<p>monydad…that is true. For seniors, the college counselor is helping a student to select an appropriate balanced list of schools and guiding them in how to present themselves in the admissions process in the very best way. Many families wait until their child is a rising senior to engage a counselor. </p>
<p>In my experience, I also work with students as juniors (but not all families do this). It is an advantage to go about it this way as the process is at a much better pace. And yes, things like course selection advice, testing plans, college visit planning, and guidance with summer plans and so forth are part of it. I don’t think of it, however, as “shaping the student’s qualifications.” Rather, it is simply a head start on the process and guidance through earlier stages of it and also spreading it out more too. I have helped many juniors with summer programs (who wanted to attend one in their interest area) and this is like college admissions a little bit in helping to suggest programs that fit what they want to do and helping with the application process (in many cases, similar to college applications). They don’t need to attend a summer program, of course not but some are planning to and so if they are juniors, they get help with that process as well. But still, I don’t see any of my work even with juniors as changing their qualifications but merely an earlier start in being guided in the college selection and admissions process and the steps that would come before one is a senior. I don’t think the students who started with me as juniors have “different qualifications” as you say than had they not started with me as a junior. I simply guided them in that year as well as senior year and it is helpful to them but doesn’t change their qualifications. I prefer starting junior year actually for many reasons but changing the qualifications isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>In the case I’m familiar with, the kid will likely have different qualifications.
somewhat. Course selection, AP vs. non-AP decisions, SAT IIs & other test, engagement of academic tutors in certain subjects, extracurriculars, summer activities, teams, have all been undertaken in consultation with this advisor.</p>
<p>^^^^That is because there are some counselors who seek to shape and mold a student for college admissions. I don’t see that as my job. I believe in taking the student as they are and guiding them but not changing who they are in order to get into college. Now, of course, I advise them in doing well in school and course selection and so on. But this is not like changing what ECs they do and what not.</p>
<p>I imagine the vast majority of counselors, and parents, approach things similarly to the way you do. I was just seconding that evidently there are some other approaches out there also.</p>
<p>The difference to us, if we had hired a counselor as a rising junior would have been:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>DS, math and science nerd, likely would have entered some of the alphabet soup of math and science competitions during his jr year. We the parents really didn’t know about them and I’m not sure he did either. If he did, he didn’t think they were any big deal. Would he have done well? I don’t know, but now we have a big blank on the academic award section.</p></li>
<li><p>He would have timed his tests differently. Now we’re looking at taking his SAT for the first time in October. Little late for a repeat if he doesn’t do well. Didn’t look into things soon enough for him to take them in May and he did the SAT II in June. Barely got those done too. Took ACT without writing as his dream school takes that. But then realized everyone else wants it with writing, so redo in september although his scores in June were fine otherwise.</p></li>
<li><p>probably would have worked on getting him hooked up at local college for physics courses for his Sr year. He has no science left to take at HS when the physics teacher left and Physics II disappeared. </p></li>
<li><p>Would have started speech and debate last year. He was interested but never got around to signing up. Now he’ll do it as a Sr. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Yes, maybe small things. </p>
<p>Are they going to make a difference in his overall app? Don’t know.<br>
Could I have directed him better, yes.
Could he have directed himself better. Yes, but no one else around here expends much energy on college apps so the culture is very different.
