We <3 School Counselors

Did you know that this is national school counseling week? Here at DC College Counseling, we love school counselors and try to collaborate with them as much as we can! We also enjoy providing consulting services for counseling staff at private and public schools. 

We get this question all the time - what will you do for my daughter that her school counselor won’t? Or, from some of our clients, why doesn’t my son’s school counselor do what you do?

The answer is that being a school counselor is a very different job from being an independent consultant, with very different responsibilities. Luckily, both can work together to make sure families have maximum support during the admissions and application process!

In fact, we believe that the best outcomes are more likely to occur for any student when that student’s parents, school counselor, and independent counselor(s) approach the process together as a unified “Team Student” front - along with any other supplemental service providers such as therapists, tutors, or academic coaches!

My Daughter’s School Counselor is Lazy

I hear this a lot and cringe every time. While there are of course bad apples in every profession, most school counselors aren’t lazy at all - they are just busy! In Fairfax County, for example, the average school counselor is responsible for over two hundred students. TWO HUNDRED! And that’s actually considered to be a great ratio - nationally, there’s an average ratio of five hundred students per counselor.

And they do a lot more than just college counseling - often, that’s just a very small part of their job. Public school counselors are typically responsible for ensuring students’ academic, personal, and social growth, and are usually assigned to students with a wide variety of needs, sometimes across multiple grade levels.

Due to the scope of their roles, most public school counselors report spending only 20% of their time on college admissions and the application process. This makes sense when you consider that less than half of high schools in the US have dedicated college counselors!

The landscape is very different at private schools (and particularly independent schools) where school counselors have much smaller caseloads that usually consist of between 30 and 40 students. These school communities often do have a dedicated college counseling team that is fully separate from the “personal counseling” team. With fewer competing job duties and many fewer students, there’s no question that private school counselors are able to provide much more one-on-one assistance for their students than their public school counterparts.

Still, it’s a misconception that private school counselors can do everything. They can’t!

Sometimes our public school families are surprised to learn that a majority of our students actually attend private schools. However, it’s not a coincidence that so many of these private school families come to us for the first time with their second child, after realizing the first time around that they needed more help than their school counselor could reasonably provide! In total, our staff will spend an average of 70 work hours per student - on top of the school counselor’s work!

The reason we have time to do this is that we only engage with a maximum of 20 students per counselor; moreover, our students are also supported by our amazing team of essay coaches and administrative staff. We are able to allocate resources ourselves to be fully focused on the process for each individual student, whereas school counselors answer to school boards, trustees, and other individuals with a stake in the college counseling process. Lastly, we don’t spend our time writing recommendation letters or sending transcripts, so we’re able to spend more of our day in a student-facing capacity.

How will the admissions process look with each type of counselor?

In addition to our standard services, we also provide what we like to call “professional nagging” - following up with students to ensure that they are completing everything to the best of their ability well before the deadline. 

This is one of the main reasons why we are so popular with families with second children - first-time parents often do not realize that this process is much more complex than it initially appears. Even the most amazing, experienced school counselors are not able to take on the role of managing and facilitating every aspect of the process for students and families. 

They just don’t have the time to do this type of personalized project management, which is why working with both a school counselor and independent consultant might be the best choice for families that need help each step of the way. It can also be a great option for families with students who are not likely to self-advocate and seek out help from a busy school counselor. No one is able to hide when working with our team. When students don’t respond to us, we seek them out! On the other hand, most school counselors have students lining up who are need immediate help - it’s not realistic to expect them to bypass students with immediate needs to track down unresponsive ones.

There are a few major takeaways here:

• A student’s school counselor plays an essential role in the college admissions process. An independent counselor can by no means replace a school counselor’s value in this process, from the letter of recommendation to advocacy calls and everything in between.

• An independent counselor’s role is not essential to the process, but can certainly make it much easier on everyone involved. However, a dedicated and knowledgeable parent with a lot of free time to commit to college admissions-related tasks can substantially lessen the value add of an independent counselor.

• It’s very important for families to manage their expectations of school counselors. They simply cannot provide the same level of support that a paid independent consultant can, and it’s not right to suggest that they are bad at their jobs because family expectations are off base.

• While school counselors and independent counselors have different roles, they can work together to provide students with the dedicated support they need to put their best foot forward in the admissions process!

Don’t forget to say thank you to your school counselor this week!