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<p>Deciding whether parental intervention is effective in these situations is also dependent on a given High School’s institutional culture and the personalities of the individual GCs. </p>
<p>My high school’s GC to student ratio was similar…maybe slightly worse than your D2’s school. The prevailing institutional culture at the time I attended in the early-mid '90s definitely leaned more towards the “it’s the student’s job” school. However, attitudes of the GCs themselves ran the gamut from welcoming parental input to regarding any parental calls as “undue parental coddling of someone who was about to be/is a young adult”. </p>
<p>My GC was more on the latter…though still more reasonable than the most extreme examples. </p>
<p>Calling up the GC who is of the latter school of thought on this is not only going to be ineffective, it can backfire spectacularly. This is not only in the context of risking good GC/teacher recommendations…it can also hurt potential applicants if the alumni interviewer of a given school was also a HS alum who has good relations with the GC staff. </p>
<p>One older HS classmate who is an alumni interviewer at an Ivy recounted how he recommended one recently graduated senior be rejected for consideration despite highly competitive stats because he felt the applicant was too immature/lacked initiative based on the interview and had it confirmed by the GCs when they recounted how his parents were the ones always calling in/checking on college app process while the student in question never bothered to even make a personal follow-up appointment beyond the initial mandatory meeting.</p>