Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?
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Anonymous
| I will use the school counselor as much as possible and continue to do as much work as I can. My kid is at a big three school too and I think we share the same counselor with the parent who turned to college confidential. I found that web site on my own too. The college counselor thing is tricky, i'm not happy but worried any complaint won't really help my kid. |
Anonymous
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I think it's a question of "trust but verify". Use the school counselor to get additional information. In particular, they have info on how kids from your own school have done at a particular college, which you probably won't find on CC. But don't let this be your only source of information.
And don't, whatever you do, let the school counselor's recommended colleges be your only guide. I wish we had completely ignored the recommendations of our K-8 school's counselor, but we didn't know enough at the time to realize how bad the advice was. |
Anonymous
Excellent advice, PP. I'm the pp who mentioned CC. We used more than CC, Naviance helped a bit (you'll probably get a link & password senior year) so we had a basic idea of other girls' stats who applied and were accepted at schools DD was interested in. |
Anonymous
The school will tell you not to visit sites like CC, don't listen to them. |
Anonymous
| The problem with the school counselors are they are out to help the top ten kids ensure they get into the top name schools and then won't work as hard for the others. We didn't rely on them and had our own strategy. Our kid got into a top Ivy. We sent the counselor a nice gift so she wouldn't screw it up. |
Anonymous
This is exactly what I've concluded. If your kid isn't a top 10/15 you're on your own. DD was accepted at a few Ivies and several "most selective" colleges. Her guidance counselor didn't recommend any school that she was accepted at, just grateful that the school was efficient in sending out her test scores, transcript, and the profile in a timely manner. We were on on our own when it came to strategizing and analyzing what we hoped might be a good fit. |
Anonymous
You sent a "nice gift" before the application process was done? Is that even allowed or "done"? An ethical counselor would have declined the gift. |
Anonymous
| Um...your kid doesn't go to a private school pp. Everyone sends the teachers/counsellors gifts. We didn't send it to get anything...we sent it so the counselor wouldn't do anything to screw our kid up...to stay out of our way. |
Anonymous
My dd goes to a private school and gifts to faculty and staff are specifically prohibited. I think the goal is to stop exactly these kind of "bribes" and put families on a level playing field when it comes to resources they are able to devote to gifts. |
Anonymous
Not true. At our "big 3" school, gifts to faculty are explicitly discouraged in the handbook. |
Anonymous
May I add to my post that, as there are always a few rule-breakers, there are a few kids at this school who give expensive gifts, disobeying the school's request not to do so, and the other kids make fun of them for that. They still laugh about the kid who gave iPods. |
Anonymous
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Gifts are discouraged at our private, too. We used to take up class collections for Christmas gifts, so that teachers didn't know who contributed how much (or if at all), and the admin even put a stop to that.
To the admissions gift-giver, where does your DC go to school where you think this is an acceptable practice? |
Anonymous
| My question to the PP who gave a "nice gift" to the college counselor at their school: Did you ever consider that DC might have gotten into a better college if the counselor hadn't gotten such a bad impression of DC from your pathetic bribe? |
Anonymous
| Regardless of school policy, I've seen parents discreetly provide gifts to faculty and staff who warmly accept them. My kids are at Cathedral schools. |
Anonymous
| Indeed pp. |