It is exactly the same situation at S26 public high school. Each counselor handles around 450 kids. They have no budget for hiring more. My kid has never met his counselor. S22 had a brand new one at the start of his senior year, and that was her first job right out of college! He did really good college acceptances wise but he was a solid student with high stats and decent ECs so its hard to say what worked and if the rec letters especially from the guidance counselors in a large public high school make any difference.
Any counselor who learns even the most basic of things can start their own business as a âcollege counselorâ with such wisdom as
- You need to have a story
- Make sure to start working on your essay early
- Take harder classes to stand out
how can anyone resits. Honestly there are far too many of these counselors charging parents for the most basic of advice.
Itâs really tough.
Ours only have about 250-300 kids? But our school is a bit of a mess currently. The school profile had so many errors in it. I wonder what colleges thought when they saw it. Lots of stuff going on every day and I am looking forward to being done in 2 more years.
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on the subject of college counselors:
My prior comment was re: the college counselor at D26 & D24âs high school. I wasnât referring to an independent college counselor/consultant person. Iâm going to stay away from the Pandoraâs box topic of whether or not using an independent counselor is something that one should do. That would get us into debate territory and debates are not allowed here on College Confidential.
That being said, the guidance, advice, and instruction which D24 received at school from the college counselor was a lot more than âget started early on your personal statement essayâ and âtake harder classes to stand out.â That counselor was phenomenal and did an awesome job, in my opinion, walking all of the seniors through the college application process. Our family followed the counselorâs advice and my kid got accepted to every college she applied to, despite her having Câs on her transcript and having a 3.22 unweighted GPA. AND she got merit scholarships everywhere she applied to. However, our high school is small (D24âs graduating class was 28 or 29; D26âs class is at about 40 students) and most high schools donât have the counseling resources to provide as much help or oversight in this area.
I think everybody who has a kid who will be applying to college should look at a couple of different online resources:
- https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/ - has a 2x/week podcast, online articles, a ton of info here. I learn something new in every podcast.
- https://www.collegeessayguy.com/ - he also has a podcast and a Youtube channel. D24 used a lot of his short writing exercises (theyâre all about 5 min or less) in order to get the personal statement essay writing juices flowing.
- https://modernstates.org/ - Charitable organization where you can take online courses for free and take the subjectsâ CLEP exams for free. TONS of colleges will give you course credit for passing a CLEP exam. Will the âtop 20â colleges accept CLEP credit? Probably not. But if your kid is really interested in attending a public university, I bet you money that they could knock out some GE credits for free this way.
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Well, if these comments are any indication, it seems like good school guidance counseling is the exception and not the rule!
And I was also referring to school counselors, not private. (I have no experience with private college counseling.) In our case, the school district provides its high schools with one counselor for every 500 students (my kidsâ high school has 4500 students). Although our counselors seem very competent, and the department runs like a well-oiled machine, there is no time for individual sessions. Most counselor-related things are handled by google forms (transcript requests, course registration, etc.), mass emails, and group meetings. Itâs a shame really.
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deleted because I donât want it to sound like bragging
oh thank you for the links! I have found this forum to be far better for info than anything else our school provides.
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If you have the time and interest to be your own kidâs college counselor, it is definitely possible with the help of the resources sbinaz posted. I used this forum, the ycbk podcast and a FB group to get up to speed for D22âs college application process and it worked out well. S26 is a totally different kid though and I have to start over 
An AO at the college D22 is attending told me that guidance counselors at our HS often put ârefer to teacher letter of recommendationâ on the counselor letter of rec., they neither have the time nor know the kids.
At a college tour at a different school we were only three families with the AO in the info session, when the discussion turned to rec letters. One of the other kids attended a small well resourced private in our area where the counselor knows every kid. The AO shared that they are well aware of the different counselor ratios and qualities and take that into consideration. I donât know if D22âs letter was one of those that just said ârefer to teacherâ but if it was, it did not hurt her apps.
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College Boardâs head of AP, Trevor Packer, has been posting AP score distributions on Twitter. This website has a compilation of the data released so far in case anybody is interested:
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D26 passed all of her AP exams! 3âs and 4âs. The 3 she got on the Precalc AP exam will bring her C to a B on her transcript (per the high schoolâs AP grading policy).
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Congrats! Mine only had one AP this past year and got a 4. (One freshman year too, also a 4). With my older two kids, I found AP credits were only slightly helpful â more for a better course registration time slot than actual credit. But itâs always nice to have passing scores!
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Mine got a 4 on his AP World exam. Super proud of him. His school only permits this one AP class for sophomores.
