S19 and D20 attend a humongous public high school and each grade has 1,200+ kids. Their GC is good about answering my emails and following through when I ask for something. However, it is evident that they are swamped and I assume that unless you ask a direct question, parents may not hear from them. They do speak with entire classes periodically throughout the year. I don’t worry about their lack of involvement because I’ve been through all this with my D14. TBH, I think my kids get enough involvement from me & their dad to more than make up for the lack of hands on help from their GC!
So this past weekend S19 was invited to atttend an elite football camp that had all the Ivy league coaches. It was fun seeing the coaches from schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale interact with the kids! A few took notice of our son and provided their info for him to keep in touch with. We will see where that goes… But, what was really a true benefit from attending a camp like this was that our S19 had the chance to talk to other athletes who were academically compatible with him. He has gotten a fresh wave of focus and motivation from these other players! Son has jumped on ACT studying without being reminded and has actually initiated college conversations. I think he is finally understanding what great opportunities he has before him!
Our school has about 3,600 kids and about 10 deans who I guess would be the same as a GC. You get assigned by the first letter of your last name so we will have the same dean for all 3 kids. Neither of my kids has ever met our dean and the only time I have talked to him is through email when I write to ask for schedule questions and changes. The kids know who he is and says he is known as kind of a jerk (isn’t nice when he proctors tests and that type of thing) but he has been incredibly responsive to me so I am OK with it. He has answered emails at night, on weekends and even on a holiday once.
We only have 2 or 3 CCs and have only met with ours once at our request. She was nice enough but I didn’t think had the best advice - told D to start out looking wherever she wanted and not worry about the money because nobody pays full price. :-/ She also said she was planning to retire at the end of this year so I don’t know what will happen for next year - finding that out is on my very long to do list.
D finished school last Friday. Unfortunately she couldn’t enjoy it because she still hadn’t finished her online french class. All of her friends were invited after school to sleep over and do a photo shoot by a friend whose mom is a professional photographer. Once in a while she does these beautiful group shots of the girls and then does individual pictures for us as well. D couldn’t go because she was pretty sure french had to be done by midnight Friday and she didn’t think she was even going to make that deadline. Her procrastination caught up to her! :(( Then she had one last AICE exam on Monday and she was finally able to be done with junior year.
I would be surprised if any public school has GCs who give super personalized advice. Our school has 2800 kids and something like 15 counselors. So, each one has about 200 total kids and 50 seniors. 98% of the class goes to a four year college but I nearly 300 of them go to Big Ten schools so our GCs know a lot about those. They are also pretty good with kids who are interested in top universities (NU, Chicago, Duke, Vandy, Wash U, etc) since that’s where most of the top 50-60 kids will go. They are less helpful for Ivies and LACs. We send maybe 15 kids to Ivies each year and I’m guessing they all have private counselors. And we send even fewer kids to top LACs (last year we sent one to Bowdoin, one to Grinnell, one to Kenyon, one to Amherst). That’s it. It’s not because they wouldn’t get in. They don’t even apply.
The GCs always talk to kids about the upside of smaller schools but most kids are not swayed. Have had their eye on certain universities since freshman year. Those schools DO come to visit our school and kids can sign up to meet with reps. Last fall, S19 met with the AOs from Davidson, Lafayette, Kenyon, Grinnell, Macalester, Carleton, Amherst, and Denison. A few of those meetings ended up being an hour alone with the rep since he was the only student who signed up. That was awesome.
I’ve asked our GC about SAT2 scores and she’s got nothing. Had no advice on whether to retake or what kind of score would boost an app. Her additional suggestions for S19’s list included Mary Washington, UVA, and Lehigh. None of which makes any sense to me. She’s nice enough. At this point, I just hope she’s good at getting his transcripts and recommendations out on time. She’s probably already tired of talking to me and I doubt she’s coming across parents like me with too many questions. Parents who want someone really helpful hire a private counselor. Most of S19’s friends have been working with one since the beginning of junior year. Some even started that relationship before sophomore year. I think it’s overkill but the parents love that it’s off of their plate and the best part is that they don’t have to nag their kids since they are shelling out big money for someone else to do that.
