know that they applied to colleges and to make sure the counsellors did their part. I heard too many stories whose counsellors did not submit material on time.
Definitely no online career stuff or beyond high school plan was done.
Now, my kids have told me about some kind of college guidance person that technically isn’t an employee of the school system. They are recent graduates of a state flagship and I think some of their loans may be forgiven by doing this for a couple of years? But, they tend to help the kids who have no help. And the kids must come to them.
The do have a night where people who want help with FASFA can come. And I once went to a meeting about scholarships and grants. It was all very basic info though.
But at our HS, it is almost all the kids working together and figuring it out themselves, with some support from their parents. Edit: my older S wound up at an often mentioned on CC LAC. Despite it being in state and having driven by it many times over the years, I had never heard of it! We “found” it because a long time teacher is a die hard alum and would take 2-3 students to visit each year. S was one of them.
Same experience for us. Semi-competitive public with ~2000 kids. About 50% are free lunch. Rated 3 by Greatschools but actually, it has been excellent for both our kids. Most kids that go to college, end up in state schools. We have excellent state schools. Few kids for go T10, ivy league schools but not many. Those that do, either have extraordinary ambitions or extraordinary parents (lol).
About 4 years ago, my DD’s best friend’s brother was applying to college. We were clueless. One day, my daughter was at their house for dinner and the mail came in. This guy was very happy because his “non-profit” paperwork had arrived. When I heard this, I was dumbfounded. I started to investigate. Came upon this site and A2C. I realized that there is whole another level – $5000 SAT preps, private counselors that used to be AOs at T20 unis, college faculty that “work” with your kids on their essays…I could go on and on.
Our HS graduates just under 300 students, with a graduation rate that hovers around 90%. Half plan on going to 4 year colleges (and almost exclusively our in state publics). We have 15 AP classes, plus full IB (everyone takes the same classes because it is very poorly implemented) but the majority of students take DE classes. Average SAT is 1150.
We have 5 guidance counselors, each class is split evenly among them. Most kids see them once every year, to sign up for classes for the next one. They offer one financial aid/college info night. The spend the bulk of their time working with students who have real problems like incarcerated parents or homelessness. We have Naviance but there is no advising about which colleges would be a good choice or really how to pay for it.
Our community is about half in the middle class range and half below. The big deal when redistricting our elementary schools was making sure each school had an equal share of students from the low income apartments and trailer parks.
We knew we had no idea what we were doing and that the school wouldn’t really help us. Our “average excellent” kid didn’t warrant any extra support or guidance but she knew she didn’t want to go to the same schools where her classmates were going. I guess we were lucky because our bank (not based in our town, but in the state capital) hosted a college info night where they talked about financing options and had a private counselor as a guest speaker. He really opened our eyes to the process, or we fell for his sales pitch, and my parents loaned us the money to hire him. D20 got exactly what she wanted - an ED acceptance to a T20 LAC with no loans and they meet full need. No regrets but really feel for folks who don’t have access to personalized service and advice.
This sounds exactly like our school and we have a relatively large group going to Ivy and top tier schools. The biggest “notable” I would say is that we have a huge percentage of first generation immigrant children with very high financial need. That might help get more than the average number of kids into those top schools, but it also means they did it all themselves with no help from the counselors other than simply pushing out the required paperwork at the students request. I’m actually pretty proud of our student body. They are very successful.
Yes, that’s about our experience with D17 and D22.
We did attend one “college readiness” session for D17. The decision process seemed to be: Top students - Pitt or Penn State?; others - which PSSHE school, or local CC?
That’s disappointing to hear. It was certainly that way back when I was looking at colleges, and the counselor expressed some disbelief that one would consider going out of state. One would hope that things had improved.
Our public HS in MA has good college counseling. Starting junior year they have some seminars for the kids and parents to go over the basics. There are a lot on-line resources for the kids to use, including SCOIR, and each student meets one on one with kids at the end of junior to get the ball rolling. Most kids (90% +/-) go on to 4 year college so kids have the mindset. Of course, the quality of individual GCs really varies. We were lucky - ours was great. She met with my son 4 times in the first half of the year to find out his interests, make sure he had all his materials ready, suggested some schools and even reviewed his common app essay. When we were debating going TO she called me at home and spoke with me for an hour (on her own time after school). I feel fortunate. I will add that she is a former private college counselor so she was really knowledgeable in a way that some GCs at the school are not. As a reference, about 20 kids per year end up at T20 schools (about 1/2 of those are Ivy/MIT). Another 40 or so will end up at top 20 LACs or schools in the T20-50 range. Not sure how it went this year - have heard about a Harvard, Dartmouth and Cornell but not a lot else so far - a lot of kids are still deciding.
Public high school where 85% of the graduating class goes on to a 4-year college. Approximately 10% of those students attend an ivy/T20. Our school is a known commodity with over 300 admission reps visiting annually.
We have a team of counselors who have open-door policies for everyone, but are primarily dedicated to helping the junior and senior classes. Our counselors are educated, knowledgeable, and cultivate relationships with AOs at all levels.
College counseling ramps up in spring of junior year. The counseling department hosts several college and financial aid nights for parents. They share a list of alma maters attended by current teachers and counselors and invite students interested in those colleges to reach out for more information.
Our school uses Naviance. College-bound students are required to enter colleges to which they will be applying into Naviance; both counselor and teacher letters of rec are uploaded through the Naviance portal. In order to be cleared for graduation, seniors must update Naviance with their final college choice. This final step ensures historical data for the following years and ensures final transcripts are sent to the correct place.
Finally, a good chunk of LA class (junior spring/senior fall) is spent writing and workshopping the common app essay and crafting “brag sheets” for letters of rec. Teachers and counselors rely on brag sheets for crafting solid, glowing letters of rec.
Our college counseling is good but not great. Parents fill the gap. Whether it’s parents like us who are shepherding their third child through high school and know which classes are necessary for highest rigor or parents who hire college consultants and test prep tutors. Students who rely solely on the high school guidance counselors to guide them through the college application process are at a disadvantage.