School Report = Recomendation from counselor/principal?

JHS
Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:06:07 +0000

I am a little sad reading this.

If you look at the form counselor letter linked above, it contains a basic recommendation, and invites the counselor to provide more detail if he or she wants. Many don’t – in large public schools, a counselor may be responsible for hundreds of kids – and many do – private school counselors often write extensive letters about a student. But the form also asks the counselor to attach both the applicant’s transcript and a school profile.

The school profile is not a simple, two-line kind of document someone can dash off after lunch. It may fit onto one page, but only if the type is really small, and some schools have very extensive profiles. The school profile is absolutely critical for providing context to the admissions staff, especially for applicants from schools with which they are not already familiar.

Here is an outline that I think represents kind of the minimum: [Sample High School Profile](Sample High School Profile – Counselors | College Board)

It should have data about grading system and patterns, rankings, student backgrounds and socioeconomic status, surrounding community (if relevant), curricular choices, test scores, outcomes, special programs within the school, accreditation, teacher qualification, affiliation with other organizations. And other stuff; I’m not an expert. The point is that to evaluate your particular transcript and achievements, one has to know a lot about the school, and the school profile is the main/only source of that information. It’s way more important than an additional recommendation, at least as long as Yale doesn’t have a thousand copies of it in other people’s files already.

You really need to get on this quickly if your school doesn’t have an appropriate document to attach to the form counselor letter.