My son goes to a public high school. He has about 450 kids in his junior class. They divide up the kids by their last name unless they are a magnet student. PVA has their own GC and the IB Diploma kids have their own GC. So my sons GC has about 100 kids per grade level that she works with because the high school only accepts 100 students per year for the IB Diploma track. GC has been ok but we still hired an Independent consultant.
Senior pictures for us begins the end of August into September. But I think I’m going to have just his senior yearbook portrait done by the school and then have my friend who is a professional photographer do his senior pictures. She photographs our Taekwondo competition team too and since that has been a huge part of his life I want his senior pictures to have at least one or two poses with his doback on. When I told my son my idea he was really happy about having our friend do the pictures!
We gave our son my husbands old car and it broke down a week ago and needed $1000 in repairs. Ugh! Mind you DS has not gone past the permit stage because he is sooo hesitant to drive on these crazy roads around DC! But now we are faced with buying him a new (used) car since this other car is too old and has become unreliable. I’m really intrigued by Carvana! LOL…
Well dd’s GC is being reassigned in addition to other changes in administration like the principal of the HS. There’s a huge hubub in town - teachers voted no-confidence in the superintedent of schools - the BOE had a special meeting, listened to public statements and then after a closed door session said, nope kids we fully back to superintendent. So should I be surprised that I did not get official word that the GC is being reassigned and we have no idea who will be her GC, who will write that rec letter? Who actually am I writing this brag sheet for then? We have no idea. Just so freaking fed up with this crazy town. After next year, putting the house on the market and getting out of dodge.
Well, considering that the high school program at my D17/19’s public K–12 school graduates ~30 students each year, there’s at least one GC at a public school out there who can give super personalized advice…
(Your point is taken, just pointing out that it’s a bit of an overgeneralization.)
D19’s in a charter school with one GC for the entire school (class size of 100+/grade), and they only recently made the GC full-time. For the size of the school, there’s a fair amount of diversity in terms of type of schools applied/accepted to. She does help, but I sort of feel like I know way more about the pluses/minuses as they pertain to D19 specifically than she does, for obvious reasons. And because the class size is so small, the data points, even if they exist, aren’t that helpful. I mean, it was nice for D19 to talk to, say, the one graduate who currently attends Haverford, but that graduate is/was probably the only applicant to Haverford in the last few years…
It of course makes me feel sad for students with potential to look beyond the local flagship (which is, don’t get me wrong, definitely the right choice for a number of students) but who don’t get sufficient advice just due to time considerations.
@4MyKidz - That’s exciting about the football camp and it sounds like it was good motivation for your son. That type of experience would have been great for us.
I am so frustrated with my S! He is just in this prolonged phase of a negative attitude and being irritated with everything I say and do. He has always tended toward thinking he knows everything but this has magnified so much! I know it is normal for sure, but it is so aggravating. I also realize that I am going to make lots suggestions of things to do or get involved with, and he is going to turn many of them down. However, over the past year, it seems like he has turned almost all of them down. There are so many opportunities that he has not taken advantage of, and I worry that his desire to not do something just because I suggested or offered it will have a negative effect that he will regret later. Just a couple of examples, he likely could have been selected for the governor’s honors program last summer but didn’t pursue it because he just wanted to work (it was only one week and would have been great). This summer there were other academic opportunities he turned down, and he could have gone to the junior olympics for one of his sports and met college coaches but he said no to that. I would have taken him on college visits, a sports tournament or let him do a sports camp out of state but no to all of that.
I know I need to respect his decisions and not be too pushy but his previously stated goals don’t fit with all the things he’s turned down. Plus, he wants to try for some pretty selective schools, so I have learned about things that will help his applications and I make suggestions as things make sense. I think he’s pretty clear that he’s not going to get in on grades and scores alone, so it’s tough to see him be so difficult. I wouldn’t mind at all if he didn’t have some high reaching goals, or if he was just nice to me.
Sorry for venting - just one of those parenting-teen moments.
