Did you go Public With Your Private Counselor?

olderwisermom
Fri, 07 Jan 2011 09:59:24 +0000

I’m with fendrock. We live in a community where only 18% of the adult population has a college degree. Ifi there are private counselors here, I’m clueless about them.

Our four GCs have 400 students each. For the past four years, we have also had a College Counselor (former admissions officer at the local directional school). Most of her time is spent helping first-generation college student kids weave through the college application process and teaching a class in scholarship applications. That is as it should be. How else are we going to get that percentage up?

When our fourth-generation-in-college son became a NM Semifinalist and decided to apply to Tier 1 schools, we asked for a meeting with our GC, the college guidance counselor and the principal. Because we have been involved, helpful, volunteering parents, this was not a problem. They all were glad to help and do whatever we needed to give our son the best shot. Our principal wrote the GC recomendation for our son’s MIT application. (It made me cry.)

If you have a special child in a large school (1,600 for us), you’d hope the counselors and principals would know you and your child. Our administrators make a point of getting to know the “good” kids as well as the ones they see frequently for disciplinary reasons.

As in most things in life, it’s about relationships. People don’t become guidance counselors because they shy away from developing relationships. Quite the opposite. So if you start out as the parent of a freshman and develop that relationship, you should be in good shape by the time the application process begins.