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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]While I've been a big supporter of my kid's college counselor in other threads, I will say there's no question a counselor can shape a letter to make it clear who the school's top candidates are.

For schools that don't rank, it's as easy as a line like: "Susie has the highest GPA in her grade." Still no ranking, but the counselor has let the college know she's #1 in her class.[/quote]

The highly selective colleges with big admissions staffs that are able to carefully read files and not rely as much on numbers don't actually need the counselor letters to compare the candidates side by side.  The admissions rep for a region will generally present the candidates geographically, and the committee can make actual side-by-side comparisons of transcripts: not just overall GPA/grades, but rigor of courses.  College admissions now also includes a lot of data manipulation/numbers crunching, and many colleges apply their own internal weighting system to "normalize" grades.  (So Harvard won't automatically think a 5.0 on a 4.0 scale from a not great public or private school is better than a 3.9 at Sidwell or Roxbury Latin or Collegiate or Trinity or Harvard-Westlake, to name some well-regarded private schools).  Again, the reps get familiar with these schools FAST and they are adept at the side-by-side comparisons.

The counselor letters, at their best, present a narrative for a student.  Teachers are asked to confine their recommendation letters almost totally to the student's academic performance in THEIR classroom.  The counselor letter is what pulls the whole "story' of the child together.  The student who is quiet in class but writes some of the most brilliantly eloquent prose their teachers have ever seen.  The student who is a genius with science and engineering who makes robots in their spare time and started the robotics club from scratch.  The quirky kid with the interesting mind who doesn't always remember to turn in her Spanish homework but writes code at such a high level that the school IT department consults her.  The student who came in 9th grade and had to play catch-up but impressed all of his teachers with his passionate desire to excel in math and science so he can be a doctor.  The lacrosse superstar who has been first cello in the school orchestra.  You read the letters and think, "this is a neat kid who we'd like to have at our college, they would add to our community in such and such a way."[/quote]

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