Hi all. New to this site. Anxiously awaiting first acceptance…Felt a little bit angry at the fact that no one at my child’s school helped at all with this process and we didn’t realize that there were actually schools that wanted official SAT scores with apps…so I think we caused the delay. Oh well. I know that he’ll hear soon.
On that note, did your children have any assistance at their schools with the process? I’m pretty involved in the school district and am trying to figure out if its worth pursing.
No personal assistance at our large public school. The counselors came into the seniors’ English classes twice in the early fall to go over some application tips, but since we are in CA and the vast majority of kids are only applying CSUs and UCs I felt like the advice was geared toward those. So no real advice on LOR or filling out the Common App.
That said the counselors have been great about answering questions and making time for appointments if kids reached out. My older two went to a smaller rural public high school and the help was nonexistent. 1 counselor for the whole school who had very little college app experience
No real help from our large public school either. My S25 had to manage the process and request forms from the school. Although they were very prompt about getting all the info to the schools. Since he is our 2nd kiddo, we hired a private counselor because we knew this going into it and it was the best $$ we ever spent. They were the ones who sat down with S25 and told him which schools needed which things, like official ACT scores and official transcripts.
Our medium public school has college counselors. They really just meet with the kid and parents a couple of times. Mainly they just go over the list of where they are applying. Luckily C25 has a very extra mom who created a spreadsheet of when everything is due. Although really C25 is super organized and looked at what each college needed on the Common App.
S25 has 5 EA schools, 1 rolling and 2 CSU’s done and we’re in the waiting game. He has suddenly lost all steam and no longer cares about the 3 RD’s due in January. Trying to tow the line between encouraging him to forge ahead or pausing efforts to decide on these schools after EA results come in.
Yes, but it came too late (in all cases, C25 is #4 of 4).
My kids all went to public high schools, the older two in a very small high school program within a K–12 school, and the younger two in a regular large high school 9th and 10th grades followed by a fully-DE junior/senior high school. (We have a lot of nonstandard K–12 options in this district.)
In all cases the schools were very focused on having their students pursue postsecondary education (whether college or vocational training), but it didn’t really start til the end of spring junior year—and by then, they’re talking about making sure to sign up for the ACT or SAT over the summer or in the fall, and to start thinking about colleges that might land on their lists, all of my kids had already one-and-done-d their ACTs and SATs and toured loads of colleges and they and I had worked to build the (absolutely massive, possibly unhealthily obsessive) spreadsheets that we used to evaluate college possibilities.
(And BTW, for those kids looking to go into apprenticeship programs, end of junior year isn’t just too late to start, it’s way too late to start, even more so than for collegebound kids.)
It’s one of my ongoing frustrations, that so many school systems provide support, but not timely support.
Our school has a college counselor - but it’s one person for 600+ seniors. So they don’t do any individual help, but they do some presentations and briefings and coordinate colleges that come into the HS to visit.
The individual guidance counselors also don’t really help much. They meet with the kids, ask if they have a list of schools, and show the kids how to look them up in Naviance to see information about the schools and search for others if they need more. They don’t see or review applications or essays or requirements for any schools. They write letters of recommendation, but that’s about it.
My kids attend a very small independents school with a dedicated college counselor. D25’s graduating class is fewer than 25 students. The school has a mandatory class led by the college counselor in the spring of junior year through the fall of senior year. In the spring they take personality and vocational aptitude tests, build theirs lists, and finalize testing plans. In the fall they collaborate with the English teacher to write their common app and UC essays. The college counselor is VERY laid back (D25 thinks way too much so). The school has a 100% college acceptance rate, but according to D25 all of the guidance is geared towards getting everyone in somewhere and doesn’t offer a lot of support for students aiming for reachier schools. I’m not sure that it isn’t an intentional move by the college counselor to lower the pressure in what could become a pretty high stress, competitive environment.
Its hard to know if you’ve never been through it. But my S25 is the kind of kid that would have waited till the very last minute on everything and I didn’t want to manage that.
FWIW, my D23 had a similar experience. She had 12 she was going to apply to but after submitting 8 apps + honors college essays for at least 4 of those, she lost steam. And I supported that decision because her list was balanced. 8 turned out to be a perfect amount and she couldn’t be happier where she wound up!
Another one for very little to no support in the process from GC. I do think the school does a good job of prepping for standardized tests. They created a for credit elective ACT prep class 1 semester the fall of junior year (the school takes ACT in spring during the school day). They have required monthly post grad training meetings during the school day worked in for students but not truly helpful with college choices and such. The school does have a few post grad option info nights for parents but they are heavily focused on in state publics. Our school does an excellent job providing options for those who want to enter the trades or work force.
It was recently signing day for D1 and D2 schools and was happy to see some different schools for once!
Larger suburban school. Very little help from the counselor. First time through this and what I found frustrating is how many essays–honors, scholarships etc. that popped up after the application is in. We didn’t see those coming and wish we had as I think we would have handled things differently.
Definitely experiencing the same things. It is tough because hes in AP English…and doing a co-op that requires nightly journaling..so he’s doing so much writing. One good thing was that his AP Eng teacher had them write a common app essay as an assignment.
No help with applications here either, other than one hour long presentation all the seniors were supposed to attend about “options after high school” that included very basic instructions on how to apply for college, as well as information on other options like military, trade schools, apprenticeship programs, etc. This is a large high school in a mid-size midwestern city.
