Reply to Great article on the direction UVA is heading......

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]There's one poster here who is convinced counselors control where students apply. They'll definitely tell you if they think your list is too ambitious for your profile and will try to get you to look at some "match" schools, but they can't stop anyone from applying to a school and they don't have Tim etc write different letters for each school. [/b][/quote]

I'm a college counselor.  We do have significant sway in the process.  We supply a recommendation of our own to UVA.  This is our job: to set each child up with reaches and dream schools (but within reason), "most likely's" and safeties.  It serves no purpose for students who don't have the grades, record or scores to apply to a college that is out of reach.  If a parent insists on it, then we do it, but I'm careful to show the Naviance chart and document everything so I don't have to deal with the parent's disappointment when the inevitable rejection happens.  It's also cruel to the child if we aren't frank in the counseling about chances of getting in.  A parent should not be setting their child up for failure. Counselors can signal a positive or a negative for a child in the counselor's recommendation.  If there are 60 other super 4.20+++ kids in the class of 500 and one 3.5 GPA applications with weak stats, I am not going to be effusive in the recommendation.  Here's some info on the recommendation that we counselors supply:

"The Counselor Recommendation

Your counselor will send us your high school profile, transcript, a school form with some basic information on it, and their recommendation. The recommendation can take any form. Many counselors write a letter, some bullet out a few statements about their student, and some schools have a form that that prompts their counselors to cover different topics. It all works for us. A school in one of my territories has a large senior class and 100% of the class typically goes on to a two or four year college. As you can imagine, those counselors are BUSY. When they created a form with areas to address different topics (academics, extracurricular, character, outside issues that may have impacted the student), it was a great move for both "sides" of the desk.

What would happen if a counselor didn't know a student well? Those counselors will sometimes share what they have learned from the student's file or from conversations with the students' teachers. There is also a way for counselors to let us know if the constraints of their job prevent them from writing a recommendation. In those cases, the school form is sufficient."  http://admission.virginia.edu/counselor-and-teacher-recommendation-requirements-uva-0
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