From USN&WR's America 's Best Colleges 1998

Insight, support, and one-on-one advising

By Beth Brophy

The quality of counseling about college options in American secondary schools ranges from wonderful to woeful. At its best, counseling is personal and detailed. At many public high schools, counselors spend as much time dealing with disciplinary problems as they do giving advice. Many counselors have too much work–and too little knowledge–to guide students adequately through the admissions maze. Still, counseling can be very good.

Here is what students and their families should expect:

One-on-one advising.
Involved counselors meet with each student for a conference at least once in junior year and again in senior year. Parents should be invited, too. Topics often include: the student's academic strengths and weaknesses, nonacademic interests, test scores, and whether he or she should take a prep class to improve the scores. After taking the measure of the student, the counselor might suggest some colleges to consider. The advice should be viewed as helpful but not complete: Most counselors know more about regional schools than those in other parts of the country.

Help developing a plan and timetable.
Many counselors believe their job is not to tell students where to apply but to advise them how to go about the process. Doing the legwork for students, counselors say, won't teach them the survival skills they need for college. Good counselors point students toward books and online resources they might not know about, to use in their own legwork.

Historical perspective.
Generally, high schools keep lists of where previous students have and haven't been accepted. Schools with more-sophisticated programs also maintain a database on the records of students who were accepted and rejected at various colleges. Getting organized feedback from graduates of the high school about what they like and dislike about their colleges, and about how prepared they felt academically, is also useful to prospective applicants.

Vigilance.
Every year, many qualified seniors are put on waiting lists by their first-choice college. A counselor can call a college to glean a student's prospects of being chosen from the list and to let the college know if a student really wants to go there. If the outlook is dim for a student, the counselor can provide guidance about alternatives.

Counselors agree that students are entitled to work with an adviser with whom they feel comfortable. If the personal chemistry is bad between student and adviser and the school has other counselors, ask for a change, advises Audrey Hill, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Another option is hiring an independent counselor, who typically charges between $500 and $1,500 to do everything from helping students develop a list of colleges to editing application essays. Colleges tend to view private counselors as agents, not as independent evaluators. But many parents are willing to pay for extra advice, in part because it provides a sense of security. Sometimes, guidance counselors will refer students to private consultants if they think special help is warranted (for example, when a family has been through a bitter divorce and the parents don't speak).

Even the most elaborate college counseling does not guarantee success. A senior who fails to apply to her safety school may wind up without a college acceptance. This is a painful lesson, showing that ultimately it's the student who has to take responsibility for applying to college.