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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DC1: MCPS Magnet HS; accepted to Princeton, Columbia, & Brown (and non-Ivy Stanford); no help from counselor who steered DC to applying to UMD, U of DE, and SUNY-Binghamton (of counselor-recommended colleges, DC only to apply UMD and was accepted into honors college & received merit scholarship). DC1 attends an Ivy.

DC2: MCPS "Red Zone" HS; accepted to Princeton, Yale & Dartmouth (and non-Ivy U of Chicago); counselor emphatically insisted that Ivies/20 top-ranked private schools were "beyond a reach" for DC but highly recommended top-ranked public schools like Berkeley, UVA, UNC-Chapel Hill, etc. (DC applied to counselor recommended colleges and was accepted).  DC2 will attend an Ivy this fall.

For DC3 (MCPS MS) and DC4 (MCPS ES):  We'll probably skip the college counseling altogether.[/quote]

You must be a really proud parent....Why do you think your DC's High school counsellors discourage admission in an IVY league school. Are counsellors told to direct kids towards State colleges ? [/quote]

I suspect it's because (1) the expectations are set low/lower for high-achieving non-magnet public school students, particularly at "red zone" schools like DC2's (i.e., pushed to apply to top publics but not Ivys/top privates), and (2) high-achieving magnet students are pushed to apply to schools were they're likely to get substantial merit aid/scholarships so that schools like DC1's can boast about the number of its students who, for example, received Banneker Key scholarships at UMD.  I also think that getting into any Ivy/top-20 ranked school is pretty much a crap shoot (which is why I encouraged both DC1 and DC2 to apply to 4 of them, and was shocked that each was accepted to 3, including both being accepted and rejected/waitlisted by the same two Ivys they had in common--Princeton and Harvard).  And finally, I think that the high school counselors really want their students to get accepted to college and don't want to see a student not get accepted anywhere; and as a result, they counsel the students to aim low/safe (we hadn't even heard of the majority of schools recommended by DC1's counselor!). But I will add that DC1's and DC2's counselors were fully onboard once we (parents+DCs) made the decision on where to apply (i.e., wrote glowing recommendations). By the way, both counselors also recommended that DC1 and DC2 only apply to 6 schools (with no more than 1 or 2 being "reach" schools); but we ignored their advice because I think it's a mistake to apply to so few schools if they include Ivys/top-20s, so DC1 and DC2 applied to 10 schools.      [/quote]

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