S19 has confirmed almost all of his supplemental prompts. A few schools have said they are working on them this summer and aren’t sure if they will remain the same, but the vast majority said the prompts on their websites are for the 2018-2019 application or that they will remain the same from last year. Looks like he will have 13 supplements. And only two of them overlap so that they could maybe be the same essay (a prompt about a favorite EC). All of the others are stand-alone essays. Four are of the Why X variety. The others are difficult, if you ask me, and will require a lot of thought and re-writes.
We are meeting with his AP Lang teacher this Monday to discuss how he will work his essay help this summer. He only has three students and our best guess is that S19 will need him for 10-12 hours of review time, etc. (Of course, S19 will be spending a lot more time than that writing.) This teacher has already reviewed three drafts of S19’s Common App essay and it’s almost ready. Why do I feel like summer is passing quickly and he’s only been out of school for one week?
@BorgityBorg - don’t do the language SATII. Or, at the very least, do research before she commits to it. S19 took the Spanish one and scored in the 500s. He thought he’d do well because he’s had Spanish since 7th or 8th grade and I reinforce it at home conversationally. Everything I’ve read says don’t take a language unless you’ve studied abroad or are a native speaker (and in that case, you need to get an 800)
These GC comments have humbled me. I’ve fussed in a couple of posts, but our GC’s probably have 100 seniors. Think I will count our blessings, because clearly the grass isn’t always greener, and at least we’ve been learning what we don’t know. I spoke to a recent college graduate about his high school GC experience. He went to one of the competitive Catholic prep schools in the area, but indicated that a lot of the parents already had a vision for their kids, so the guidance counselor activity wasn’t as aggressive as I was assuming.
@elena13 Gotta say that I can relate. There were specific things that were right up her alley the last couple of years, yet she found lame reasons not to commit. Right now she’s a state away, and I’ve temporarily chosen to leave her completely alone and see what she does, but not sure how long I’ll stay quiet. She literally just bailed on two summer commitments last minute, with vagueness that she can only pull off over the phone. Yet somehow, she’s going to expect a certain result.
There are only about 100 kids in each grade in D’s school. Every senior meets with their GC weekly. They call it college club. I just met with her GC today for the first time and she said she appreciated how proactive and on top of things we are. D is in a selective NYC public 6-12 school.
@elena13, I know you know this, but your son really is behaving like a normal teenager! If he conforms to your wishes without questioning and pushing back now, he will likely end up rebelling later, which in my experience is worse. (I have a relative who was totally malleable until 25, and then finally clashed with the parents. The consequences of flouting parental expectations at 25 were much further reaching that they would have been at 17.)
It irks me too when D19 doesn’t want to do something that I know would open doors for her. Sometimes my husband, whose path in life has been unconventional but successful, has to tell me to back off. He says she’ll find her own ways to open doors, or she’ll go in the window.
It is definitely true that the whole asserting their independence thing is so much easier if they can just be nice about it. I frequently tell my kids that they shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds them. For goodness sake, just say, “No, thank you.” Or, “I can tell you’re trying to help, but I need to figure this out myself.”
The guidance counselors in our school each have about 70 kids/grade. I can’t speak for everyone but my son’s guidance counselor has given him very personalized advice and has developed a nice rapport with him based on mutual interests. He also recommended a school that S never would have thought about applying to and discussed him with the admissions rep when he came to the school based on qualities the rep said they are looking for.
DS procrastinated putting together a resume to give to the teachers who are writing his letters of recommendation and finally did so very grumpily tonight. He’s usually good natured to a fault but for whatever reason, this was a task he did not want to do and was very irritated that I didn’t do it for him. But it’s done and so is junior year for all intents and purposes. Half days tomorrow and Friday to walk next year’s schedule and hold the awards assembly.
@elena13 Thank you for your kind words. TBH, your son sounds a lot like my oldest daughter when she was in high school. Most of my gray hair came from dealing with her. It got to the point where we called a family meeting and told her we were taking a step back but would be there if she asked us to. After about 6 months (she’s incredibly stubborn and strong willed), she began to ask questions and initiate college/athletic recruitment conversations. She graduated from college in exactly 4 yrs a few weeks ago AND just secured her 1st full time job! Not saying this would work for your kiddo, but we were at our wits end with her and to be quite frank she needed space from us and we needed a breather from trying to manage her. It is interesting how every child is different. My other two are much more open to guidance and in fairness, we learned to give our kids more space. My oldest was unfortunately our guinea pig.
