<p>my S '10 had a terrible guidance counselor. She had a roledex on her desk of available scholarships and you were suppose to come in during free time and look through it. She was only in her office 8-3:30 and took a lunch break. She occasionally listed upcoming scholarship deadlines in the daily announcements. One in particular she kept pushing because it was a nice dollar amount. only problem is the recipient had to be african-american. We don’t have any african-american kids in our entire school. She didn’t even know what the scholarships were for !</p>
<p>She said she wasn’t going to “spoon feed” the kids during the college process because they needed to do it on their own. She didn’t help with college match ups or choices, careers, nothing.</p>
<p>S’ senior year she gave the “spoon fed” remark and her usual speach during senior orientation. There were 3 parents attending that were on the school board. needless to say, she was fired and was even asked to leave before the year was up. </p>
<p>Golf, this is pretty typical for even the best GCs. Ours has 65 seniors to get into college somewhere, and she has asked that juniors wait until January to schedule an appointment. She also gave priority appointments to those applying early decision/evaluation all thru Sept and Oct. I think this is only fair.</p>
<p>DD14’s GC had no idea what the PLAN test was. She was astonished when I asked her about it in 2010.</p>
<p>Knowing how important the GC/student relationship is, In November of her freshman year, I asked if DD if she had met with her GC yet and she had not. As I had met with her/spoke to her via telephone but wanted DD to get to know her. In December, right before Christmas break, I told dd to pop into GC’s office to schedule an appt for AFTER Christmas break. DD14’s response was, “mom, she is very busy and really doesn’t have the time for us!” I then told dd that it was her job to get to know her students and it wasn’t her fault that gc was too busy. She went to GC to ask for an appt/after break. And GC’s response was “for what?”. I understand that GC’s are busy, and are stretched thin by college admissions/psych social issues that arise. But I also think its unfair that the “good” students get the short end of the stick. Thats why I am so glad that I found CC. </p>
<p>I have friends who are educators and warned me against send dd to the meeting alone. As the gc would probably hand her her PSAT scores and send her back to class after a quick 5 minute slam bam thank you ma’am meeting…I didn’t mention this to dd and on the morning of the meeting, dd asked that I attend as she was probably a bit nervous about meeting with her for the first time. Of course I did! And when the gc saw that I was there, she was not too happy at all. Our meeting was very productive and lasted 45 minutes. Had I not shown up, I wonder how that initial meeting would have turned out.</p>
<p>At least for the public schools in my community, counselors have a heavy workload exclusive of college admissions related work. Ours have to do everything from dropout prevention to working with DFACs on abuse concerns. They also do a bunch of the registration related activities. It is not uncommon for one counselor to serve 500 students. In addition, due to budget cuts, counselors across our system now are paid for 5 hours less a week than previous years.</p>
<p>For my friends whose children are interested in out of state private schools, I always encourage their parents to use CC or a private counselor. Our counselors don’t have the time or the depth of knowledge to necessarily serve them well.</p>
<p>Our high school is diverse and it took a new counselor arriving two years ago to introduce Questbridge. First year it was publicized, a student received it.</p>
<p>In our school district they are called Academic Advisers. They do not have to have any college degree, just a couple of related CC classes. Many are former school office assistants who get promoted. They are considered ‘para-professionals’ and get paid similar to an admin assistant salary. Ratio of students to advisers is about 550:1.</p>
<p>Saw this thread on the home page . Thought I’d share. Our GC, a decent lady who tried hard to please, had no concept of an “unweighted GPA” and said she had never been asked for one. ;)</p>
<p>My high school guidance counselor told us the PSAT was just practice for the SAT and that there was no need to take it if you planned to go to school in-state, since most Michigan colleges prefer the ACT. So practically nobody took it. Seriously.</p>
<p>But, this is the same woman that told me to apply to colleges even though my parents told me they weren’t paying and I didn’t have a hope or prayer of getting scholarships. “If you can get in, the money will be there.” Really.</p>
<p>When I was a student my friend’s GC, who had recently transferred from a school where she’d been doing the job for 5 years, told my friend she must have been mistaken about her acceptance to Williams, as it was an all-male school. This was 12 years after Williams went co-ed.</p>
<p>Well…not knowing about the common ap when virtually ALL students use it…well that really is a doozie! To be honest, I would just casually mention this to the principal of the school. Seems to me that this GC needs some professional development.</p>
<p>If this new GC is 24 or 25, the common ap was very available when THEY applied to college. That was about when it was becoming more popular than separate aps for each college. DD applied to colleges in the fall of 2005 and used the common ap. All of her schools weren’t on it but some were.</p>
<p>Now…if the GC is older than 28, the common ap was not all that “common”. </p>
<p>Having said all that…this person is helping students with college aps as their JOB, and the common ap should be something they are familiar with!</p>
<p>^ OP is in Texas. We have something that is a sort of copycat Common App. It’s called ApplyTexas. It covers apps for most Texas schools–all the public and many popular privates including SMU, Baylor, TCU, etc. So, in a sense, I am not shocked. Going OOS is less common in Texas than I think it is in other places–we have a lot of schools here. With that said, it doesn’t cover apps for Rice or Trinity, our best private univ and LAC…both of which are CommonApp schools (although Rice has its own as an alternative). So, yeah, OP has high performing kids and has posted often about the inadequacy of her Texas public school district to support their needs. Unfortunately, in my experience, this is not an isolated issue in our state. College counseling is not high on the budget list. What our state lege calls “gifted and talented” instruction is not high on the budget list. And on and on. But we have great football stadiums!</p>
<p>All the students at my son’s HS took the PSAT as sophomores. I found out that my company offered scholarships to employee’s children, but did so through the National Merit program, so he’d have to retake as a junior.</p>
<p>I emailed the GC to see what I had to do to get him permission to take the test again as a junior. After months of waiting and me sending multiple ‘reminder’ emails and her attempting to get approval from administrators and the school board, I was finally discouraged by her saying that he could take it, but I’d have to pay for it myself. I figured it’d be about the same cost as the SAT or ACT and wasn’t too concerned, but looked it up and I think it was $15…I pretty much said “Are you kidding me? Of course I’m going to invest $15 in the chance for my son to potentially get one of the full-ride scholarships offered for NMFs.”</p>
<p>Then his school had offered a dual-credit calculus class, but were phasing it out due to some issues they had feeling that it wasn’t up to par. I’d been in touch with the calc teacher and knew they were trying to get their course approved to be an AP course. I emailed the GC and asked the status of offering the calc course as AP. I got a very condescending response that said “We don’t offer AP here, we offer dual-credit courses.” (Like they’re mutually exclusive???) I thought about responding and asking if she knew what an AP course was, but opted to instead just talk to the calc teacher who was able to answer my questions.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the GC left at the end of that year and wasn’t there during my son’s senior year when he was applying to schools or I’m sure I would have pulled all my hair out!</p>
<p>^ I can’t believe your son’s HS did not offer the PSAT to sophomores and juniors. It only counts toward scholarships junior year! I can see parents unaware of this, but Administrators? That’s awful!</p>
<p>I’m not in Texas, but very few students in our school apply to schools using the Common App. So virtually ALL students is not true here. Almost everyone applies to one of the state public schools. The CSS Profile is also unknown.</p>