<p>At least from my perspective, my GC in high school (graduated in 07) was ‘abnormal’ to the CC community! I rarely visited unless I needed to turn in a local scholarship app or had to have her fill out the GC forms (which she did in front of me). </p>
<p>In regards to the Common App, I only filled it out for Miami and Yale, none of the other B10 or state schools I applied to. Since most students from my HS went to Indiana or Purdue, I almost doubt my GC would’ve known how to fill it out</p>
<p>Knowing about the Common App is not something I would put in the top #100 things to know.
Neither of my kids used it- perhaps if they had applied to as many schools as seems to be common on CC they would have.</p>
<p>The common app as far as I can tell isnt an obscure document that you need the GCs help to decipher. It’s less critical to the well being of their students than knowing which kids have outside jobs or which ones have unsafe homes.</p>
<p>Thinking about the person who is now the head counselor at my daughters high school, I actually shudder. He has shown himself to behave immorally and illegally in his previous job as a school coach but still has been promoted to head counselor!
If all could be said about him was he didn’t know $%^+ about applying to college, I would feel better.</p>
<p>Oh the stories! I am familiar with all of these issues, and some others to boot. I don’t understand a school that doesn’t promote the PSAT…The National Merit Scholarship competition can be a lifeline to a student, if they score well. And my goodness Emaheevul07 we had a similar experience with a GC telling my child to “Apply! we will find you the money”! Haha, after she was admitted to her dream school we never heard from him again.
The GC at my niece’s school told my sister that above grade level testing was ridiculous and a waste of time and the student only needed to take the SAT/ACT ONE time. I tried to tell my sister that this was bad advice…she chose to believe the GC and my poor niece took the SAT for the first time as a senior and it did not go so well. Fortunately years ago we were informed of the advantages that above grade level testing can offer, for example, increased awareness of the student’s strengths and weaknesses which can help you boost the not so strong areas before the next test. Also, the student becomes comfortable with the test itself and knows what to expect, which leads to better performance. Most colleges superscore! It is an advantage to try a few times to score your best. And there is often scholarships offered for scoring well on these tests. Some schools give automatic money if your score is attractive to them.</p>
<p>BEST COLLEGE PLANNING ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED:</p>
<p>You must not rely on the GC at your school for anything other than a signature or to send a transcript. Even then, follow up follow up follow up, and make sure whatever you needed was handled in a timely manner because often it is not.<br>
I am ABSOLUTELY not putting down Guidance Counselors, by any means. In my experience, most of them are pretty nice folk, but they are so overloaded and frankly, the quicker they can get your kid out of their office, the sooner they can move on to something else.<br>
Parents, spend some time on the internet, bookstores, libraries, and CC. You will learn what you need to know to help navigate your child through the college application process.</p>
<p>The Common App is now accepted by almost 500 schools. Most of them are high quality. There is no excuse for a GC to not know of its existence!</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Members.aspx[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Members.aspx</a></p>
<p>So many students know more than a GC? Odd…
This is why I’m reluctant to approach mine because I feel like they provide biased information…and often times I get the sense I’m giving them information that they just validate by agreeing with me. Guidance counselors should know the ins and outs to give a plethora of information. Otherwise, why would you need them to guide you?</p>
<p>It is still not common for students to travel far from home and only about a quarter of four year institutions utilize the common app and because it was a tool from College Board most of the early users were the eastern private colleges and random colleges that had a strong draw from the east and while fewer and fewer many of those colleges still had their “own” app on their website. It would not surprise me that a GC might not be familiar with the common app in part of the country. It wasn’t until Michigan joined the common app that it became much of a factor in our entire state. The best and the brightest were heading to Michigan and Michigan had it’s own on-line application system. Probably some of the private schools like Interlochen or Cranbrook who had students from all over the country were familiar with it but I don’t find the situation in the OP to be crazy unusual. Shepparding kids out the door of the public high school and into the arms of a college is a small portion of most guidance counselor’s job. Most counselors spend far more time dealing with at risk students, students with emotional issues and a gamut of other responsibilities.</p>
<p>If just about any involved parent of a college bound high school student is familiar with the common app, which I believe they are, an employed GC should be as well. Assisting students with the college application process is one of their main responsibilities. It’s what they are paid to do. There are also Principals, Assistant Pricipals, Deans and School Psychologists to help deal with emotional and behavior problems.</p>
<p>I found CC in the process of trying to decide if we needed a college counselor for S1. Quickly realized that CC provided me with what we needed, and the one college counselor I talked to had little knowledge of the highly regarded and competitive magnet programs in our area anyway, and what I needed was guidance on how to approach admissions for a kid in such a program. </p>
<p>From a college selection/administrivia/FA/admissions strategy POV, S1 (and later, S2) and I figured it out. Didn’t realize how fortunate we were to have kids who were willing to research and evaluate schools, and who spent serious quality time on essays. They truly bought into the process.</p>