Agree that AP exam results werenât super helpful for my D22. Seems to me that taking AP classes is about showing rigor and the tests are maybe but probably not that helpful.
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I think that thereâs a lot of variation from 1 college to another in terms of AP exam credit for college courses. Some colleges EXPECT you to take the exams AND score high on them, but wonât give you any course credit. Then thereâs other colleges that will only give credit for a score of 4 or 5. Other colleges will give course credit for a 3 or higher. And some colleges are a combo of the latter 2.
However, the good thing is that pretty much every college spells out their policy about this sort of thing on their website. And an awful lot of colleges will even list out what specific course youâll get credit for, whether itâll cover a specific general ed requirement, etc.
For example:
D26 got a 3 on the AP English Language exam. Hereâs how that would translate to 5 different colleges that we are sort of eyeâing:
- ASU - no credit. Must have 4 or 5 for course credit.
- U of A - no credit. Must have 4 or 5 for course credit.
- UAH (Univ of Alabama-Huntsville) - gets you credit for a 3-unit writing/english course.
- Univ of Incarnate Word - gets you credit for ENGL 1311 (similar to UAH, this is a freshman writing/english class)
- Embry-Riddle (in Prescott) - gets you credit for COM 122.
However, a 3 on the AP Computer Science Principles exam gets you the following at these same colleges:
- ASU - IFT 101 (3 units)
- U of A - CSC 101 (4 units)
- UAH - no credit
- Univ of Incarnate Word - no credit
- Embry Riddle - CS 120 (3 units)
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This is same in our school. No APs freshman year, only AP World History sophomore year. Kiddo did good on the AP Exam, got a 4. For next year, he is signed for three APs which I told him at the time is too much for him to handle but he didnât agree. I guess peer pressure because majority kids were signing up for 4! Now he is having second thoughts and wants to drop one. But our school counselors are notorious for being very rigid and donât allow changes to the schedule. So letâs see what happens. Fingers crossed!
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My D26 got a 3 on her AP World test. First AP exam for her so we were happy she got a passing score. She will take 2 more AP classes this upcoming year and will take 3 APs senior year. Our high school offers more dual enrollment classes than APs. D26 will take several dual enrollment also over the next 2 years. Canât believe our high school already has schedule pick up next week! Itâs coming quick!
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Which 3 APs is your son taking? Mine is only taking AP USH, but he has Honors Physics, Honors Pre-Calc, Honors Studio Art. He could do AP Language or another AP science, but he is interested in Physics and English is not his strongest subject.
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Our school doesnât offer honors classes in 11th and 12th grade. S26 is taking AP Bio, AP Psych, AP Lang. AP Lang is the one he wants to drop now as it has insane amount of work. S22 took 4 APs including AP Lang and encouraged S26 to take it too, mainly to improve his writing skills and that it would help with writing essays for college apps. But I know my kid. He takes a lot more time to finish his homework, and has tendency to stress a lot. So I donât think its worth it.
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Mine also took AP World last year (4) and AP Human Geo freshman year (4). Seems like those are the popular first AP classes!
Next year is also gonna be a big step up for my kiddo with 4 AP classes â AP Lang, APUSH, AP Physics 1 (also dual enrollment which is nice because credit will be awarded for any passing grade regardless of AP score), and AP Comp Sci Principles. Other classes are Honors PreCalc (no AP math offered until Calc), Honors Spanish 3, and Honors Beginner Guitar.
D wonât get her actual schedule until mid-AugustâŠ.
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My D22 took AP Lang, AP Stats, AP USH her junior year. It was fine for herâthough the AP stats teacher went on maternity leave halfway through the year and the teaching went to hell after that.
My D22 goes to UCLA and got 54 units of AP credit. But it didnât get her much. She tested out of an English requirement. If she had gotten a 5 on the AP Calc AB test, she could have skipped the Calc 1 class. Same with the intro Stats class, but since she got 4s on both Calc and Stats tests, she retook them at UCLA. She said they were very easy and a repeat of her AP classes.
It doesnât even matter that she went in with 54 units. Everyone at ucla does that so itâs not unusual. And it doesnât affect registration.
In our district, AP classes are about showing rigor and demonstrated interest in topics. They are also about surrounding yourself with likeminded students who care about school and getting better teachers. Those who teach AP classes are usually the strongest teachers at the school.
S26 is more geared toward math, physics and history. Heâll get the rigor nod for the honors classes and the extra grade point bump, without the test.
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I think itâs interesting and kind of neat how different all of these high schools are with their class enrollment offerings & policies. Itâs definitely not a situation where 1 size fits all!
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