Reply to Big College Admissions Year at St. Albans

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm also a former admissions staffer at a top SLAC (small world, PP) and a 3-time veteran of the college application process as a parent.  While I would agree with much of what the other former admissions staffer says -- e.g., the middle of the class benefits most from the college counseling services offered by many independent schools, parents need to inform themselves and ask questions of college counselors -- I would hesitate to describe independent school counselors as hand-holding families through the application process.  Independent school counselors do a great service to the applicants by coordinating the flow of transcripts and recommendations -- a service that public schools cannot offer due to the number of students.  Similarly, independent school counselors can write more detailed and nuanced school recommendation letters for students -- again because of class size as well as the availability of detailed teacher reports.  In our experience (at a "Big 3" school), however, the counselors did not provide much help at all on essays, nor, more fundamentally on developing a list of colleges to visit or, ultimately, to apply to.  Perhaps that's not the case at every independent school, but that's what we found.     [/quote]

"Parents need to inform themselves and ask questions of college counselors."

After going through NCS' college application process, I completely agree.  Basically all my DD's counselor did was coordinated submitting transcripts and recs. There were no special calls to schools. DD learned during a meeting that her counselor hadn't placed any followup calls on her behalf and was asked if she had received any emails/feedback from her schools.  We figured that we were on our own, it was around January at this point.  Fortunately, my DD was in the top third of her class.  We did a lot of the footwork ourselves, she was accepted at her first choice school.  [/quote]

Counselors play triage. Your DD didn't need the support because that counselor was likely certain that she would get in on her own. No need to waste chits on her. The counselor saved them for other students. Not necessarily fair, but your DD was fine.

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