<p>Both guys attended large semi-urban high schools with a wide range of diversity, SES and other needs – ranging from kids who didn’t speak English to kids who were homeless, kids in the judicial or social services system, to kids who live in humongous houses and for whom $50k/yr for college would not be an issue. I quickly came to the conclusion that we were not going to bother the GC for anything other than what we/the GC specifically needed – 1) submit the student and parent writeups that the GCs used for writing rec letters; 2) to have S attend the meeting with the GC (one invited parents, the other didn’t); and 3) transcripts/school profile/recs sent to colleges. I didn’t care if they submitted teacher recs or the school info stuff electronically as long as it got to the schools. With S1, most of that was mailed. By the time we got to S2, the GCs had some training in electronic submissions.</p>
<p>The GCs did an outstanding job with those tasks. There were other kids far more in need of the GC’s time and energy than my kids, so I did not want to take up their time. Considering what we were expecting to pay for college, I was going to make darned sure I had my arms around the entire process anyway.</p>
<p>High school GCs should at least have a passing familiarity with the Common App. Ultimately, though, it’s your kid who needs to know how it works. There are plenty of threads on CC about how to create multiple apps, uploading essays, etc. Best to know how it works long before the app deadlines.</p>
<p>I guess, in a sense, misery loves company. D’s (small, good, public) h.s. counselor was okay…IF a student wanted to go to Big State U or the two local in-city universities. I had to literally camp out in her office (with my laptop and a smile…) to “encourage” her to get around to the NM paperwork…which she finally did (again, I looked lovely in her chair) on the due date, even though d’s stuff had been in for weeks. (D is a NMS at her out of state school). I ended up finding scholarships (on the college’s websites!!) for several of her friends, whose parents were flustered and had been told by the GC there was nothing else out there for their kids…maybe they should reconsider the in-town schools (gee…maybe I should to into the college counseling racket…). It was the guidance secretary who sent the transcripts, etc., and thank goodness for her, or I don’t know if d’s stuff ever would have been sent. It is frustrating, as the kids (and parents) are told that the GCs have their backs in the process…but it really is up to the kids to figure it out…and (hopefully) the GCs will do their parts in the process. To everyone in the admissions cycle this year…good luck, make a spreadsheet or other tool to keep deadlines, etc straight, be kind but insistent as to what you need from GCs, teacher recs…and we can’t wait to celebrate with you on the other side!</p>
<p>CountingDown – I can relate to your situation totally. The GCs at our public high school are overworked (literally hundreds of students each), and they deal with the same diverse population as in your school. They do an amazing job under the circumstances – counseling students whose parents don’t speak English, students who want to drop out, students whose parents demand that they drop everything to do something ASAP, students who need to navigate the community college/dual enrollment route. They conduct several programs a year for each grade level, they have a day when they do nothing but help families fill out FAFSA, and they meet with each student at least once. They even stay after school to sponsor clubs and take tickets at athletic events.</p>
<p>I don’t bother them unless I have to. We are a well-educated family that knows how to use the Internet. There is no reason that we need a GC to hold our hand through the process, especially when other families really do need that help. We only ask our GC for what the colleges require that she send, and she does that promptly. Through NC’s College Foundation, students can apply online to schools in the state (kind of like a Common App for the state) and click to submit a transcript.</p>
<p>I have been stunned to find out that the GCs at a private school in our area spend their summers touring colleges, then basically hold their students’ hands through the application process – even giving them a list of colleges to which they should apply. I guess that’s one reason that school’s tuition is so high!</p>
<p>It is. Some private schools do an amazing job and have a reputation in the area.</p>
<p>Marsian-</p>
<p>The hand holding at some private schools goes even further than you might imagine. Here are some of the things the college counselors at DS’s school do:</p>
<p>Sit down with kids and parents in meetings starting junior year. Some kid-advisor, some parent-advisor, some all 3. Topics=deadlines, financial aid, course selection, visits, etc.</p>
<p>Craft a list of schools and discuss it with the parents and kids in multiple meetings, including ranking them as reach, match or likely based not only on basic stats but on things like which schools are looking for greater geographic diversity, which are heavily dependent on scores, which “love kids from our school”.</p>
<p>Send reminder emails to the kids when schools they’ve expressed interest in are scheduled to visit the high school and let the colleges know about any kids who wanted to show up for their presentations but couldn’t for scheduling reasons. We get 1-2 of these visits per day throughout the fall.</p>
<p>Hold mock interviews. Want to know how you’ll be seen by college admissions officers? Do a mock interview with one of the counseling staff who worked as an AO at a top-20 university for years before coming to the HS.</p>
<p>Review essays and make suggestions for editing. (They absolutely do NOT write them. It’s more like “This is how I read this. Is it what you mean to say?”)</p>
<p>Chase down letters of recommendation for the kids. One of the teachers who’d agreed to write DS a letter of rec. didn’t return to the school this year. When we asked whether we should be concerned and what we needed to do to ensure she’d follow through with her promise the CC said, “Don’t worry about that. It’s part of the school’s job.” Everything was in to DS’s ED school 2 weeks before it was due.</p>
<p>Advocate for kids who have been wait listed at schools. These CC’s know the personnel at many schools personally, and while most of the larger schools no longer take calls from CCs, a recommendation can make a difference at some of the smaller schools. When DS interviewed at a top-50 LAC the Dir. of Admissions asked specifically after DS’s college counselor and commented that they “love him. He really knows his stuff.” Our sense was that what he was telling us is that if DS’s CC had recommended the college to him that carried some weight.</p>
