My son’s GC definitely tried not to encourage false hopes. He never told a student not to apply but made sure they had sufficient safeties as backups.
My DH loves to tell the story of his HS guidance counselor who tried to dissuade him from his first choice and told him he would never get in. That school became his alma mater. To this day he has a deep distrust of GCs !
To give the complete story some have asked for.
My son did graduate HS in 2017 so as some suspected this is all water under the bridge now. As it worked out we needed very little from the GC as we did visits to most of the schools on his list early in his senior year and as luck would have it he fell in love with 2 of his safety schools and both had rolling admissions. He was accepted to both by November and he saw so reason to apply to any of the reach schools so it became a mute point. The other piece was he realized the super reach was also going to be a super financial reach and was not realistic so it all worked out without input from the GC. In fact I don’t know that he ever talked with her again or even let her know of his ultimate decision on school.
I jumped into this discussion because of my S22, who starts at the same school next week. This son is a completely different student and will be looking at much more selective schools so I wanted to gain a better understanding of the GC influence before we start the process again. Thanks to all.
Thank you for sharing.
I am glad your son found a college that’s a good fit for him.
I agree with you that the student should own their academic record.
I hope your younger son has a better experience.
In last year’s class of 400, less than 50 of the students ended up going somewhere other than the local state directional or community college. Our GC is better at finding apprenticeship programs than colleges. But she does get very excited when a kid has the grades and scores to go to a college that isn’t Local Commuter U.
A relative of mine who is about 29 now went to a tippy-top boarding school, where he was in the top third of his class, but not the top 10% or 20%. He had something of an unusual background – an American kid who had spent the first 12 years of his life in a European country, and went to public schools there through 5th grade. Then he went to boarding school in Ireland, a couple of years in a private school in NYC when his parents moved there, and then the elite boarding school. Even after moving to the U.S., he spent most of his summers in his country of birth (or in one case one of its former colonies). He had some cool opportunities that came out of his father’s position as a top executive at a well-known European company.
Anyway, he would have been a third generation legacy at a super-selective university where his grandfather got at BA and PhD and his father a BA and JD. And his boarding school GC told him directly that it would not support him in applying to that university. They didn’t say he couldn’t apply, but made it clear that his recommendations would not support the application. To say three generations of that family were hopping mad is an understatement, but that’s the way it was.
Things worked out fine for him. He had a very disappointing college application season, but got in off the wait list at what was probably his 5th choice college. He finished there in three years with a BA/MA in International Relations, then used family connections and his own intelligence and social skills to get a series of increasingly sexy jobs with international human rights organizations. He’s now attending a top-whatever U.S. law school.
Eye opening to me. Seems kids attending public school can get a raw deal and there’s not much you can do about it. If anyone was contemplating private high schools it would be pertinent to ask what the Guidance policy is on college applications. It’s a minefield.
What was the reason for the non-support?
I suspect that the GCs probably planned out which kids would apply to which Ivies so that their likelihood of landing a spot was enhanced.
For obvious reasons, this wasn’t a topic I have ever discussed in depth with him, his father or grandfather. My impression was that he wasn’t enough of an academic star, he wasn’t an athletic recruit, and he wasn’t a development case for that university, and his boarding school had plenty of each of those categories. It may well have been nothing more than educated realism – this school being one of the top feeders to the target university for generations. They may have calculated that he had no chance, given his in-class competition, and they may have been right about that. Or they may have been performing a screening function for the university, in order to enhance the prospects of those kids who were allowed to apply. It hardly matters.
Lesson learned the hard way: Going to a feeder school does not help unless you are the right kind of fodder. Lesson two: It doesn’t matter. If you are rich and privileged, you can go to a “lesser” college and still learn a lot and enjoy yourself. And when you graduate – indeed, well before – your wealth and privilege will go to work for you plenty.
Without stats, it is hard to comment on this. Say a kid has a 3.1 GPA and 28 ACT, and wants to apply to Harvard. Even a hooked applicant is not getting in. I can hardly blame a GC for trying to put the brakes on. So there are situations where it isn’t crazy. Just can’t tell if this is one of them.
Nor could I, really. Not a 3.1 GPA, though, or a 28 ACT or anything close to that. They told me he was in the top third of his class. Grandfather (a reasonably famous economics professor at a world-class university) and Father (successful international lawyer and businessman) had no doubt Grandson was headed for Alma Mater U. His academic performance at Slightly Lesser U. was stellar enough to permit one to say with confidence that he would have done fine at Alma Mater.
I’m not saying this was crazy, by the way. I’m just reporting it happened, an instance of a school effectively cutting off access to a particular elite university for a student deemed a long shot.
Private schools don’t do long shots. The college counselors have longstanding relationships with the Adcom’s and they aren’t going to risk those relationships by writing “this kid is brilliant” when the kid is “less brilliant” than 25 other kids, also applying to the same institution. And they answer to the administration of their own institution, which would not stay in business if it’s employees were writing “This kid is a third generation legacy and pretty smart, although not as smart as the other kids who are applying from our school”.
