When do your school counselors begin to engage with the student and family about the college process? Can you also share if your child is or was at a public or private.
D28 attends a Catholic HS. They have a guidance counselor for 9-10th and then are reassigned to a guidance counselor+ college counselor for 11-12th. Her counselor is new to the school this year but looks to have lots of experience in both. D reached out earlier this week to introduce herself and asked to get on the counselor’s calendar to share where she is in the search process and get some initial advice. The counselor (who is new so just following the school’s directions) said that they don’t meet with juniors until spring but she would try to find a few minutes with her later this fall.
Last spring the dean of academics urged families of rising juniors not to hire private counselors since the school provides excellent college counseling. I’m now a bit frustrated, and will be “that parent” and insist on a fall meeting, because April is way too late.
Wondering what everyone else’s experiences have been and if mine are unrealistic for a smallish school where each counselor has probably 100 students assigned to them. We live in a HCOL area and most public school parents with resources have hired private counselors by spring of 10th. I had expected more since we are already paying tuition at a smaller school.
My D went to a private Catholic college prep HS too with a similar set up with individualized college counseling starting in 11th grade. The college counselors did in class sessions with students starting in 9th grade - stuff like personality inventories and general introductions. 10th grade was mostly test prep and group sessions for parents on financial aid and affordability.
In 11th grade the kids and parents had to create a brag sheet in the late Fall (we were given a template), the juniors were allowed to participate in all the local college fairs, and there were a bunch of in school group session about preparing, how to create a list, when to ask teachers for LORS, and in the spring, the English classes worked on the common app essay in class.
We had the first individual family meeting with the counselor in the winter of junior year. We had another family meeting in the spring to hone the college list and then they brought in all the kids over the summer to complete the common app when it opened in case there were any glitches. We had a final meeting in September of senior year just to make sure all the ducks were a row. We thought they did a good job.
My kids’ public HS had dedicated college counselors. Many students also had a private college counselor. Up until about 6-7 years ago, the HS college counseling started in fall of junior year. The calendar included several parent programs…speakers, admissions panels, financial aid info. But, the school moved the calendar forward into spring of soph year because so many students were applying ED and/or to the early EA deadline schools.
IMO April of junior year is too late for many reasons. Not least of which, many families do college visit trips on presidents’ weekend and/or spring break during junior year. Tough do to those without some type of college list. Do the counselors help students choose classes each year?
Adding, the colleges’ app timing does keep moving earlier and earlier. Examples:
RPI’s early First Approach accepts apps from strong HS juniors in the spring, with an admission decision of June 1, so before senior year even started.
Many schools open their own apps on July 1 each year.
Common app opens Aug 1 and at some schools it’s important to apply that month (TAMU, some rolling admit schools.)
Auburn’s first EA deadline is Sept 15.
Obviously, April of junior year seems quite late to start building a list.
My S24 went to a feederish private high school, which at the time was on a trimester system. They began the process at the beginning of the second term junior year, so not right away at the beginning of fall, but not as late as spring.
Personally, I don’t think you actually need help with the application process before spring. However, you might benefit from guidance on the college investigation and selection process before then. Like, you might want to be scheduling some spring visits to colleges while they are in session, as opposed to waiting for summer. And you might eventually want to identify some rolling colleges where you would be applying as early as late August or early September, although for sure the rest of your selection process can be continuing past that point.
Of course you can get a lot of high end advice on college investigations and selections right here if necessary. But I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask for an early meeting for that purpose. If this is not something they really do, though, well, we are here to help.
Incidentally, we just dropped our D30 off at boarding school (sniffle), and part of that process involved a brief introductory meeting with her advisor. She explained that they have just moved to an integrated academic and college counselor system, and part of why is they want to be having these conversations around college investigation and choice earlier. She then gave us a few thoughts about how that should look, which sounded great to me because she was articulating our own values.
I am pointing this out because I do feel like one of the first things S24’s high school counseling team was doing was sort of deprogramming kids, or perhaps even more so parents, who were already getting caught up in generic rankings lists, advice for how to get admitted by colleges high up generic rankings lists, and so on. Basically, they had to try to persuade those kids and parents to take a step back and rethink how to identify the best colleges for them.
