This discussion was created from comments split from: Early Decision Questions.
Why is the GC given so much authority in these situations? I am asking as I truly don’t understand it. The way I look at things the GC is a step on the road toward college acceptance, not the gate across the road. In the end, the decision of how, where, and when to apply, accept, decline, etc. falls to the student, his/her family and the colleges.
My son came to me early in his senior year and told me his GC had told him she would not let him apply to a school that was beyond a reach. There was an athletic component to applying but everyone (my son included) knew it would have been more of a long shot than hitting the lottery. My discussion with him was if he wants to apply there is no way we would allow a GC to stand in the way. We would go to whoever we needed to in order to get his transcript released. My view is the student owns their academic record and no GC has the right to not release it per the student’s instructions.
Am I wrong in this and do all of the GCs of the world really hold the power to determine if and where a student goes to college? It would appear at some schools they seem to think they have this authority.
They effectively do for colleges that ask for a counselor recommendation, or the college requires transcripts on application and the counselor controls transcript sending. Whether they abuse the power in the way you are referring to is another story.
However, even non-abusive counselors can have “soft power” over the students in terms of influencing them by suggesting colleges that they prefer the student to apply to, and not suggesting other colleges. At elite private high schools with connections to elite colleges, there may be good reasons behind that due to semi-insider information, but otherwise it may be just the counselor’s general college preferences or based on his/her opinion of the student (whether accurate or inaccurate). Or, in large public high schools where the counselor handles hundreds of students, it may just be based on typical students there, rather than the individual student.
@iaparent Yes, they do when it’s related to early decision. The GC has to protect the high school’s reputation and the chances of future applicants. If the high school, and by extension the GC, does not enforce the ED rules, then no student from that school will be accepted ED in the next several upcoming years. If high schools are willingly sending out transcripts and recommendations to, say, more than one ED school, or sending transcripts to more schools after a student has reneged on his/her ED commitment, then that HS is blacklisted, so to speak. So the high school can do what it needs to do to ensure that students are following the rules.
As for your example, that doesn’t make any sense and just sounds like a power trip on the part of the GC. The school’s rules should exist only to ensure students’ compliance with colleges’ rules.
“My son came to me early in his senior year and told me his GC had told him she would not let him apply to a school that was beyond a reach.”
Wow! First time I have heard of that happening! I would agree that is abuse of their position. And the backlash from that decision is bound to be more trouble and time-consuming than just sending the transcript.
Our school will only send one transcript for ED, but that is to preserve the honor of the guidance department and reputation of the school for all other current and future applicants.
Some posters on these boards have mentioned there are limits to the total number of transcripts that will be sent to colleges. While I agree students should consider their lists carefully and do thorough research, I disagree with those kinds of school policies. Set priorities (e.g. your transcripts #15-30 will go out AFTER your and everyone else’s #1-10 transcripts) or charge a handling fee after the 12th transcript), but get 'em out.
I’m marveling that y’all are talking about guidance counselors having undue influence. My son’s didn’t even know his name. If his letter was good and personal (which I suspect it was because his acceptances suggest he hit above his weight), it was because he and I did a careful job on the “student brag sheet” and "parent brag sheet’ the guidance department required.
As for the original OP: I wouldn’t let a GC stop my kid, but I would strongly urge a few things:
a) Do that application last so you don’t burn bridges for the other ones - this is advice if the person truly is as awful as it seems.
b) Do some digging as to why the counselor is opposed to this application. Perhaps the counselor thinks your child wouldn’t survive there if admitted? Is there any reason to believe this counselor’s opinion? Are the counselor’s other suggestions reasonable?
c) If this application will be accompanied by a hostile GC letter, how will you get around that?
Unless your student is asking to ED to two schools, the GC has no business dictating what reach schools are on a students’ list. IMO, the GC has the obligation to steer kids to have a balanced list but that’s it. I would be super worried that the GC’s LOR will be a problem. Sorry OP that you are going through this!
It’s my experience that many guidance counselors have no idea how athletic recruiting works. If the college coach is encouraging an ED application for a recruit – it’s no business of the GC to stand in the way. Especially for D1 schools, including Ivies. If it’s a D3 and no support from the coach, that might be different. But if a coach is supporting the application, the student-athlete has every right to apply.
In my opinion, your GC is overstepping their authority.
I’m my experience, GCs do not have that level of authority.
Private school GCs are pretty notorious for trying to maximize ED acceptances. There job is to tell you why they think you have no chance. Many public GCs have such large student loads that they may not spend the time to explain why you have no chance. (All the slots are actually going to athletes and legacies for example.) Our high school seemed to encourage ED and EA, but I never had the sense that they tried to manage not having too many students competing against each other. My SIL whose son went to a very highly regarded prep school felt that her unconnected son was not getting equal treatment from the GC. It was one of the many times I felt we hadn’t lost anything by sending our kids to a public school!