So what’s the answer? Gatekeeping. A CC at an elite boarding school would rather tell the Adcom at Northwestern or Vanderbilt “this is the top student from our college applying to your college this year” (and have it be truthful) than lie, obfuscate, or hide behind weak euphemisms.
Is it fair? I don’t know. But that’s what you paying for at a top boarding school- college counselors who know the drill, and want to advocate on your kids behalf WHEN APPROPRIATE and when realistic.
The same with colleges which gatekeep for med school applications btw. Why are some schools stats so high on who gets in to med school? Numerator AND denominator. You’re stats are going to zoom once to pull all the marginal applicants (i.e. the long shots) out of the pool. So that’s what they do.
I completely disagree with the gatekeeping mentality on the reach schools. If student wants to give a $90 donation to GF’s-alma-mater-U by way of an application, then it’s no business of a guidance counselor (public or private) to stop them.
Should the kid ask for a glowing recommendation that would be less than truthful then the GC has the right to say no.
The GC, in taking salary from taxpayers or tuition payers, is obligated to do their job: warn the kid and his parents that it’s a reach (put it in writing if there’s a need to CYA), and send the transcript with the same LOR you sent to all his other schools (GC’s assessment of his chances at one school shouldn’t negate the good qualities written in regards to him for other schools). Charge a small $10-or-so “processing fee” for the transcript for the reach school if necessary (not a punitive amount - just something to hint, “You know you’re wasting our time, right?”). The HS GC is NOT the college’s AO.
For better or worse, our public HS performs this kind of screening function for a handful of schools that it has an excellent relationship with. These colleges have come to trust the HS.
Don’t send your kid to boarding school if you don’t like gatekeeping. From the experience of parents I know, places like Choate, Exeter, etc. are pretty transparent about how college admissions work. And they are NOT going to tell every kid who would be a solid fit at Lehigh or Muhlenberg or Trinity "sure, apply to Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth “just to see what happens”. Not happening.
You don’t like it? Send your kid to public school.
Seems like there should be no need to do “hard” gatekeeping (i.e. refusing recommendations and transcripts) when the counselor can just be honest about telling a student asking about an unrealistic reach school that s/he has no hope (and therefore should not waste time applying), and that the recommendation if s/he does apply will be an honest one* that will not be as good as those given for stronger students also applying to that school. Perhaps that may be sort of like @JHS 's story from #24, if indeed the student in that story was basically a no-hope applicant despite the presumed legacy preference.
*e.g. if the student is only “average” or “good”, that is what the recommendation will say, not “outstanding” or “one of the top few encountered in [the counselor’s] career”.
Did the OP say their kid was at a private boarding school? I might have missed that.
Nope. She did not say one way or the other. But in other threads s/he mentions that it’s an LPS in a Chicago suburb.
Of course, at elite BS or preps, there are parents who insist. But there can be a realistic quality difference in LoRs, albeit between the lines. The superlatives can be missing or the examples less wowing. Most elite BS letters will seem to pass the parent sniff test. But adcoms can see it, especially when they know what years of strong letters look like. This isnt sabotage, but letters aimed at the right tiers and matches.
I don’t think a public GC should prevent a kid from having any reaches. But what’s a reach here, a tippy top or another level? I think we agree most GC don’t know enough about what could get a kid into any college that’s a stretch. Those who do should be able to sit down and explain the hesitation. It shouldn’t feel arbitrary. There can be discussion and hopefully, a smart compromise. But kids and families (you know I’ll say this) need to be aware of reality, as well.
Last year, the child of close friends of mine (private prep school until 9th grade, then BS from 10th-12th) ended up at his “first choice” college- one of the CTCL schools. He finished Freshman year with a bang; has found his niche intellectually, socially, athletically.
Only very close friends know that:
Kid is third generation Penn alum with generous (although not tens of millions of dollars generous) relatives;
Kid assumed until junior year that he’d be going to Penn;
Parents had a near meltdown to discover that the college counselor told the kid that Penn was off the table.
Sure, the BS could have taken the attitude of “you never know”. And I have no dog in this hunt- my kids didn’t go to BS, I have no relationship at Penn, etc. But to me- this seems like a success story in every possible way. Kid got redirected to a “first choice” college which he could fall in love with early enough in the process so that it didn’t feel like sloppy seconds after getting denied by Penn; kid is at a place where he is THRIVING by every measure and not on the verge of flunking out because by some miracle he got into a college where his stats put him at the very bottom of the class; kid honestly believes that this college was his first choice “forever” and that he’s forging his own path by NOT attending Penn where older sibling went, parents and grandparent went, etc.
Yes- it’s gatekeeping but I think that’s what you are getting at a BS. Happy ending all around, no? And one less kid for Penn to reject… EVEN a legacy who applies early. Still doesn’t make the kid a fit for Penn.