<p>We are VERY lucky. There are 4 dedicated college counselors for 100 kids. Although they are available to give course selection advice they are in addition to the students’ regular advisors who deal with general academic, social or other issues. Many friends with kids at the local public school hired private consultants for the process but we figured it would be totally redundant.</p>
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<p>It would be interesting to know what % of hs have guidance counselors who are truly only dedicated to the college app process, versus those who are playing dual roles of guidance counselor and social worker dealing with emotional issues, behavioral problems, and so forth. Even in our affluent suburban district, I didn’t feel the GC had any particular knowledge that I didn’t have, and I had a lot of knowledge that she didn’t. I wouldn’t trust her knowledge base for much outside our state schools and a few other local schools. What would she know from elite eastern LAC’s? Not on most kids’ radar screens, so a waste of her time and effort to learn about them.</p>
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<p>I know what schools make up the Ivy League because that’s how I roll and I’m pretty precise about the distinction, but honestly, outside of exclusive private or extremely affluent public high schools, and outside of the northeast, I would hazard a guess that Ivy League just gets used a lot as a generic catch-all phrase for “top of the line college” and not in its more precise meaning denoting those specific schools.</p>
<p>Sue22 – I am floored. I cannot imagine the GCs at our school having time to do half of those things. Each of our GCs is responsible for around 500 students, rather than 25, and they are not called “college counselors” because their jobs involve general academic duties and some personal counseling as well.</p>
<p>I was at a PTSO meeting a few weeks back and a parent was complaining about her junior son needing help with college planning/more one on one time with the GC. What I so desperately wanted to tell her during the meeting was that she needed to be his GC and if she was waiting on the GC to do any college planning, she would be waiting from now til doomsday. They will typically meet with kids in large groups and pull up the websites of community colleges to browse… which is so frustrating as many of the kids are realistic candidates for highly selective colleges. They will hand out a “college planning checklist” senior year… That is the extent of it.</p>
<p>When DD14 was a freshman, I was under the naive impression that GC’s played a bigger role in students school life so to speak. I have come to realize that this isn’t the case at all. DD14 only uses GC for summer program LOR’s, to grab PSAT scores, and to ask about dual enrollment classes at the local universities(which she doesn’t even handle). We had to go over her head this fall to get her to do an LOR in a timely manner because she is also in training to become an administrator. So that means she is out of the building 2 days/week.</p>
<p>All I know is that when I was in hs in affluent suburban St. Louis, my GC’s input was “oh, you’re a smart girl, you should go to WashU” - while an excellent school, since my family was originally from the east coast, we had a broader range of schools in mind that simply “top college in our backyard,” So we said, “thanks” and did our own thing. </p>
<p>That’s what we did with our kids as well (ironically, S wound up at “top college in our backyard”, but I didn’t want it to be a default choice for him).</p>
<p>Sue. Here’s what happens in our public school - ca. 250 kids per counselor maybe more, I know I calculated it once, but can’t find a listing easily on their website.</p>
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<p>Yep. Our school does that.</p>
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<p>Yep. Our school does that at least to some extent. </p>
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<p>Yep our school does that. (Thanks to Naviance software I think.) I don’t think we get quite that many visits. You can also look up the visits on the college advising page if you haven’t told the GC all the schools you are considering.</p>
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This we don’t do as far as I know, but they do give you handouts on the subject.</p>
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They GC’s don’t do this but the AP Euro and AP English teachers do a lot of this. They don’t do it as part of class, but make it clear you can see them before or after school.</p>
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Don’t know it wasn’t ever necessary. All the teachers followed through, in the one case where a letter went missing it was faxed to the college in question the next day.</p>
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I know they do this, because the GC was telling us that GW had put a student on the waitlist because they thought she wasn’t interested because she hadn’t visited. Our GC told them GW was the student’s first choice and she was eventually accepted.</p>
<p>How does the school do it? They’ve got the system running like a well oiled machine. They use Naviance as much as possible, they’ve got a whole set of handouts that explain the whole process to parents, and they run a couple of evening events for parents that get most of the questions answered in one shot instead of one student at a time. The PTA also uses many of its meetings for subjects related to college planning. For example, a recent meeting was scheduled to have someone talk about interviews.</p>
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<p>Our high school did a mass meeting for parents / students in spring of junior year. By that time, we had already done most of our college visits (we did them Jan - May of junior year, leveraging three-day weekends, President’s Day, spring break and so forth), and the kids were thinking about what they might want to narrow down to for ED and planning to use the summer for essays. All standardized tests had either been taken or were in the works (e.g., AP tests in May of junior year). I found the spring-of-junior-year appallingly late and told the school so. A kid whose parents didn’t know better would be effectively shut out of ED at a selective school.</p>
<p>What about this one…D1’s college counselors visited almost every college students had interest to apply. They made sure adcoms knew the high school’s profile well. The joke was they were all lobbying for a student to apply to U of HI.</p>