Reply to Huge turnover at Churchill

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[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]

Counselor here that you're addressing. I personally "interviewed" my students to ensure I wrote as positive and thorough and personal a recommendation as possible, but I would agree that teacher recs are likely far more substantive. But this is what schools want, so please encourage your children to get to know their counselor. One misconception kids have is that they need to have a problem to see us. Our whole day is often putting out fires, and we love to just chat and be a source of support for students who simply want to know and have another trusted adult in the building. Even if we leave the school and don't end up writing their recommendation letter, it's always a positive for students to feel a connection with a range of educators.[/quote]

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