So again, I do feel like moving that part of the conversation earlier is not a bad idea.
You need to be “that parent” and have no regrets about it.
Our kids went to an “independent” (i.e., “private”) day school, where the students were assigned to a guidance counselor, and met with them periodically in both small groups and individually over the course of high school; during the junior-senior year, there were some meetings scheduled with both parents and their child together (lots of eye rolling by the students in this meeting, BTW).
As between me and my wife, I took the lead in having multiple, independent communications with my children’s assigned GCs – both by e-mail and occasionally in person – which were done without the knowledge of my children. The GCs were amenable to this “back door” approach, which I found helped with the meetings that the GC had with parents and children – mostly because the GC had been primed, privately, about what schools had been visited with each child, what comments (if any) had been made by the child about potential schools/areas of study of interest, etc.; this made the joint meetings of GC with family a bit more productive.
I don’t think that I abused the back-door relationship with the GCs; and the “squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as the saying goes. Also, since you are paying for the GC and his/her services, you should avail yourself of those services – even if you are more involved than the school’s planned/preferred way.
If your kids’ school has Naviance or a similar software program, use that early and often if you can.
OP- I think the answer is a little more nuanced than some other folks here are describing (you post on a message board, you’ll get a lot of conflicting advice).
If your kid is likely aiming for a type of college the HS doesn’t have a lot of experience with (music conservatory, studio art program with a portfolio requirement, film/screenwriting, etc.) then I agree that the school’s timing is likely late (not too late, but late). If the HS typically sends kids to Georgetown, Notre Dame, BC, your own state flagship, U Michigan, Wash U, Northeastern, Columbia, Drexel, etc. and those are reasonably representative of the kinds of places your kid is interested in- then I think you can relax. I don’t think the message you are getting is “we don’t care about college and your kid”. I think the message is “We don’t want the student’s four years here consumed by college admissions. We make sure your kid is on track academically, socially, spiritually, athletically or whatever for where his interests lie… and then we crank into gear when it’s time to get granular”.
I know kids whose entire HS experience is one arduous treadmill… and even if the kid gets into “Dream College”, there’s a HUGE adjustment ahead. Every day needs to be unicorns and ice cream- why else sacrifice your peace of mind and free time in HS if not for the “perfect experience”. And college is not that. It rains at Harvard! There are professors who speak with a heavy accent at Stanford and are hard to understand! There are classes at Princeton where a C is actually a C- average. And getting a B means incredibly hard work and focus. Etc.
So if the college has a track record of the kids going where they want to go for the most part- I think you can chill. And not drive your family nuts by paying for a private counselor who will want your kid taking fencing- immediately-- and giving up his Friday afternoons spent baking with Grandma so he can join the robotics club- or better yet, START a robotics club and name himself president.
Great question. Probably most of what others have said. We have an initial list of colleges that might be good for D. I’d like her to do an initial look, offer any feedback and suggestions for schools we might not have considered yet. We are starting tours and virtual info sessions this fall. For D, fit will be super important so we do not want to do summer tours.
A lot of the schools in this list don’t have Naviance data for her school since not enough kids have applied over the last five years unfortunately, so insight will need to come from the counseling staff. Oh, and I had to ask for Naviance access last year since they normally don’t give it until at some point later in 11th.
Between this board and lots of other resources I feel like I’m on top of it to be the “private counselor”, but I’m not a professional, so a good solid hour to make sure we are vectored correctly between now and spring would be hugely helpful.
Many kids do just fine without counselors - especially at public schools where they are over burdened.
Counseling is great - but you also need to lead the process - and if you were without counseling, frankly, that shouldn’t change the end result (in my opinion).
It’s a nice to have, not a necessity.
So the school has a process - and I wouldn’t worry about it.
If you’re unsure of what to do or how to build a list ahead of the school’s timing, this website will load you with ideas - sometimes far more expanding than counselors will.
2 kids, one pretty top public (top 25ish in a top performing state) one at a small private with former AOs as dedicated college counselors - kids all go to highly selective schools.
