<p>My experience has been that I wish I knew about CC before the college process. Find out if your GC has had any of their students get into the colleges that you think your child may wish to attend. If not, then read the posts here about what a GC needs to do in order to help a student get in. Ask other parents on this site what their experience was with that school - then make a list of requests of the GC - tell the GC that you have done research, and that your child wants this school, and others who were accepted had GC who did the following: Explain nicely that you know that it would mean extra work, but that it really is crucial. My D's GC, though very experienced, had no clue about the schools that my D was applying to - she had to educate her, NICELY. She had never heard of Middlebury, Amherst, etc, and didn't think UofCh was very competetive, and this we found out after it was too late! Luckily she was accepted at most of her schools, but the one she wanted, she was rejected. It turns out that from what I heard on this site, that she may have had a chance if the GC had established a personal rapport with the adcom and sell my D and her rep. We didn't know, so we fell with the EA slaughter. That doesn't means he would have been accepted, but she at least would have had a better chance. We are from a large public school, and the GCs focus on TX schools - they know everything there is to know about them, and they think getting someone into Rice is the epitome (Now, don't get me wrong - I think Rice is an exceptional school - up there with MIT, Stanford, etc.) but that means they have no clue about the top LACs or the ivies.And the only kids they talked to about applying to somewhere other than TX were the 2 NMFs - not the val or sal or others in the top ten of the class. So do your homework, and work politely with the GC. Have child request pleadingly that they do certain things so that there is a chance. And always follow up - at least 2 kids in the class did not have things sent out that needed to be sent, so their applications were incomplete to at least one school, and they were never even evaluated. It worked out, but it could have been disastrous. Remember, the GC has hundreds of kids asking for something - you have only one, so it is easy for you to remember to check, and easy for them to let things slip through their fingers.</p>