Would I go back and pay a few hundred dollars to have done these things differently? You betcha.</p>
<p>The problem with college counselors is that anyone can hang out a shingle. There are organizations that a counselor can belong to, such as IECA and NACAC, that I think require some type of certification. (We were told never to hire a counselor that was not part of IECA.) It’s also good to know their educational background…were they a guidance counselor or admissions officer in a previous life? If not, what has qualified them to be a college counselor?</p>
<p>My post 103 was responding to your post 102 which at the time had stated:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>AFTER I posted my reply, you edited and added to your post the following:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think consulting on those matters is the same as changing qualifications and is not the same as molding or reshaping the student. I simply believe it is good guidance! I definitely help with course selection. But shouldn’t even a good school counselor do that? I advise about testing plans and test prep (I don’t do the actual test prep) and again, this is good guidance but isn’t changing the student’s qualifications. I help with summer activity planning and for many, this involves a selection of programs and applications or even audition process. I don’t reshape students and tell them they need a summer program instead of what they were going to do for the summer! These are families who were already planning to attend a summer program in the field of interest and I helped them find the programs and with the application process. I didn’t suggest they do a program when none was intended. While we discuss ECs, I don’t help them invent new ones or change what they were already participating in. We might discuss any initiatives they might consider in their areas of interest, like I would hope many parents would be discussing with their kids…the student’s plans of what they wanted to pursue and any suggestions related to that. It is not redoing the qualifications or making them different but guiding them along their path. I would hope that parents and school counselors engage in such discussions already but an independent counselor is a third party who is very knowledgeable who can guide them as well. I don’t believe I have changed a student’s qualifications or molded or reshaped them. I have guided them. I don’t say, “you must do a summer program!” This year, I had a student who went back to his lifelong summer camp to be a counselor even though he is applying to specialized college programs where i have other applicants who are doing the same who chose to attend summer specialized programs in that field. In both instances, I followed whatever the student wished to do. If they wanted a summer program, I was able to suggest ones and help with the application process but I didn’t tell them to change their intentions of what they wanted to do for the summer.</p>
<p>However, all that said from my own experience, I DO believe there ARE college counselors who aim to reshape and mold the student.</p>
<p>Going back to post #95, about the degree and timing of adcom’s communications with private school counselors, I have to believe these are much more frequent with private feeder schools, at least. A recent grad of our public HS who attends Dartmouth on an athletic acceptance told me that many classmates who were graduates of the St. Paul’s and Exeters of this world had lower stats among the accepted, and fewer accomplishments (but, frequently, much wealthier parents, some with stratospheric jobs and connections), vs her classmates from public high schools. Don’t the elites accept disproportionately more private school students? There MUST be conversations, particularly about development cases, and some kind of understanding or expectation that a predictable number of grads will be accepted. With diminished endowments, there may be even more of this activity. </p>
<p>Conversely, in our public school, the GCs refuse to call colleges (if we do it for one kid, we might have to do it for all, and we don’t have the time, is their thinking). Even for their Val on a WL at HPY.</p>
<p>MomPhD, my daughter is attending a top lac. Her roommate last year was from a prep school and had no APs and no extracurriculars but is quite wealthy (inheritance-- not a famous family or anything like that). I do think that’s an issue. That said, my daughter (who attended what would be called a very good non magnet ps) says that the kids from Exeter and such are very well prepared.</p>
<p>My DS was a freshmen at Dartmouth this year and came from an elite day school as selective as Exeter and St. Paul’s. Realize, to get into those schools in the first place, the kid has to be pretty much ivy league level. So you can go very deep into their classes and the kids will be 99th percentile in everything.</p>
<p>From DS’s school, the only kids who got any ‘break’ from the stats ivies want were the hooked. The issue is there are a lot of them. There are a ton of ivy legacies at these schools, children of the rich/famous/powerful, top URMs and the boarding schools produce lots of recruited athletes.</p>
<p>The ivies actually want fewer kids from ‘feeder’ schools. They need to make room for the low and middle income kids they want, representation from every state and as many countries as possible, etc. The unhooked prep school kids are getting no breaks.</p>
<p>But yes, there are lots of conversations going on between adcom and prep school counselors. When DS went to ask his school college counselor to send his mid term grades, he was told they had already called for them. His counselor knew he had gotten in before he did as well. The college counselors at these prep schools are often former top school adcom. It’s not helping the kids without the stats get in, but it certainly assists in getting the full picture of the qualified communicated.</p>
<p>4 yrs ago it was unusual to hear of someone hiring a private counselor. It is now common.
I just briefly looked at the annual notice to parents and read the section on counseling.
In our district- School personnel shall assist pupils with course selection or career counseling.
The district is required to include a one page written notice to parents of students in grades 9-12 that includes all of the following:
1 a brief explanation of the college admission requirements
2. a list of the current UC an CSU web sites that help students and their families learn about college admission requirements and that list high school courses that have been certified by UC as satisfying the requirements for admission to UC and CSU.
3. A brief description of what career technical education is as defined by the CDE
4. The internet address for the portion of the web site of the CDE where students can learn more about career technical education.
5.Information about how students may meet with school counselors to help them choose courses that will meet college admission requirements to enroll in career technical education courses.
Interestingly nowhere does it say that the counselor has any role in helping the student find appropriate schools or any help in the application process. Our school counselors have over a 500 student load. They have little time to help individual students.
For both my older kids- Jr year the high school has College Info night- basically a few counselor stand up and show a power point of the UC and CSU requirements. They also remind people that they should apply for financial aid. Also if you are an athlete to look at the NCAA rules. They also point out the process of enrolling in the community college. They don’t provide any info that someone could not get from a brief look at the websites for the UC’s and CSU’s. In both jr and senior years in english class one assignment will be to write a college essay. That is the depth of any essay help. Our students basically meet with their counselor once a year unless they have a problem.