Thanks everyone, this makes things a little more clear as based on our experience and some of the comments on CC I thought this GC was the norm. @brooklynlydia our situation was much the same, the GC barely knew my son’s name and was basing her comments on grades/test scores that were most likely put in fron of her mere minutes before his meeting.
My son did have a good balance of schools on his list. He was not a spectacular student and had included a 98% admit school, just to be safe. The thing that got me was not only did she say she would refuse to send a transcript on one super reach, she strongly discouraged applying to several schools where his stats would have put him below the 50% mark. We knew they were reaches and were comfortable with “taking the long shot” but she was firmly against it. I think in the end, these reach schools were all schools where our high school places many kids each year and she wanted to limit the number of rejections in order to keep the school admit rate high with those schools. This is where my problem lies, the public school is more worried about their reputation than helping the student follow their chosen path.
Do they have the power? Pretty much. Counselors are so incredibly different though. My eldest had this intense counselor who was on the kids every second and overly invested in where they applied and went to school. She had heavy favorites and those kids got no interference at all. However, we knew kids with the same stats as DD get railroaded by her because she just didn’t like them. On the flip side, DS’s counselor (who has this massive reputation for being “the best”) never once talked to him about college until the acceptances rolled in! Both small schools.
@iaparent - yes, it does sound like your guidance department has an agenda. I wish you luck with solving this.
A few thoughts:
I don’t know your means or preferences, but perhaps the solution is to look at similar schools outside your region where she cares less about admit rates.
If you have brag sheets available, like I discussed, put the effort in to fill it out electronically. Naviance has a suggested one. If the GC can cut and paste she will, and that gives you some control over language. This was really important for us since my son’s main EC was not school related and complicated to explain.
How many applications are you looking to do? My kid was very burned out by the seventh. So nice you say “several” where your kid is in the bottom of the class, I wonder if the GC is trying to limit volume?
I’d study naviance data for your school and see what your kid looks like compared to his peers. If the GC is making sense, you will know it. If the GC has an agenda, you can go over her head.
Finally. This sucks. I’m sorry your kid is being sold so short.
I’ve never seen a high school publish admit rates. They generally publish the names of the school where kids were accepted and are pretty coy if say all the Ivy League acceptances are just one or two students. Both my kids’ public high school and my own private high school publish college acceptance lists with no numbers. I think they both put asterisks showing which colleges students actually attended and my private school puts in bold colleges where there was more than one acceptance.
@iaparent I would contact the principal and demand a meeting with him/her and this GC. You need to make it very clear that while you appreciate the GC’s input, your son has every right to apply to the colleges that he wants to apply to and that they zero right to interfere.
You’d be amazed at how quickly school staff change their tune when you start copying the principal.
Your child should be able to apply to any and all schools. I agree with @shortnuke that you may want to bring the principal in on the discussion.
@mathmom our school does not publish admit rates, but our school uses Naviance, so we have a pretty good sense of how many students apply and are accepted/deferred/waitlisted/denied. You cannot tell if the students are recruited athletes, legacies, etc. I think it is based on what students report to the guidance department so it is not 100% accurate but pretty close at our large public HS.
“My son came to me early in his senior year”
I am curious to learn how this played out. I am assuming, from the opening sentence of your second paragraph, that your son has finished high school and is either in or headed to college (hopefully of his choice) this semester.
Our D was forced to leave her private HS after JR year due to frequent and prolonged medical absences. The HS GC said he would help her apply to a U after she successfully completed 2 years of CC. After her 1st semester of CC, she applied to transfer to the competitive, elite, OOS private U her brother attended. She was also accepted by the instate flagship after completed her 2nd semester of CC after completing a cursory application. If the GC was supposed to be a gatekeeper, he had no control of D after she was no longer at the HS. She didn’t seek or get any support from him.
Our S was urged by the young, new GC to cast a wide net because he had had frequent and prolonged absences as well. The old GC was very pessimistic about S’s chances but the new GC was encouraging. S applied as he chose and had quite a few nice acceptances with good merit awards.
The GC at my kids’ high school did not play an important role in the application process. He was overwhelmed: hundreds of students. This is a college town, and many of the students’ parents know more about academia than the high school counselor. The GC played his minimal role well, which involved expediting the sending of information (e.g., transcripts) to the colleges in support of applications.
In California, high school counselors do not have any gatekeeping power over California public university applications, because they do not require any recommendations, nor do they require transcripts on application (self-reported courses and grades are used; matriculating students provide final transcripts that are used to verify).
However, they can still have “soft power” in terms of influencing where students apply, and can have gatekeeping power over students applying to colleges that do require recommendations or transcripts on application.