My sons’ high schools charged $5 per transcript. At least at the time, there was no limit on the # of apps. DH went to a HS in NYC and the limit then (late 70s) was six. The transcript fee basically paid for a clerical person to process and mail the transcripts, at a time where there was not other funding for that position. For obvious reasons, parent volunteers or student office workers could not take on that job, as they could with other office functions within the school. There were fee waivers for students who qualified.
We had 400 kids per counselor; the parents and student were expected to write a profile and answer a questionnaire to help the counselor write a rec letter. Those letters are on top of dealing with kids who are homeless, speak a different language, are in abusive situations, don’t get enough to eat, have a critically ill parent, etc. We didn’t expect the counselor to have time to help our sons get into their reach schools. The letters the counselors wrote seemed to help my sons’ cause; other than that, we stayed out of their way so they could do the really critical parts of their job.