<p>This question is geared toward large school (3000 students +) students. Its an entirely different story for small schools.</p>
<p>Does she/he actually know your name?
How does your GC help you?</p>
<p>I’ve found that a lot of students go to these puny 1000 student schools and their GC knows their name, knows where they’re applying to, and they really get lots of help. But how about for the rest of the students who don’t get that “intimate” relationship?</p>
<p>1000 is puny?</p>
<p>haha. I wonder what word you would use for mine.</p>
<p>I have 2400 students in my 7-12 school, so around 400 per class. My GC didn’t really advise me at all. He never even told me that ECs were important for college admissions, so I didn’t start them till 11th grade, which is much too late. He is completely incompetent. I gave him a list of mostly Ivy caliber schools, and he said my only reaches were Stanford and Princeton.</p>
<p>Okay, 2400 student school is small. 1000 is puny. ^ Your GC is just ignorant.</p>
<p>Any people out there?</p>
<p>My guidance counselor was more or less useless… he isn’t very smart, he doesn’t like me, and he has to deal with 3000 other students.</p>
<p>I managed to get into an ivy league college with average/below average grades, regardless.</p>
<p>It won’t hurt you that much if he doesn’t know you.</p>
<p>my school only has about 700 students, so my gc knows me (mostly because he coaches the quizbowl team). but he doesn’t really get involved w/ helping you choose colleges, etc. he’ll fill out forms and send transcripts–i guess he’s pretty good. but for having such a small # of college-bound students, he’s not that personally involved.</p>
<p>As a guidance counselor, I personally know terrific counselors who work in large schools and ones who are not as effective in much smaller schools. Obviously, as in any other profession, there are counselors who are not as competent as others.</p>
<p>That being said, it is extremely difficult for a counselor who has 300+ students to effectively guide, let alone know each and every student…In some cases, it is up to the student to do the best he/she can to get know the counselor, and this should be done much earlier than the junior or senior year…</p>
<p>Counselors can be extremely helpful, especially because we have witnessed trends within our school, and have the ability to view admissions from a much larger point of view (having dealt with hundreds or thousands of prior students) rather than an individual student, who sees the process on a much smaller scale…</p>
<p>This is personal opinion, but I think that GC’s in public schools are more oriented towards just getting people into at least some college or community college. Asking your GC to help you get into HYPSM is like asking your gym teacher to help you get into the Olympics.</p>
<p>Dufus, not necessarily even close to being true. I go to a very competitive public high school in Montgomery County, Maryland, that sends many kids to Ivies each year. Guidance counselors here are not only helpful and have good relationships with the kids (she knows my extracurriculars and all…hasn’t been that helpful to me though since I’m really on top of the game and haven’t needed much help) but they encourage kids to apply to Ivies and help them decide which Ivy/Ivies they’d have a shot at. This is partially because our reputation is based so much on the fact that we get people into good schools.</p>
<p>My GC is nice but I don’t know her all that well. Usually at my school, you don’t really get to know your guidance counselor unless you get ISS, OSS, referral(sp?), write suicidal thoughts down, etc.</p>
<p>My GC helped me a lot. He knows my name and a lot about me, just b/c i made a point to get to know him. I realized that he would be an influencing factor in college admissions, so i made it my goal to become his favorite student in the class of '06. And i was successful…</p>
<p>But, on another point, my school has about a little under 5000 students and there are 4 guidance counselors…</p>
<p>My school has about 1000 students - but that doesn’t mean our guidance counselors are any better at helping us with college admissions. Actually, in our school, there’s a bit of a joke about the incompetence of our admin…esp the gc. I’m a junior, and we don’t start meeting with our gc’s on colleges until february, but I’ve already spoken to mine at length about both colleges and senior year abroad. And the other day, in lunch, she goes, “You’re E----, right?”</p>
<p>My school has about 1700 people but my guidance counselor knows me really well (because I’ve changed my schedule about 8 times this year, am constantly going in to ask/talk about my study abroad and had 8 million college forms and questions). The man probably has a heart attack every time he sees me in his office - OH GOD WHAT DOES SHE WANT NOW?</p>
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<p>I’m in the DC area. A competitive public high school in Mont County, Maryland would imply either Montgomery Blair Magnet School, Walt Whitman HS or Winston Churchill. All of these high schools have an average SAT of around 1350/1600, but there are high schools in Mont County with average SAT’s of 900-950. Next door in Prince George’s County or in Washington DC, the average SAT’s are more like 750-850. I stand by my comment, but I didn’t say all public high schools. (Blair is a magnet and the other two are in rich areas of the county. Of course, you might be talking about about some other hs. There are a wide range of high schools in that county.) However, most of the posts on this thread are from schools where a single GC has to handle hundreds of students. This is not true at least at the elite private schools. In your hs, how many students does a GC handle?</p>
<p>my school has about 2200 students. there are actually about 8 counselors that divide everything up alphabetically. fortunately our school employs another quidance counselor that deals solely with college admissions. she is pretty helpful considering the 500 people she has to deal with. i personally never had to really deal with her except to get transcripts sent and the such, but from what i’ve heard she knows her stuff.</p>
<p>You were right, I’m at Whitman. And yes, it’s a very wealthy area, explaining the push to get into good colleges. There are 2000 students at Whitman, so 500 a grade. But, there are I think 6 guidance counselors, so that leaves under 100 per grade per guidance counselor- not too bad.</p>
<p>4,000 at my school</p>
<p>1,000 in my grade</p>
<p>the counselors write recs like robots</p>
<p>2,300 students and 4 counselors. Most of us only get a half-hour chat early senior year, for recs, and that’s it. :/</p>
<p>I actually had to fill out a really long form for my counselor so that she would have some clue as to what to write for my rec. I swear, I practically wrote it for her…i just hope she was smart enough to use it.</p>