<p>Would people please post what their high school counselors or teachers do to help with college search, selection, application and admission?
For example, do counselors or teachers have group meetings with students and/or parents? Do they have individual meetings? If so, what happens at those meetings? In what grade do they start? Do the counselors or teachers try to draw students into activities that match their interests? Do the counselors or teachers help students come up with safety, match and reach lists? Does anyone know if there are standards or best practices regarding this? Also, please identify whether this high school is urban, suburban or rural, and whether it is public, private, or religious.</p>
<p>I go to a large public school, and they really don’t do much to help with the process. Each senior has a short meeting at the beginning of the year to discuss post-graduation plans. In the meeting, the student basically tells the counselor where he/she wants to apply and that’s it. Our counselors usually don’t suggest colleges or tell people that their choices are unrealistic.</p>
<p>Thanks, KingJames! Is your school urban, suburban, or rural?
Other people, please post!</p>
<p>Suburban religious–oh my, let’s see . . . coordinated the requests for teacher recs beginning last spring, hosted sample SAT/ACT sessions, sent out a year-long timeline for seniors, hosted family financial aid session and separate college planning night, responded at length to my requests for specific college information and test prep questions, sent out reminders for students to prepare envelopes for teacher recs and school reports and then coordinated the sending of those items, continues to offer recommendations on where my d should apply, and recently hosted 2009 graduates on a panel that addressed the HS students on what to expect. More, I’m sure.</p>
<p>I am a middle school counselor in WI. Best practice states that counselors will start meeting individually with parents and students once in middle school and again at least twice in high school. At these individual planning meetings the purpose is to identify individual goals and help students plan accordingly. This best practice is true for all types of schools in all types of settings. As you can imagine, it is very difficult to put into practice without the support of the school district’s administration. It takes a lot of time and in order for it to work, counselors have to have other duties taken over by other folks in the school. </p>
<p>Personally, I offer planning meetings for all of my 7th graders. About half of the parents choose to take advantage of them. Those that do find them very helpful. At the high school level, they offer the conferences at 9th grade, but our 9th grade counselor only works half time so it is difficult for him to meet with everyone. The upper class counselor meets with all juniors, with or without parents. The district is a semi-rural district of about 1600 students in grades K-12.</p>
<p>Suburban…</p>
<p>Suburban Private IB;; They help get you together at the begging of the year BUT they don’t suggest anything or help with the requests etc</p>
<p>At the small town public high here the counselors do most of the stuff that Digdig mentioned in the sense that they organize handouts, parent and student meetings from time to time, submit counselor evals for the Common App kids, remind kids collectively by means of announcements, email newletters, etc. of deadlines, and the counseling office secretary coordinates getting teacher recs sent that aren’t being sent electronically.</p>
<p>They will also meet with the students individually by appointment and offer very general advice, but they don’t have time to really do one-on-one advising throughout the search, selection, application, and financial aid process. Instead kids who want or need that are referred to volunteer advisors if they’re lucky enough to have enough volunteer advisors to cover all the requests (there never are enough).</p>
<p>Kids who don’t ask early enough or often enough for a volunteer advisor just have to sink or swim pretty much when it comes down to the actual process. It’s pretty sad.</p>
<p>I don’t blame the counselors, there are only two of them – and one is far less productive and helpful than the other. Mostly I feel like it’s so unfortunate that so many of these kids don’t have parents willing and/or able to step up and help the student navigate this process. The ones that do have involved parents have far and away more successful outcomes.</p>
<p>My kids are in a small public school in a large city. The counselor has held group meetings with the Seniors, then group meetings with the parents, and individual meetings once as Juniors and twice as Seniors. The counselor also provided a summer session to help the Seniors put together their common app and write one essay. Later the counselor held specific computer lab meetings to get one of their apps submitted online. In the individual meetings the choice of colleges were discussed based on their grades, SAT/ACT scores, and field of interest. App deadlines were given by the school (much earlier than the college ones) so that all the teacher recs and transcripts that would be required were known by and submitted by the school before Dec. A bulletin board is displayed showing which colleges are being applied to. When someone is accepted, this is noted on the board.</p>
<p>Large (2,000 students) suburban public high school in the southeast. </p>
<p>I had to seek out my guidance counselors. When I found them, they told me that I had a choice between the University of Tennessee and a local community college. All of my general ed teachers said the same thing (“3.3? You need at least a 3.5 to go to a good liberal arts college.” sneered my art teacher). I did all my own research and found out that there were in fact good liberal arts colleges that were targets for me. </p>
<p>My special ed teacher was much more help. She assisted me in organizing both my applications and my thoughts.</p>
<p>Our GC’s do nothing in the way of college counseling. Our h.s. is a large public school in a very large urban/suburban system. There are no meetings, no instructions.
