D is a junior and we are having our first meeting with the College Counselor next week and I am not sure what to expect. The school is over 3,500 students and she is the only counselor so I have no idea how much help we will be getting through this whole process. (I graduated with 75 kids and we had 2 counselors so we got the full hand holding treatment.)
When they called to set up the appointment I asked if I should bring anything with me and she said just questions. I feel like I have learned so much on here, but can you think of any specific questions I should be asking? I am going to ask how much help we will be getting (how often do we meet, etc), does the school have Naviance, where other students with her stats have ended up. Now that the meeting is finally here I am blanking on things to ask!
I would ask how they handle things like letters of recommendation - our school had a set process of asking in person, then following up on Naviance and the recs when through Naviance. The same with requesting transcripts to be sent.
Ask how they handle the process of transcripts, Letters of Recommendations, and the Counselors’ letter. I suggest telling them that your child intends to apply Early Action to at least one college and needs her materials ready to go by November 1 of senior year. (Some colleges have this early deadline for honors programs and scholarships and you want to be prepared.)
The Counselor’s letter was new to me. It basically describes the school, indicates how rigorous your child’s course load is, provides class rank if your school ranks, and recommends the student. In my day, only teachers provided LORs.
Ask if they have a college fair or if admission reps visit the high school.
In big schools, they often ask the student and parent to provide a brag sheet on the student so the counselor has something to use for the recommendation. Ask if they use a brag sheet (sometimes called a college resume) and when you should send it (at our school, it was the first week of school senior year.)
Basically, ask questions about the part that is the school’s responsibility. You and your child can research the colleges, and he/she can prepare the applications on their own, but there are some things the high school must do. You and your student need to stay on top on those things because it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. Keeping a table or spreadsheet on each school of interest and what needs to be sent by when is helpful.
Ask about deadlines. How far in advance of a college’s absolute deadline to receive all transcripts and LOR do you need to make request to your high school? Is there a charge for each transcript? Is there a request form to complete? Find out All the nuts and bolts of making sure your request is processed without delay.
With so many students, I am sure they are overwhelmed at certain times of the year. So you want to get your child’s requests in early.
Ask if your child’s schedule meets the criteria for “most rigorous schedule”. Colleges want the Counselors to tell them if the student has taken advantage of the most rigorous classes available at their school.
If you are able to have any personal conversation, find out what the counselor likes. (Most folks like chocolate, but some folks have allergies. My mailman only likes peanut butter cookies.) sending in a small treat for counselor during their crazy, chaotic deadline days is a nice gesture. Don’t go over the top, and if the student can bake them, it is even better.
Ask if they have a copy of the school description that goes out with the transcript - this should have the info that puts your kids stats in context. Ours has demographic make up of the school, number of AP courses offered, number of AP scholars (various levels) they have, how the GPA is calculated, mean SAT scores, ditto for subject tests. A list of colleges last year’s seniors attended and a bunch of other infor I don’t remember.
Our school doesn’t calculate rank except first quarter senior year, so I wanted an estimate of where my kid stood in class. I was very surprised that my lots of B’s student was certainly in the top 10% of the class.
Your questions are good. You want to get help seeing out appropriate and affordable colleges.
IMO another priority of this meeting should be to get a timeline of when things should be done – for example when to ask for recommendations, when to start taking standardized tests, when to start writing the college essay, when to visit colleges etc. Having everyone agree upfront to a time-frame of when to get things done will save a lot of fighting down the road.
^For many high schools, the School Profile is available on the school’s website.
If your kid are looking at selective colleges, I second the advice above to ask whether your kid’s schedule is “most demanding” and/or how that designation is determined. (I, for one, would be interested to know how this is determined and how much this varies among schools.)
Do your financial planning first. Determine what you can afford to contribute for her college costs, and run some representative colleges’ net price calculators (e.g. state flagship, local state university, common private schools, any other school that she may consider wanting to attend).
If the results indicate that list price or need-based financial aid will not make college affordable, you and your daughter should emphasize to the college counselor that she needs to find large enough merit scholarships, not just admission, to colleges of interest. Otherwise, the counselor may suggest that she apply to “safeties” that really are not because they are not affordable.
I am hoping she will tell me about the most demanding stuff although I don’t know if she will tell me. This past summer I emailed with her asking for advice on some classes we were picking and I told her I wanted to try to make sure D was going to get the most demanding status- she gave her suggestions but never really said if they would change her status or not.
I would love to see the school’s description letter. Our school does rank but we cannot figure out how they do it. We know kids who have taken less demanding schedules and are much higher than kids who have taken more demanding schedules. The kids get very frustrated with it. If I have time I will ask how that is done although I guess it doesn’t make much difference because she will end up wherever they tell her.