Interesting takes on the GC realities at different schools. I wonder if our GC staff is going to kick in a ton of helpful resources annnnnny day now. We have 4 GCs for around 2300 students. I’ve been volunteering every year during AP season in an attempt to forge some relationship with our GC, although yes, like at other schools, they do sometimes re-shuffle who you’re assigned to. I hope if they do this for D19 she can have her materials still prepared by her current one.
I wish colleges would recognize that the GC letter disadvantages many students. Weird that they all persist in asking for this. If I ruled the world…I’d get rid of that letter and also get rid of ED.
@homerdog Oh my gosh you guys are so on the ball. Already through several drafts of the Common App essay?? Wow. We’re still in school so I at least don’t have the summer freedom yet to start urging D19 to work on this. When I read your S19 has 13 supplements, that’s…sounding like a ton of work. But we will probably have a similar number. I definitely do need to get this all into a spreadsheet. My more immediate concern right now is getting D19 prepped for her interviews that are fast approaching. She’s got her first one on July 10. Has your son done any interviews yet?
And yes, parenting teenagers is no joke, and it’s not for the faint of heart. I find it can be a bit rough on the 'ol ego. But they sure can be adorable too. And brilliant, geez. Sometimes one of my teens will say something and I just want to write it down, it’s so cool. But they’re also insane much of the time. I guess the conclusion is never get too comfy…
I don’t know how many supplements kiddo is going to face. He has a list of 6 colleges that he’s solid that he’s going to apply to, but there are a lot of colleges still on the maybe list. I’m fine with leaving the maybe list big until December, honestly. We have one safety and two matches and two reach and one tippy top college. This would have been a perfect list 10 years ago, but I think he needs a few more matches and reaches.
He’ll get these 5 done before the end of September, then we’ll start thinking about expanding the list.
Heh, I just checked. If the kiddo wasn’t so fired up about going to Yale, he would have 3 supplementals to write. But Yale has a ton of them, though some are short responses.
The Yale short answers are nothing to stress about. They just want to get to know the student better. Keep them casual and honest. There are lots of examples on the Yale forum here.
@SDCounty3Mom All juniors at our school worked on common app essays for the last three weeks of school. That’s the only reason that S19 is that far along. Also, we hired his AP Lang teacher to help with essays this summer and he asked S19 to pull together a list of supplements so it was basically a homework assignment for him this week.
As for interviews, he will have seven. His first will be in August. That one is set up. The others will be in the fall and we need to wait until those schools get interview date options up on their websites. Right now, they only show summer options. I wasn’t planning on prepping him. I figure he will be well into the process of writing essays by then and he will have written up his activity section for the CA, so he should have things to talk about. I will make sure that he looks over each school’s website beforehand and has a question ready. Wasn’t planning on much more than that! I keep hearing that these are “get to know you” types of meetings and they are usually fairly short (maybe 30 min) so I’m not too concerned. He’s generally good with adults. I almost feel like, if he preps too much, he will come off more robotic. I just want him to relax and be himself.
Ugh. We are a bit behind here. D2 is still in the middle of finals. Regents and final projects. Hopefully, next week we’ll be able to make a start. I didn’t even know you could get the supplemental materials yet. Doesn’t common app open in August?
D is really stressing about the essay. I am trying to get her to calm down. She doesn’t even realize how many supplemental materials there will be. Its gonna be a fun summer!
I agree that the GC letter is a problem. Our GC only really knows the kids who have issues. My D is one of the easy ones who never needed guidance accept to pick her classes. And that was just a five minute conversation once a year. His entire letter will be based on what I write in the brag sheet. Hope I can write my daughter a good GC letter!
We have 4 GCs for around 2300 students. I’ve been volunteering every year during AP season in an attempt to forge some relationship with our GC, although yes, like at other schools, they do sometimes re-shuffle who you’re assigned to. I hope if they do this for D19 she can have her materials still prepared by her current one.