Not great support here, even in a smallish private school (about 175 boys per class). They hired an entirely new college counseling staff this year. They are better than the previous crew but are still finding their footing.
Similar here. S25 attends a private Jesuit high school in CA. While we’ve been very happy with the college counseling experience, it was a bit pulling teeth to get hard yes’s or no’s for his reach list. The only reaches we were told were most UC’s and Cal Poly SLO which seem to be reaches for everyone in his graduating class. Overall graduating class is heavy on stem majors, while mine is an outlier as a humanities kid. They didn’t seem to have a lot of data for us from previous classes to help guide beyond likely and target schools. Most advice and app support for reach schools seemed to come from within the parent community in chats, conversations, etc.
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Throw us into the “no help” category. The counselor at the school asked D25 where she wanted to apply. Period.
Definitely in the no help from the school category over here. I am positive I know more about the college admissions process than D25’s counselor. Although he must have had some training in the last few years because the LOR for D25 was much better than D22 (He emails a copy to the students). With D22 it was his first year as a high school counselor and I don’t think he’d ever written LORs before.
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I definitely know more about the college application process for my particular kid and our particular financial circumstances! That said, I love our school’s guidance counselor and I know she’s doing all she possibly can. I am absolutely staggered by how MANY kids she is supposed to be assisting. Even keeping track of it all for one kid is so much. There are surely kids slipping through the cracks.
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We’re in an affluent suburb. I would say we have decent help. There are 4 counselors for the graduating class of 300. I got same-day or close enough, email responses from the counselor. Other support included presentations for the kids, email blasts about transcript requests, and webinars on the common app and our third-party college admission software (Scoir/Naviance).
I would have liked College 101 in each year with timelines. The school is really good about talking about college, advertising test prep, test dates, etc., but there were little things that fell through the cracks–like EA deadlines and those colleges that require all documents/scores/LORs submitted by the EA date, which is essentially a drop-dead date for EA. That was a surprise and I assume we were not the only ones surprised by this.
Other than having to follow up with the counselor about submitting the school report and transcripts, I am pretty pleased with the resources the school has provided.
Jealous of all those schools or teachers that use class assignments for college essays. Our kids are SOL here and my kid could really use the help.
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No real assistance from our semi-rural public school. The AP English teacher helped a little, more than the counselor. But we got a notice last week that they’re running a Common App session later this month…which is not helpful. My D25 is basically finished applying.
Now that my D25’s ED deadline has passed, I’m feeling nervous. I’ve tried to help her not get too into one college, but find several where she would be happy. But she’s so in love with her first choice that it makes me nervous for her. The ED turnaround is so fast though. At least she’ll have time to get excited about new possibilities if she doesn’t get in. Or at least I hope that’s what happens.
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We have had minimal help from guidance. S25’s school has one counselor for 370 students. It’s a professional art school, so most of the kids go on to art colleges - FIT, SCAD, Purchase, Cooper Union, etc.- a lot of what the counselor does is plan portfolio review days and bring in AOs from those schools. I am a single mom, and my kid is casting a very wide net because of their unusual background and the fact that we need FA. Supporting them, keeping them on track, and organizing everything has become a second full-time job. That being said, we started early, S25’s counselor DID send all of the materials on time, and my son has some good safety options while we wait for the remainder of their EA (and one ED) results. We will then decide if he will continue with a handful of RD options.
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Our English teachers have an assignment to write a common app essay… but the assignment isn’t given or due until late October. At that point most of the kids have it done already because most of the students at our school are doing EA somewhere. So kids basically have a choice - turn in the essay you’ve already written on your own or use the “write about anything” prompt to do an honors college application essay or some other essay that is about the same length.
While I wanted my son to do the second (get something else done, yay!) I was not surprised to see him do the first (why do more work right now if you don’t have to). The good news was that he got a good grade on the essay, so at least he knows what he submitted didn’t suck.
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We’re at a public hs in the Northeast. We have a dedicated college advisor, but it is for the whole class (246 students). Our school also starts in earnest in spring of junior year, offering webinars and individual meetings. I’ve been pleased with stuff like summer college essay class and common app boot camp. They do a great job running the back end of things too. No complaints, but my guys aren’t interested in Ivies. Here lots of families hire independent counselors if they want more.
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Our school has something like that. Not officially, but an exercise in reflection and writing about one self that end up as the foundation of many student’s personal statements. HOWEVER, this happens in winter of Junior year.
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My daughter’s school held a few parents and student meetings in fall of senior year and had an evening of colleges attend to talk about the process. We started the college process end of sophomore year but mainly focuses it on college visits, SAT prep through junior year so by the time senior year started she already had her list of colleges and dates all figured out. The school missed the boat on getting her official transcript but Aburn by 9/15 for EA1 so she was put in the EA2. Otherwise the counselors have been helpful with the process but in my opinion most of this should have been covered in junior year not in fall
Of senior year. Luckily I’ve been through the process with my older daughter.
And if that’s the expected norm, then the rich get richer and the poor fall further behind.
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S has all four of his early apps in. He has been telling people who ask that he is going to his ED school. Yikes. The coach (whom I trust) has led him to believe he is an unofficial yes, so… I will feel a lot better once we have it in writing — we should know in less than three weeks!
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If you aren’t aware, the FAFSA opened today for everyone. I just completed it for S25, which took less than 10 minutes.
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We tried the beta version. Also, first time doing FAFSA ever. Did it as a parent. There was no section to put special circumstances (Job loss, disability etc.). Did the previous versions have an option for it? Thanks
Good to know. I thought it wasn’t opening until Dec. 1.
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Same! I was surprised when I saw a post on Facebook about it opening today.
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even more extreme is if you have a kid in top private school..(one of mine is)
2 FT college counselors (all they do)…graduating class is about 75.
Both were AOs at top schools for awhile, and have worked at a couple of independent schools. Night and day experience to even good publics plus the under-appreciated benefit of indepedent schools that Letters of Rec by teachers and counselor will be beautifully written, customized, and written in a way AOs like.
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