We have talked about finances and are pretty sure we know what we are willing to pay (we are full pay but not sure we are willing to pay full price at the LACs e were originally considering.)
It may be easier just to ask. Ours is definitely nowhere to be found and the school district’s website is such a mess even if it is lurking there you might never see it.
I’d go over logistics. How does the CC prefer to be contacted? How much notice do they need to turn around an application? Which parts of the job can you and your student manage so that she can do her best job with you?
I would also ask if she has any advice for you. Great way to identify hot buttons of hers…
And if you have scores and grades, any ideas of schools you might want to consider. This could be really helpful or a total bust, but it’ll give you an idea of how she thinks about the colleges out there.
FWIW - At our first meeting junior year with the GC. This is what I remember talking about.
Due dates (though this was in a packet that had a lot of good general info about FAFSA, descriptions of the tests to take, essay advice, and an overview of the process.)
Naviance spit out a very general list based on scores and GPA
We got password for Naviance
We got a brag sheet form to fill out
Son was asked to have two teachers write short recommendation for the GC to refer to when she wrote her letter (these didn’t have to be the same teachers used by the student.)
Ouch our school is the same size, but we had a lot more counselors. I think eight in all.
Wow, I’m still stuck on the fact that they have one college counselor for a student body of 3500. If you assume that she is helping all of the juniors and some of the seniors through the fall that’s between 875 and 1750 students. Are these group meetings where multiple parents /students meet with the counselor or one-on-one meetings? If she even spends just an hour individually with each one that basically takes up an entire school year of the counselor’s time. Just struggling to imagine how she’ll be able to devote any real time to each student.
I would make sure you get on top of things yourself, because as per above you should not have high expectations of a counselor with such a huge group. Many schools don’t have a dedicated college counselor at all though, ours was just the GC who had 400 plus kids. There was nothing she had to say that we didn’t already know.
She probably has an agenda for the meeting all ready to go-- she’ll plan to cover so many of the things mentioned here. So I would wait with questions until she’s gone through all the stuff she plans to cover.
But it will help, tremendously, if you and/or your daughter know:
an idea of a major
finances-- how much can you realistically afford to pay, aside from any aid?
the type of school you’re looking for-- large or small, city/suburb/rural, ballpark distance if it matters, level of competiveness
So many of our kids go to College Placement with “I don’t know” as an answer to all of those questions. It makes it so hard for the counselors to help them!
My daughter and I were talking last night-- it went along the lines of “Thanks so much for being on top of all this stuff for me, mom. I would have had no idea of how to even start. Some of my friends have parents who just don’t know what to do, and they’re still not even sure of where they want to apply.”-- This, from a Senior in November.
@adlgel your math depends on most of the kids in the class planning to go to college when they leave high school. This isn’t the case in many, many schools. My kid’s school has a single general guidance counselor per grade, about 400 students per grade, but on college night, the families of juniors and senior who are planning to go to 4 year college after high school don’t fill the library.
My kid’s guidance counselor is very adept and helping kids fill out job applications, finding apprenticeships and connecting kids with the right branch of the service but she told me straight out that she will do what she can for us but no kid from our school has ever been accepted to HYPSM.
I would kick off your meeting with “What can we do as a family to make your life easier”.
That’s how we started every single meeting with every school official from the kindergarten “we’re not sure he’s ready, why not hold him back” (we did not) meeting up to the college counselor meeting.
If the counselor quickly assesses that you are all on the same team-- do the very best for your kid without driving the school staff crazy- you will be sitting in the sweet spot.
Do not wait to find a copy of the school description. If it has errors or is out of date (many are) it will take a while to get it fixed. The GC’s don’t write it- they just Xerox and send it (or upload it). It is written at the district/superintendent level and it will take multiple phone calls to get it corrected. If your kid tried to register for AP Physics but couldn’t because AP physics hasn’t been offered in 5 years since the last teacher retired- and the description includes AP Physics as one of the 15 AP’s offered- get it fixed. If your district has 25% ESL students or 40% on Free Lunch but the description is based off statistics from 1999-- get it fixed. You are helping everyone- but particularly your own kid, who needs to be evaluated in the context of reality at the HS, not some bogus numbers.
@adlgel To be honest I am not 100% sure there is only one counselor. That is what I was told by another student but I haven’t been in yet so maybe there i another one that person didn’t know about. I can’t even imagine having that jon if there is only one!
@bjkmom I will definitely plan on letting her go first, she may answer half of my questions before I even have to ask!
@blossom I love the idea of asking her what we can do. I don’t mind doing lots of legwork so that should be easy. I hope she gives me the school description because I googled for a while and all I could find were some general statistics from sites like US News & Great Schools.