Reply to Huge turnover at Churchill

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A paid consultant can help you with some of the strategizing. There are some schools that disproportionately take kids who apply early decision. There are schools that don’t like certain high schools. There are schools that won’t take kids who are overqualified because they know from past yield numbers that these kids are unlikely to matriculate. There are schools that are by-the-numbers, and schools that really have the bandwidth and interest in considering a student as a whole. Then there’s second early—in-the-know kids might choose to have a second-early decision choice if their first choice rejects them. Some kids need to get creative about scholarships to make early decision a worthwhile gamble. These are all just examples, but not everyone is savvy. I am a school counselor and can give this type of advice, but not because of any specialized training or grad school course or PD in MCPS. I know my colleagues wouldn’t be able to do the same, though they certainly have strengths in other areas that I lack. This isn’t meant to be a boast—I just took a personal interest in the topic, maybe because I find it a fun challenge to figure out the system—to the extent possible, it’s pretty broken. Anyway, the college and career counselor can guide groups at a time but there’s just one person and no way they can give individualized help to 350-500 graduating high school seniors. [/quote]

How do you feel about the required counselor letter for seniors?  It seems like such a joke.  My DD (rising senior) has spent 5 minutes total with her counselor as he signed her class schedule 3 times.[/quote]

Yes, that seems useless. Who requires it, MCPS or colleges?[/quote]

Not useless at all. The colleges require it and I think the staff does a good job trying to write personal information about the kids. They solicit information from both the parents and the kids. Some schools refuse to write them because the counselors don't know the kids and that really hurts them in admissions. This is a good compromise.[/quote]

How is it not useless to ask a virtual stranger to write a recommendation you have to supply with all the info for.  A recommendation from someone who actually knows you is much more useful.  At My kids school the teacher (who will right their own letters later) also have to supply the counselors with info to help.   I was at an info session at an ivy league school and they talked about the counselor letter.  A public school student asked about the situation where they did not know their counselor.  The admission staff encouraged them to schedule a series of meetings so they could get to know each other better.  He was completely out of touch with reality for many students.  Public school counselors do not have time for that.[/quote]

That's a college policy, not an MCPS policy. Knowing this was coming, I've been encouraging my daughter to go see her counselor. I think that MCPS makes an effort to provide as personal recommendations as they can given how many kids they have. This is not unique to MCPS. Many public schools are like this. I think the fact the at MCPS they ask for help writing the recommendation is actually a good thing and can give you an opportunity to include the information you want the college to see.[/quote]

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