Posted by janeadams on May 20, 2010
 Gates Foundation Report Gives College Counselors Low Grades

Gates Foundation Report Gives College Counselors Low Grades

Shrinking budgets have made college counselors a vanishing breed  in most public high schools as  the ratio of students to counselors – optimally, 100 to one – has surged to two and a half times nationally, and a thousand to one in California schools. Discipline issues, scheduling, and other administrative mix-ups take up most counselors’ time, leaving so little for college and career counseling that most recent graduates rate the advice they were given “inadequate, impersonal, and perfunctory.”  A recent study of 22 to 30 year olds sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found graduates who termed their interactions with guidance counselors  anonymous or unhelpful were less likely to go directly to college or other post-secondary program, while those who did continue their education believe they got the best advice on their futures from their teachers.

Are your teenagers getting adequate assistance in college planning? Make sure by getting to know their high school counselors early – freshman year if possible. Do they have additional training, experience and professional affiliations in the subspecialty of college counseling? What kind of individual attention can your teenager expect, and how involved and/or proactive will  school counselors  be in helping them through the college selection and application process? If the answer is “not very,” what are your other options?

The cost of hiring a private counselor for your college-bound teenager can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. One determining factor may be how much you’re already involved with your kids’ college search. While only 6% of college-bound seniors surveyed by the College Board wished their parents to do less and 30% wished they did more to help them look for and apply to colleges, remember that your role is coaching, not managing, the process. Expect conflict and even open warfare with teenagers when you  spend all your time surfing college websites, meet with counselors without them,  take the lead in lining up their college references and recommendations, plan and schedule their courses and activities, or tell them which schools they may or may not apply to.  If they’re not doing most of those things themselves, there’s a reason – they just haven’t told you yet what it is.

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32 Responses to “Gates Foundation Report Gives College Counselors Low Grades”

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