Do guidance counselors generally advocate for their students if they are waitlisted? For example,make a phone call to the admissions officer ? Do some in principle not do this and only offer to provide updated information? I would think at well known private feeder schools this could be common, but what about public schools? Is this practice generally discouraged except under exceptional circumstances? Does it make a difference?
I’m not sure about generally, but yes, sometimes counselors will make advocacy calls for waitlisted students. And yes, this might be most effective when a counselor has a preexisting relationship with the regional admissions officer. And cultivating such relationships is typically part of what counselors at selective private high schools do.
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At some schools, and in some situations, a CC might reach out to an AO.
I am aware of a situation in which a legacy of a major donor was deferred in the ED round and the CC called to ask if it was a soft rejection or whether the student might be admitted RD, and if the latter, what they were looking for. This was not about advocacy but about interpretting results. But admittedly, the CC received and relayed the kind of insider info most deferred students would love to have!
At most private schools, the CCs are solely responsible for college counseling and they often have relationships with AOs, some having even worked together. In the summer/fall, it is also not unusual for AOs to talk to CCs about initiatives at their schools with the goal of having the CCs help steer the kind of students they are seeking to those schools.
Still, my sense is that CCs reach out after decisions only occasionally. To call and advocate for every student would very quickly ruin the relationships that allow both sides to be effective.
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I have the same sense. These relationships are built on trust and you can’t abuse that trust and expect that relationship to stay productive. So, they reportedly do this judiciously, and try to be honest in their advocacy.
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It may also differ from public vs private school. Some colleges have relationships with some school counselors especially if the counselors have done visits at these schools. But in my experience, if a counselor made a call to a school, the counselor would also want to be in a position of telling the college that if an admission came through, that the student would accept the admission, regardless of cost.
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Absolutely.
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Don’t know about all publics, but my son’s well-known public feeder school will not make calls to advocate for the waitlisted students. Their rationale is that first, there are just too many of them (class of 800), and second, it would be unfair to advocate for some and not the others.
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I don’t necessarily disagree with this sentiment, but this is one of the things that many private feeder/feederish high schools essentially offer–a willingness to be “unfair” in the sense of advocating for some applicants and not others for any given college.
On a statistical level, I think this helps them achieve more placements in the most selective colleges, even after controlling for other factors. But I have seen first hand how some parents may not take it all that well when the college counselors explain they will enthusiastically support their kid for some colleges, but not every college the parent thinks their kid should be applying to.
But then there is no elected school board to complain to. So that’s that.
It could put both the counselor and admissions rep in a pickle - and then what happens if said kid gets off with the promise to go and doesn’t.
I can see counselors definitely not doing this. After all, while it’s a business, it’s not supposed to be a business - a kid shouldn’t get in because a counselor pulled a card.
My sense is even at the schools that sometimes do this, they won’t unless they are dead sure the kid will in fact take the offer.
Of course in many of those cases, the counselor is working with far fewer applicants than at a typical public HS, and this is their only job. And in fact, they may have been working with this specific kid for a long time by this point, starting back with their initial college search. So, they may sometimes feel rightly confident about the kid taking an offer if extended.
And if they don’t feel confident, again I think in most cases they are basically authorized to politely decline to make the call.
Yes, this seems like valuable information that is not otherwise available, even though the counselor is not trying to influence the eventual decision.
At colleges which do not reject in the ED or EA round, such information can be useful for deferred applicants to know whether they still have a realistic chance of admission. This may affect whether they apply ED2 elsewhere, for example.
For wait listed applicant, there may be some insider information about whether a college is projecting to be under enrolled (and in buckets that the wait listed applicant matches). But there is less actionable information for the applicant, since the applicant’s actions do not change with or without this information.
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I would not have felt right about the guidance counselor picking and choosing who they made calls to from my kids public school. I truly don’t think it would make any difference and don’t understand why it would? I wouldn’t let my kid choose a school that made them beg to get in.
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I agree but then I wonder if there’s any I’ll get your kid in, but you need to steer to me next year.
There’s so much potentially wrong with this type scenario.
I don’t really think so. Ime, the CCs are genuinely committed to seeing the kids make good matches, and to that end, the kids they steer are the ones who will benefit. For example, a school might let a CC know that they have just started a new institute that does x, so the CC will let kids interested in x know about that. At least what I have witnessed is pretty win-win.
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My son was waitlisted at GW. The (boarding) school knew none of the admitted students were going to attend GW that year. (So not the same situation as above, choosing between several waitlisted students). The CC offered to have the Head of School call admissions for my son, if he would accept an offer. (My son preferred a different school, so we did not pursue this).
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Oh absolutely! My daughter is in a private school, and the difference in the entire college application process between hers and her brother’s has been stark. I do think that as a highly selective, extremely high-performing school, my son’s public is massively underperforming in their college placements. But they neither have the resources nor the expectations to support the kids the way a private school does.
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I struggle with knowing how much these calls actually matter. Of course, if there is a deep personal relationship over many years - it can be a positive. TBH Admission rep turnover has taken care of the majority of that. Some people speak of admissions being less and less communicative with college counselors with most getting nothing more than a status, and a sense of how realistic it is that the student gets admitted. I have even known a few college counselors to inflate the amount of influence they truly have with schools. Their waitlist influence seems to be trending downward.
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But the possibility is there. The high school counselor wants the student in - and the admissions counselors are all - sales people.
I think that the possibility is there is what matters.
And then internally at a school - if you have 8 admissions counselors - is one person trumping another, etc. - so I wonder how that happens internally.
I simply don’t like the possible hint of impropriety.
In my line of work, I’m always being asked for favors - both from dealers to me and my company to dealers. I try to avoid anything that might come back on me later as a you owe me. So I may be off as I’m not in high school counseling, college admissions but I sort of see the same relationship.
I hesitate to call AOs at highly rejective schools ‘sales’ people. I do think that moniker is accurate for AOs at most schools that are ‘buyers’, to use Jeff Selingo’s parlance. And for those schools, I doubt there’s much motivation and/or necessity for a HS counselor to make a call.
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I know they don’t go into that role with that in mind - but like in any role, i’m sure there are quotas of some sort and more.