It is up to the seniors to go by the guidance office, request their transcripts and send them off themselves. If teacher req’s are needed, it’s up to the kids. Our GC’s spend most of their time dealing with classroom and discipline problems. My kids’ GC’s had no idea who my kids were.</p>
<p>The guidance office does post a listing of scholarship oportunities every few weeks if kids want to drop by and take a look. Also in the fall some instate colleges reps come to the school so kids can apply that day.</p>
<p>my kids are in semirural public 1700 kids. main goal to keep kids from dropping out. had my kids meet with counselor at our request. they had a class meeting for financial aid and ncaa rules. local state college had a meeting and they had a bus to a rural college fair. nice counselor who filled out the forms.</p>
<p>Great information, everyone! Keep it coming!
Shennie, are these best practices written anywhere? And, could you describe in more detail what it means to identify individual goals and plan accordingly? Thanks.</p>
<p>Same as KingJames. Suburban public highschool.</p>
<p>Since I work in the Guidance office, that realm is my responsibility now :)</p>
<p>I attend a microscopically small school, btw.</p>
<p>135 students per graduating class, two college guidance counselors.</p>
<p>Junior Year, Third Trimester: 40 minutes, once a week, small discussion session.</p>
<p>Senior Year, First and Second Trimesters: 1 hour and 20 minutes, once a week, large discussion session.</p>
<p>Presentations, activities, Q&A, etc.</p>
<p>Counselors hold office hours, schedule mandatory one-on-one meetings to discuss college selection and personal statement writing, answer questions about applications, etc. They arrange for juniors to attend large regional fairs, and seniors to attend information sessions hosted by deans of admission from top unis/LACs. They call and meet with admission deans to lend additional support to waitlisted students.</p>
<p>College Guidance Office has SAT Reasoning and Subject Test books, copies of Princeton Review: The Top 3XX Colleges and the Fiske Guide to Colleges, financial aid and scholarship guides, etc.</p>
<p>Independent, metropolitan H.S., total enrollment ~540.</p>
<p>My kids go to a large public, about 3200 kids, and I love our guidance counselors and school district!!!</p>
<p>From my perspective as a parent, our GC’s get great support from the administration of both the school and the school district. (But they might say otherwise. How would I know, other than by observing how well-oiled the machine is?) It’s hard to separate what the GC’s do from what the school district and school staff do, because they’re an integral team here.</p>
<p>The best and most obvious thing our GC’s do is get all the kids going in the right direction from the start. Some examples: </p>
<p>They offer and pay for the PSAT for the entire 10th grade (district-wide), they select the top performers on 10th grade PSAT (a lot – maybe 150 out of 800???) to take a PSAT course the first 9 weeks of 11th grade. (It’s optional for those kids.) They open up the school for a 4-day summer course for those who opt to take that PSAT class, as well as for 3 different Saturdays during the first 9 weeks of 11th grade so members of the PSAT class can take 3 mock PSAT’s. (If a student elects to take the by-invitation-only PSAT class, they and their parents must sign a commitment letter, which then makes all PSAT activities --summer and weekends–mandatory.) They hold a PSAT parent meeting. During Fall Open House, parents in the PSAT classrooms are briefed on little details; like that it would be wise to register your kids for the SAT shortly after the first 9 weeks is over, since everything is fresh in the kids’ minds. They handle the whole PSAT thing - registration to finish, in both 10th and 11th grades.</p>
<p>The GC’s keep up with the kids and parents in all sorts of ways throughout each year. Twice a year, they send home a little informal note on a half-sheet of paper advising parents that they’ll soon be meeting with our kids to discuss a, b, and c, and that parents are more than welcome to attend. They meet with each and every kid twice a year! Amazing. The agenda for these meetings is grade-level-based. If parents attend the meeting, the agenda can include anything that’s important to the parents as well.</p>
<p>Our school district has “handbooks” that come home from the GC staff each year. There’s a Freshman handbook, a Sophomore handbook, and a Junior/Senior handbook. Within each handbook, there are checklists and general guidance about all sorts of educational opportunities, what your kid should be thinking about in regards to the future (appropriate to grade-level), the various options available to each kid – within the school, the district, the state, and after high school. For instance, the Junior/Senior handbook discusses the various service branches; the various ways to join the service; the option of college after high school and the various “levels” of colleges that might be well-matched to academic programs within our school; technical schools and other non-college options; community colleges; scholarship opportunities and where to find them (websites, etc); online courses, dual-credit courses, zero-hour courses, technical school courses while still in high school, and so on. It is always VERY informative. As I said, within each handbook, there is a checklist that guides your student on what he/she should be doing each month to stay on track. Visit Colleges, Write Essays, Request Transcripts from Registrar, Take the PSAT, Take the SAT, Take the ACT, etc, etc, etc. If your kid follows the handbook, everything will be done on time and in an orderly manner.</p>
<p>On that note, our GC staff is VERY good at ensuring that every student knows about every step along the way. If the students are good at giving notes and handouts to their parents, then parents are also well-informed. Sometimes reminders come home in the form of typed, informal notes on scratch paper, sometimes in the form of automated phone messages, sometimes via emails, sometimes via district-wide pamphlets. As a parent, I really don’t have to worry about a thing (though I was tempted to when my oldest went through – before I really understood how awesome our GC’s and admin are!). My kids will be ready for the college app process as long as they follow the directions that are given to them by the school.</p>