So I don’t fault anyone for hiring a private service. What the school provides is not enough unless you have a parent who is involved or you want to attend a CSU or the community college.</p>
<p>Sybbie, in terms of PERCENTAGES of applicants accepted from private (including but not only parochial) schools, it is higher than for publics at the elites. Absolute numbers would be lower. This is what I meant by disproportionate. </p>
<p>hMom, regarding stats of private school kids, just a little added perspective–in our suburban public school in a high socioeconomic community, fully 1/3 of the class tested 99th percentile on nationally normed, standardized tests. We also saw the other side of this when our kid was accepted and attended a top ranked private school–where a large percentage of the class were also legacy, development, etc (it works the same way for elite private HS admits as elite colleges). Our kid was pulling up their average.</p>
<p>Another true story, from recent years-- a mom of a kid at a top private HS told me her kid’s experience with elite admissions. In a waiting room full of interviewees, the admissions rep walked in, and said, with enthusiasm, “I see I have someone here from (insert top private HS’s name). Who is it?” Whereupon her kid stood up, was jumped ahead of the interview queue, and was later admitted. The kid was unhooked, and with decent but not stellar stats, according to the mom, and the mom told me this story to illustrate why she considered her hard-earned private school tuition dollars money well spent. </p>
<p>This is just an example of the kind of relationship that our public HS GCs do NOT cultivate…not that an independent GC could compensate, but they at least might know the lay of the land a little better.</p>
<p>Pardon this digression. I can’t help but think that elites profess not to discriminate on socioeconomics, and to give equal access to lower and middle income public school kids, but the truth is the financial aid packages can fall far too short (there is even a term for this, the “admit/deny”, in admissions parlance). For example at HY where the middle class FA initiatives started, parents have recently told me that although they were within the stated income ranges, those colleges did not deliver grants that bridged anywhere near the “no more than 10% of AGI” family contribution promised. Must be lots of fine print in those initiatives. This is why some of our public school’s Ivy admissions end up at state colleges on merit scholarships. Okay, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.</p>
<p>For example at HY where the middle class FA initiatives started, parents have recently told me that although they were within the stated income ranges, those colleges did not deliver grants that bridged anywhere near the “no more than 10% of AGI” family contribution promised. Must be lots of fine print in those initiatives. </p>
<p>harvard states:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think the Financial aid inititiative works for families whose Financial picture is pretty straight forward; income from employment and usual assets consisting of the primary home. </p>
<p>Where things can get a little funky is for </p>
<p>families that own their own businesses (where business losses are added back in and considered income), </p>
<p>families where parents are divorced and remarried (then the custodial parents and the stepparents incomes are taken into consideration), </p>
<p>people whose gross income may be over the $180k and then are maxing out on their 401k (the 401 k contribution is added back as income)</p>
<p>Families who have second homes (whether or not they are making $ off of them)</p>
<p>Students with considerable assets in their name
and the list goes on.</p>
<p>Re “with average asset worth for those incomes,” I wonder what $ amount H considers average, for say, $150 K or $180K AGIs? Does H publish this? It would be informative, but if it would discourage applications (and the H’s profit from these), my guess is this info would never be posted by H. Just by us parents here on CC (hint, hint)</p>
<p>In the families I referred to above, the fact that their mortgages were paid off was what they said had increased their expected contribution dramatically (the parents thought their primary residence HAD been considered as an asset–and we are not talking McMansions). None of the other circumstances above applied. </p>
<p>mom60, we are in a different state, but same basic services apply here too, minus the essay assignments as part of the cirriculum in jr/sr year. A student without any problems gets a 5-minute appt for scheduling each year, and are directed to use Naviance for everything college. That is it. If I had not experienced it with Kid#1, I would never have believed how lacking these services are.</p>
<p>It is the same in our large urban public school. Each guidance counselor has 400 students and allots 5 minutes per student for scheduling each year. As of now, my rising senior has had no conversations with her GC regarding anything related to college. We have had to do all the research on our own. </p>
<p>So yes, in cases like this I do think there can definitely be added value in hiring a private college counselor. In our family, we have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to craft an appropriate list that will include schools likely to offer merit aid. I shudder to consider how many hours I have spent pouring through threads on CC and reading every book on college admissions that I could get my hands on. A professional counselor would have been very helpful, most likely saving us a great deal of time and possibly even money if she or he steered us in the right direction. </p>
<p>As a poster mentioned up-thread, I fail to understand why it is okay to spend $20,000 on private school tuition, with excellent college guidance counseling included as part of the package, but it is not okay for public school families to spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on professional guidance.</p>
<p>As for the original post, I have heard of private counselors in our area charging anywhere from $75 per hour to a $4,000 comprehensive package (not sure what that includes). The families that I know of who have utilized these services have for the most part been quite happy and have felt that it is very beneficial to have a professional involved.</p>