Have you asked to switch HS counselor
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Anonymous
| The HS counselor assigned to my child at the IB program is making several mistakes in course assignments to our alarm. Before we go ahead and requested a switch, I wanted to see if anyone has asked for a different counselor and has the request been approved? This is for Richard Montgomery. Also, how much do the kids need recommendation letters from the counselors for HS? TIA |
Anonymous
| Don't worry. they will be switched again and again and again, whether you request it or not. |
Anonymous
Whew! I thought they remained the same all four years! |
Anonymous
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Yes
The incompetence was astounding Most of them stink. |
Anonymous
| I would ask to switch but would never depend on a counselor to make those decisions anyway. |
Anonymous
My four kids had the same counselor throughout high school and she was amazing! YMMV. |
Anonymous
| There are some really bad ones out there. Of course they think they’re the best around at their job. I could tell a few stories having seen firsthand…. |
Anonymous
It depends on the school and then if the principal changes so can the decision about whether counselors change. |
Anonymous
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Yes I did, but for a serious issue. The counselor talked to her good friend, who was the step-mother of my son's girlfriend. She told her a ton of confidential information that shouldn't have been told to anyone outside of the school administration. She denied it of course, but she's the only person who knew said information.
Trust no one. We were assigned to a much better counselor. |
Anonymous
PP was being sarcastic. The intention is that students keep the same counselor all 4 years. However, they have to make adjustments based on counselors leaving, changes in overall enrollment, and just keeping the load balanced. Students that have a lot of personal issues can keep seeing their old counselor if the assignments change. Students with personal issues who don’t fit well with an assigned counselor can see someone else. But the basic administrative stuff (courses, college letter) you are stuck with your assigned counselor. I wouldn’t worry about the counselor letter - a lot of it is mostly templated, and the rest you provide via the interview/brag sheet. I would cc the IB coordinator on emails regarding IB courses. She can intervene if needed. RM teacher here. I would say most of the RM counselors are really good. A couple are new and okay, they just don’t know enough to be proactive about certain things. However, this year has been insane down in counseling. Off the rails. The usually proactive, fantastic counselors - I never heard from. Which tells me how bad it was. Hopefully courses will get scrubbed this summer and double checked for correct placement. If anyone is uncertain about next year’s courses, you can ask your counselor to send you the current request to double check. They would rather fix things now. |
Anonymous
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My DD is also at RM and I would love for her to be able to switch counselors but I don't think it's possible given they divvy up the kids by last name. So it's not like if our last name started with W, she could get the counselor for last names starting with As.
How did this counselor make mistakes in course assignments? Could it be a case of your DC requested Class A as first choice with Class C as the second or third choice but was scheduled for Class C? If so, that may have been done because Class A wouldn't have fit in the same schedule as Class B so the only way to make the schedule work is by putting your kid in Class C. |
Anonymous
You keep posting this. You're a unicorn as far as counselors go, and it doesn't help to hear about your unique "perfect" experience. |
Anonymous
Mine I think was finally fired this year- oldest had her ALL four years and youngest 1/2 year. She screwed up my daughters schedule as a freshman and was unhelpful. We finally had to go over her head. Also when my daughter wanted to switch out of an AP senior year she described the process and bolted on vacation for two weeks without telling my daughter who to contact or what was going on. It was stressful for my daughter as she didn’t want to switch out but thought she couldn’t handle the workload of AP Chem virtually. No preemptive help- I’m going on vacation for two weeks at the beginning of the school year so if you don’t get it in by today m contact Y. No email that she was out. There were other things too never answered a single question my daughter had about college. It was look at the college website or I don’t know. This was specific information on Naviance where things didn’t align with common data set and her answers were unhelpful at best. However since the counselors write recommendations, we played nice and seethed quietly. A counselor this bad everyone hates- all our friends complained too. She never did anything. We dealt with it. Counselors write the recommendations so we didn’t want her to be penalized for a terrible counselor. She was the |
Anonymous
| PP again- rather counselors cut and paste what your kid writes in the recommendation section and I suppose they edit it. Whatever she did, we didn’t want my daughter penalized and that’s the reason to stay quiet with a super bad counselor |
Anonymous
| Reach out to your IB Coordinator to make sure your child's schedule is correct. Part of their job is to verify that their students are enrolled in the correct classes. |