Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No time is spent on the bottom 80% other than the college counsellors disuading them from applying to any good schools.

Sorry, must disagree; that is not my experience and is simply not rational as a description of the college counseling at the many good independent schools in this area.

Then you must be admin.

This is a very accurate and honest description of the college counseling experience at the school my DD attended.

Still disagree, and not admin--I think your generalization is over broad and facially suspect, but maybe you had a bad experience and are not just shooting the messenger via DCUM. It doesn't make it true for every college counselor at every school.

[Anonymous]

I think it's a clash between what parents think are good schools vs. what college counselors think are schools where the kid in question will flourish.

And who is right may depend on (a) whether the parents just have a generic list based on rankings and (b) whether the counselors have any insight into who the kids are.

[Anonymous]

not the person you are debating pp, but i think there is a difference between the schools that put heavy emphasis on their college stats and those who don't. My child is a a less competitive school and the college counselors there work very hard on finding the best fit for all the kids. There is less emphasis on percent of ivy league schools. I think the assertions about focusing on the top 10-15% applies to the big 3 schools, and i suspect is actually quite true.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's true at GDS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No time is spent on the bottom 80% other than the college counsellors disuading them from applying to any good schools.

Sorry, must disagree; that is not my experience and is simply not rational as a description of the college counseling at the many good independent schools in this area.

Then you must be admin.

This is a very accurate and honest description of the college counseling experience at the school my DD attended.

Still disagree, and not admin--I think your generalization is over broad and facially suspect, but maybe you had a bad experience and are not just shooting the messenger via DCUM. It doesn't make it true for every college counselor at every school.

Actually our outcome turned out wonderful because we only used our DD's guidance counselor for very basic tasks: transmittal of transcripts, recs, and the school profile. He was useless for anything else and this is the shared experience of other parents he was also assigned to counsel.

[Anonymous]

Proving PP's point -- you're making a gross generalization based on one guy.

[Anonymous]

I am sure college counselors vary in their abilities as teachers at even the best schools do (and as we all remember about teachers from our own school days). Fortunately college applications is an area where the kids don't need a great college counselor to get into a strong school--grades/scores are most of the process.

[Anonymous]

Anybody seen a college that they were really surprise by either good or bad during the visits?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stow the sour grapes, people--it is about grades and scores, or a hook such as legacy status or varsity athletic potential at the collegiate level. It is just ludicrous to assume there are lots of students dissuaded from applying to Harvard who otherwise would have gotten in. We don't know what we think we "know" about college admissions as parents, because the landscape has changed so much since our time.

17:26 here. I was writing from experience as an alumna interviewer for one of the top schools. For me it's not sour grapes, as my children have not gone through the college-application process and I myself got into all the colleges to which applied (and that was a different world then, as we know).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stow the sour grapes, people--it is about grades and scores, or a hook such as legacy status or varsity athletic potential at the collegiate level. It is just ludicrous to assume there are lots of students dissuaded from applying to Harvard who otherwise would have gotten in. We don't know what we think we "know" about college admissions as parents, because the landscape has changed so much since our time.

17:26 here. I was writing from experience as an alumna interviewer for one of the top schools. For me it's not sour grapes, as my children have not gone through the college-application process and I myself got into all the colleges to which applied (and that was a different world then, as we know).

NP here. 17:26 - If your children haven't gone through the college application process then you really aren't in a position have a clear perspective and can only hypothesize. You only have experience with the interviewing aspect of the school you attended and know NOTHING about how the school represents the other 80% at other colleges. FWIW my father was an alumni interviewer for a top Ivy in DC, and while he found it rewarding, he had little say in the whole process or with the schools where the students attended.

Bottom line, any opinion you might think you have about how schools today handle the "other 80%" is limited at best. I might add, that every school and counselor is different, so it's just not right to make such a negative sweeping statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stow the sour grapes, people--it is about grades and scores, or a hook such as legacy status or varsity athletic potential at the collegiate level. It is just ludicrous to assume there are lots of students dissuaded from applying to Harvard who otherwise would have gotten in. We don't know what we think we "know" about college admissions as parents, because the landscape has changed so much since our time.

17:26 here. I was writing from experience as an alumna interviewer for one of the top schools. For me it's not sour grapes, as my children have not gone through the college-application process and I myself got into all the colleges to which applied (and that was a different world then, as we know).

NP here. 17:26 - If your children haven't gone through the college application process then you really aren't in a position have a clear perspective and can only hypothesize. You only have experience with the interviewing aspect of the school you attended and know NOTHING about how the school represents the other 80% at other colleges. FWIW my father was an alumni interviewer for a top Ivy in DC, and while he found it rewarding, he had little say in the whole process or with the schools where the students attended.

Bottom line, any opinion you might think you have about how schools today handle the "other 80%" is limited at best. I might add, that every school and counselor is different, so it's just not right to make such a negative sweeping statement.

While 17:26 may have little say in the outcome, that may not preclude 17:26 from gleaning insight on what is happening in the admissions world for the cohort of students over the time 17:26 has been conducting the interviews.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stow the sour grapes, people--it is about grades and scores, or a hook such as legacy status or varsity athletic potential at the collegiate level. It is just ludicrous to assume there are lots of students dissuaded from applying to Harvard who otherwise would have gotten in. We don't know what we think we "know" about college admissions as parents, because the landscape has changed so much since our time.

17:26 here. I was writing from experience as an alumna interviewer for one of the top schools. For me it's not sour grapes, as my children have not gone through the college-application process and I myself got into all the colleges to which applied (and that was a different world then, as we know).

College counselors write a recommendation which is very important to the process (probably far more important than alumni interviews). This is where their ability to influence comes in (and why one pp presumably bribed theirs).

[Anonymous]

Aren't the teacher recommendations more important than the counselor recommendation?

What does the counselor add, exactly? I'm asking an honest question, not trying to be snarky. Do they provide an overview of a kid's academic career, and discuss mitigating or extenuating circumstances?

[Anonymous]

The counselors guide the student through the process. There is a sense that the good counselors have relationships with college admissions offices and get give ``color'' on students. They want a counselor who will got to bat for a student if there is a college they really want to go to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stow the sour grapes, people--it is about grades and scores, or a hook such as legacy status or varsity athletic potential at the collegiate level. It is just ludicrous to assume there are lots of students dissuaded from applying to Harvard who otherwise would have gotten in. We don't know what we think we "know" about college admissions as parents, because the landscape has changed so much since our time.

17:26 here. I was writing from experience as an alumna interviewer for one of the top schools. For me it's not sour grapes, as my children have not gone through the college-application process and I myself got into all the colleges to which applied (and that was a different world then, as we know).

How, then, would you know how much a given college counselor works with any kid not applying to your alma mater? And as for "discouraging" applications to a school, it is part of the cc's job to give unvarnished advice--along the lines of "Sally would not be competitive for admission to Ivy U.". I sm surprised that as someone purporting to be part of the official process you would join in the college counselor bashing.