Maybe we’re lucky, but despite our counselors having two or three hundred kids to take care of (only a quarter of whom will be seniors) they do a pretty good job of getting to know the kids. They meet with them in small groups junior year, and also once with the parents late junior year and early senior year. They ask for a parent brag sheet, get the kids to get two recommendations from teachers that she looks at for her letter (my son didn’t use the same ones he used for his real recommendations), they ask the kids to fill out long forms about their activities. Both counselors knew my kids by name.</p>
<p>I suspect that ad coms won’t think that “hard working” from a parent is code for a kid who has to work hard, but has no natural brilliance. And honestly, what you want is both smarts and the willingness to work with those smarts. No?</p>
<p>This is a very interesting topic. One that’s currently up for debate in our household. Wrote one for D1 at Richmond several years ago. Just got the offer for D2 also to Richmond. We will probably write one but it is hard. D2’s GC has a “tell me about your student” form with a lot of very specific questions. I almost wish I could see the GC’s rec before writing one I think it would be weird if they got duplicate information.</p>
<p>Yes. You’re lucky. Do you realize in how many schools the guidance counselors aren’t just dealing with college matters, but the messy stuff of life – getting help for the kid who has a substance abuse issue, or an abusive situation at home, or is in trouble with the law, etc. Or where the GC college focus is on getting scholarships and financial aid to ensure that some kids can <em>go</em> to college, not worrying about whether Buffy gets into Swarthmore or Amherst. Even in <em>affluent, upper middle class</em> suburban districts. </p>
<p>The very fact that adcoms have to adjust based on their internal knowledge that this school has intensive counseling and in that school, the GC filled in the blanks for Johnny/Mary/Suzy means that the whole exercise is so very pointless, IMO. It amazes me colleges still ask for it, because I think it’s a complete bit of nonsense.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many academics…especially those at respectable/elite universities seem to prefer those with “natural brilliance” and assume the “hard working” part as a matter of course judging by conversations I’ve had/overheard. </p>
<p>To some extent, this also exists in the professional world…a reason why several early supervisors warned me to watch for feedback/evaluations where the term “hard worker” is used as that is often taken as “damning with faint praise”. </p>
<p>While it is something I can understand somewhat(No one wants to be stuck with a dullard whose only notable quality is a strong-work ethic)…I personally tend to lean in favor of “hard work” over “natural brilliance”. </p>
<p>That’s a byproduct of both my personal tendency to favor people who “get things done” and being in academic/professional environments filled with naturally brilliant, but lazy, talk it to death, or otherwise “just can’t get stuff done” folks who end up falling by the wayside and/or screwing up projects for everyone else.</p>
<p>The parent letter also favors kids with parents who attended similar schools. My DS may be applying to the small New England LAC both DH and I attended. It would be very easy for us to write a profile of DS that emphasized the traits we know would be more likely to result in admission to that or a similar school. My friend whose son is also eyeing this LAC attended a huge, excellent midwestern university. She’d have a much harder time writing the letter.</p>
<p>GCs at private schools are more likely to write better, more tailored letters to colleges than overworked GCs at large public schools but I wonder if this advantage might extend to the parents of kids at private schools as well because they had to write these “Tell us about your child” letters for prep school applications, and if their child attended a pre-prep feeder school they may even have had feedback or coaching from their child’s school. I could also see parent letter help becoming a part of the standard college consulting package, again favoring the privileged.</p>
<p>I think the schools still ask for GC letters because it one of the few places where they’re going to get relatively unbiased feedback on a student’s personal history and high school ECs. I think they probably stop some kids from trying to claim school awards and distinctions they didn’t earn, and they allow the school to explain weaknesses in a student’s record without making the student whine about their social history. It’s much more effective for a GC to explain that mom had cancer or dad lost his job than for the student to have to do the same.</p>
<p>I’ve gotta say, I don’t even know how my kids’ guidance counselor would even have been aware of any significant social history (such as a parent dying). They just didn’t know them. At all. Which isn’t a slam on them, but it’s just reality.</p>
We aren’t an affluent upper middle class district, though we do have a critical mass of upper middle class kids. We have gangs in our school, and are majority minority. We’ve got the gamut from upper middle class to kids who take six years to graduate or who drop out all together. What our town has realized is that they need to keep the academic students happy enough that they don’t leave for private schools. So they offer a lot of APs, decent college counseling, lots of info about financial aid, and plenty of extra arts programs. They do a pretty good job on balance.</p>
<p>It’s wonderful that your school has been able to retain kids that would have otherwise fled to private schools. In HI, unfortunately, that has mostly not been the case. Most of the folks who can afford it one way or another do try to get their kids out of our public schools & into privates, including our electeds and many of the public school teachers & administrators. The academics just do not satisfy many of the families, PLUS the discipline problems and hassles with the teachers union.</p>
<p>My sister said something is definitely wrong with a system where ALL the teachers at her school had already calculated how soon to the DAY they could retire! She said she enjoyed working with the kids but found the faculty draining. :(</p>
<p>If this is true, if parents need to know the “code” in order to write a letter that would catch certain adcoms’ attention, color me nauseated. If I wrote an honest, heartfelt letter about my child and it didn’t resonate with an adcom, so be it. I wouldn’t have the patience to learn how to read the tea leaves of admission policies at any school, and I know my D wouldn’t want or expect me to. As in romance, it ain’t no fun if you have to work too hard to make a college want you. After a certain point, if being yourself is not good enough (for parent writers or for student applicants), then maybe it’s time to move on.</p>
<p>absweetmarie-
My point is that the parent letter is not really fair and it makes the parent(s)’ ability to capture their child on paper part of the assessment. I don’t want to be writing that letter, but if I have to I’m going to write an honest letter but tailor it to the school in question.</p>
<p>As to “reading tea leaves”, that’s unfortunately part of the college application process. Should your student write her essay on her love of theater, the death of her father or coming out as bisexual? Certainly not the third if she’s applying to Christian colleges. Do you think students are really telling admissions officers in interviews that their favorite class is their favorite because the teacher assigns next to no homework? Nope. The reason they’ll report will be the challenge or the fascinating subject matter or the way the teacher makes the material come alive.</p>
<p>And for families of less than perfect kids, do you think any of them would really write, “My child’s a nice average white kid who would prefer to spend his weekends playing video games and hanging out with his friends”? No. That parent’s going to talk about his sense of humor or kindness or his diligence on last year’s science project. The first description might be the most honest but what parent in their right mind would use it?</p>
<p>I’ve been turned around on the question of the usefulness of parent letters (anyway, no one ever even asked me for one! :(). Well, scratch that. The GC did. I don’t know what parents of less-than-perfect kids say about their sons and daughters, but I just read my thorough response to the questionnaire about my paragon of teenage virtue. I did not mention the fact that my D considers it a good day when she can watch six (six? more like nine!) episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a row. Her sense of humor, her intellectual curiosity, her fierce independence as a thinker: All that I did mention, and that’s what will carry her forward in college. (I did mention her work ethic, too! AAARGGGH! I damned my own child with faint praise ;).) As for the “code”: I agree with all those points you made about subject matter for essays. I call that “knowing your audience.” When I talked about the “code” I thought maybe you were hinting at something like the verbal equivalent of a secret handshake. I truly don’t have patience for that. You know, “Like all children of good breeding, my child prefers lacrosse to football.” I assume that’s not what you were suggesting but it just hurts me to think that any student should feel the need to twist him- or herself into the image of what a particular school wants.</p>