Public - for college stuff – there was events for parents starting middle of 11th (webinars and parents nights - I think there were 4 events between Jan of 11th and fall of 12th) and 2 1:1s required for kids more if they wanted. Was quite competent staff, a lot of good handouts and herding but not much 1:1 strategy and if your kid was showing they were somewhat competent, left alone…My kid went in to their 1:1 with a list which was sensible and that was that.
Private - starting formally spring of 10th with course selection for 11th and suggesting starting some visits- a series of events for parents starting then too… In 11th kids had a weekly group classes on college process and doing deep dive on their own wants for college, then lots of 1:1 starting in Jan of 11th. Help with lists, essay topics, supplementals, SAT submission, etc. Will speak 1:1 with parents as much as we want. Invite parents to group coffees, etc.
Winter of 11th they had a list of colleges, categorized by reach/likely etc (based on fall grades)…
I agree meeting spring of 11th as a first time in private is late. If you said that for public I would say that sounds more typical
One thing I was annoyed by with private, we didn’t get naviance access until 11th in winter! in public I had it from 9th grade! I think it was to keep stress down, but it is SUPER helpful for building a list..
We went to a public HS and our kids got to know our HS counselor as a freshman (same counselor for both kids). We didnt have separate college counselors.
IMO, that really helped because she wrote glowing reviews of our kids because she knew them for 4 years and spoke about all the things they did in and out of school.
Not sure if its common for kids to know their HS counselors that early.
Just to add my D26’s experience here - at her relatively uncompetitive Catholic high school, she met with her advisor at the beginning of Junior year, but it was really just an intro conversation asking if she knew what she was doing. They did have a parents meeting that fall, but it was light and mostly to tell us that the details were coming in the spring. Her school didn’t really help with list building or advise on classes. It was primarily to make sure that students actually filled out their applications and submitted on time. So overall it wasn’t very useful, but they did actually reach out the fall of junior year.
Just an FYI. This was the situation with one of our kids also. There were no students who had applied in the past to two of DDs colleges, and very few who applied to the third. Since this was the case, and all of these colleges were OOS colleges, the school counselor knew absolutely nothing about admissions there. So it wouldn’t have mattered when our kid saw him.
WRT fit, I think the school counselor can’t help with this really at all..except to maybe suggest similar colleges to those on your list.
Frankly, we didn’t rely on the school counseling staff at all (small rural public high school). But I knew a college counselor who gave us some advice. And we did a LOT of research ourselves.
If this private Catholic HS has a good track record of getting students accepted to colleges, I wouldn’t worry.
Our public high school has a dedicated college counseling team (one full time and a couple of part time counselors for about 300 seniors, plus a couple of part-time essay coaches to supplement the counselors seasonally when it’s application season). They started engaging with the kids by the summer before junior year and fall of that year - things like emails about prep, some general presentations on the application process in general and for UCs/CSUs specifically (CA school) etc, but the in-depth engagement (individual meetings etc) started spring of junior year once the current batch of seniors had all their college applications in. When I say started in spring, it was pretty much as soon as they went back to school - I think C26’s meeting was in January. The counselor also sent a suggested college list based on the discussion afterwards, broken down into dream, reach, target, safety based on C26’s stats etc. (we had our own list by then and it was interesting that a lot of it was similar, but there was a good suggestion that we added.)
This was pretty similar to our school as well in both content and timing.
The school has a good track record with a good number of students accepted at T20s, the flagship UCs and flagship OOS schools along with of course many at schools “further down” the list as well.
DS attended a BS with an excellent team of college counselors. Students were not assigned to a CC until January of junior year. (Athletes who were going through a recruitment process were the exception and had a different timeline.)
There was programming for both parents and students before then including a college fair (for sophomores and juniors) in the spring, events on financial aid, information on standardized testing, and a session at the fall parents weekend covering how the CC process worked, the college landscape in general, and timing. Students had some group activities as well. Over the winter break, parents were asked to complete a pretty extensive questionnaire about their student and college expectations, preferences, etc.
Some of the rationale for the timing was:
It was helpful to have results of first half of junior year and some test scores.
This was a population that had gone through a similar process for admission to BS. Most appreciated that prior to 7th grade, they would not have had the best clarity about 9th grade fit.