SmileAMile

My husband is the counselor, and will be writing the counselor letter. Now that you mention it, he is a professor at a graduate school and has seen tons of students over the last 15+years. He should be able to answer the questions by comparing our son to his graduate students. (And, in all honesty, since many of them arrive at graduate school with very poor writing and grammar skills, he can write positively about our son.) I'll mention to him that he could include an explanation in his counselor letter of which students he is comparing to.

SmileAMile

I am looking for some info about how homeschooling parents (acting as their student's Guidance Counselor) answer the questions on the Common App School form where they are asked to rate their student compared to other students in the school. Here is the question I am referring to:

Compared to other students in his or her class year, how do you rate this student in terms of:

Academic Achievement, Extracurricular Accomplishments, Personal Qualities, Overall


How do you fill out this part of the form, since you are not really comparing this student to other students in the "school?"

sbjdorlo

I think I just wrote, "See counselor letter." The schools were then referred to the counselor letter I wrote which was uploaded to the Common App.

Creekland

I'm fortunate that I work in a public high school, so I answered it based upon the thousands that I have seen over the years (and hundreds in "his" year). I described that in the counselor letter.

If you don't have much "access" to other students (friends? outside classes?), then this will be difficult, so I'd probably put N/A and gloss over it preferring to promote other positive things about the student.

HogwartsOrBust

My parent filled out the counselor recommendation as honestly as possible, and began the letter of recommendation with the caveat "I realize as a parent my evaluation may be seen as biased, but here are the criteria on which I evaluate this student/my son." She did also have some grad school teaching experience though that she was able to use as a reference point.

'rentof2

I just put N/A for all those "compared to other students" questions.