<p>Our GC staff also organizes guest speakers, maybe 2 or 3 a year, who speak to the entire parent and student population (those who bother to attend), about various future-related topics. Admittedly, the speakers are often the same year to year, and they discuss the same topics, but it’s good to take the “refresher course!” There’s one speaker who is college admissions for a private school in a whole different state, but who draws from our region. There’s a speaker who is in financial aid for a college in a different state who speaks about the costs of college and the various ways one might pay for college. There are always great Q&A’s following the talks.</p>
<p>Our GC’s take the time to know their kids pretty well. My kids have all actually had good, trusting, friendly, working relationships with their GC’s who knew them very well. Consequently, our GC’s can write a kick-a letter of recommendation for their kids. And they do.</p>
<p>Other than fulfilling their duties writing letters of recommendation for their kids (and the “above and beyond” of getting to know their kids so well), our GC’s don’t really have a hand in helping the kids with their college apps. That’s probably how it should be – at least in my mind. The kids are given all the tools. Then they have to do all the work on their own college apps.</p>
<p>Our GC’s broach college searches during all the kids’ sophomore year meetings. They tell the kids that it’s not too early to start visiting colleges in the summer between sophomore and junior year, and that they should certainly START looking by the spring of junior year at the latest. They tell the kids that they should start forming a general idea of what they might want to do after high school by the end of their sophomore year. They tell the ones who want to go to college that they should enter their junior year with a general, rough list of colleges they’d like to attend. They assign an unmonitored homework assignment for the soph/junior summer – visit this list of websites, do some personality surveys, and come up with a starter list of 10 or so colleges by the time you enter your junior year. Visit those college’s websites to learn about admissions and financial aid. That way, they say, you can have a plan and know what you need to do for the next 2 years of high school. I love it!</p>
<p>Our GC’s keep the kids abreast of all things “college board.” My Road, the personality surveys, the college surveys, the college search, the test registrations, etc.</p>
<p>Our GC’s coordinate and plan visits from various college admissions personnel so that students can meet with them during their school day and learn more about the colleges and ask questions.</p>
<p>Our GC’s don’t offer any advice or suggestions about specific colleges. However, if the student or the parent ask something like, "Are there certain colleges that you think would be a good match for Adam? the GC’s will name names. They will also speak up about those they think you should avoid – if asked about those schools specifically. They do this during those semi-annual meetings I mentioned earlier.</p>
<p>At the end of junior year, our GC’s hand out a huge list of scholarship opportunities. What they are, who’s eligible, how much they’re worth, contact information, etc. Seniors can stop in the GC office once a month to pick up a newly updated scholarship letter.</p>
<p>So, these are the sorts of things our guidance counselors do for the kids. I just LOVE them. They are hugely helpful! However, they don’t really do anything SPECIFIC for the kids, in terms of helping with the college search, selecting appropriate colleges, helping with applications, or admissions – except for Letters of Recommendation. I am fine with this, as I see that as the student’s responsibility alone. But every student is guided slowly through the process for 4 full years so that, if the kid follows the directions along the way, he/she is fully prepared to apply when the time comes. Pretty awesome!</p>
<p>I’ve basically did the entire college process by myself, since 8th grade I actually was becoming more informed about random schools and learning how they work… slowly from there and mainly in 11th-12th grade ( now) I’ve basically learned and did everything. Though ofcourse my counselor would send my transcript etc… do my rec’s and I’m sure if I had any questions concerning the process my cousnelor would help as I often would see other students in the office seeking for help ( when I would go to ask about sending transcripts etc…).</p>
<p>I go to a pretty large high school of around 2000 kids and we have a huge graduating class this year of almost 600 students. So the counseling office can’t give us that much personal attention, unfortunately. They meet with all the seniors at the beginning of the year and hand us a “resume packet” which we must fill out if we need a letter of recommendation from the counseling office (since they don’t know us that well, they write the letter based off of our resume and the other information we provide). But that’s about it. Students can always make appointments to see their counselors and ask college-based questions, but most people turn to the College and Career Center for these matters.</p>
<p>So, long story short, no, our counselors don’t do much to help, but I guess I can’t blame them. Too many of us, not enough of them.</p>
<p>Large (4,000 student) suburban high school. Counselors have best intentions, but have no time to help individual students. The only personal attention given is interviews, which are required for students to get counselors letters of recommendation for private schools (our guidance counselors don’t know the students really, so they basically have to do interviews in order to know what to write. They also refer to a packet of info we provide that’s about 10 pages long…) Limits are placed on the number of recs a student can get from counselors. Counselors do not suggest colleges, help with applications, or asses the strength of the final list. We’re pretty much on our own.</p>