Counselors Can Help Students? Yes, They Can. That Isn’t New News.

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

The most popular school counseling piece I ever wrote was for National School Counseling Week, where I talked about the behind-the-scenes work school counselors had done to help out a student struggling with an eating disorder, and a high school senior who was struggling with the responsibilities of being an unexpected father. This column resonated with a lot of people, especially counselors, who know that much of their work as mental health professionals must, by definition, go unrecognized. That’s been the case ever since we’ve had school counselors, and it was absolutely the case in the 1980s, when a counselor helped out the two students alluded to in that column.

The long-standing reputation school counselors have as advocates for the personal well-being of students makes me wonder about the recent spate of new articles like this one that are trying to portray our mental health role as if it’s something new. What’s even more interesting is that most of these articles take the same approach to explaining this “change”, by saying “You may remember your school counselor as the person who sent out transcripts and told you where to go to college, but…” The articles then go on to explain how the “new” school counselor focuses on four (or five) areas of student growth, presents lessons in classrooms, and partners with other school officials to create a positive atmosphere of personal growth for all students.

It’s hard to say just why there’s an effort to re-cast school counselors in this new light, especially since school counselors have been playing these “new” roles for decades. It’s certainly true that some schools haven’t used school counselors to their full capacity, occupying their time instead with administrative duties like schedule changes and test oversight. But that isn’t a reason to convince administrators that counselors can do “new” things that aren’t really new. If anything, it would be wiser to use the success and history of past school counselors as examples of best practices a struggling school can adopt, knowing that this model has been successfully used at hundreds of schools in the past. With school administrators, familiarity breeds comfort, while innovation often leads to doubt.

Part of this framing of counselors as mental health advocates may be a desire to have the public see school counselors as something other than college and career advisers, but counselors pursuing this path will also want to proceed with caution. School counseling continues to enjoy renewed interest by the public at large thanks to the work of former First Lady Michelle Obama, who praised the value of school counselors, especially in their capacity to help students go to college. Combined with the high expectations parents have for counselors to play this important role, now is the time to embrace this opportunity, and meet those expectations. The goodwill and trust created with the parents and the larger community can then be used to advance the other parts of the school counseling curriculum in ways that would otherwise be hard to achieve.

The media may present images suggesting school counselors have a history of being well-meaning but somewhat clueless, but that image overlooks the long record of support and success counselors have extended to students for years, in everything from individual counseling of family concerns, to group counseling of mental health challenges, to classroom lessons on common challenges facing students as they grow up. Affirming the media's false portrayal, and using this straw man approach to advocate for a “new and improved” approach to school counseling is not only professionally dishonest; it portrays a lack of respect for the counselors who changed as many lives then as counselors do today. As a profession, we’re better than that.

The End of the Safety School

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

It’s known as the calm after the storm. Once the October flurry of college applications are submitted, and you’ve done your best to offer words of support and praise for every one of the 62 gazillion students on your caseload applying to college, you somehow find a minute to review just who has applied to what college, just to make sure everyone has a place to land next year.

And that’s when it hits you. Dear Melody, that high-flying senior who came into your office with a color-coded list of colleges and a spreadsheet that would put Goldman Sachs to shame, has completed all of her applications to the colleges that admit two percent of their applicants—but somehow never got around to applying to State U, where she’s a sure admit for their honors program.

Steve, the bassoon player with OK grades, came in and freely admitted he wanted to apply to some colleges where his GPA and scores suggested he didn’t have a chance, but he wanted to see how far the bassoon thing could get him. He had an audition video file professionally produced, and the applications to the Reach schools are all done. But the applications to the two local schools that have heard the tape, waived the application fee, and basically said “send us an email and you’re in”? Not so much.

Welcome to the world of application clean-up, that gut-wrenching time around Halloween that is nearly all tricks and no treats. All of those nice lists created last spring that had the right mix of Safety, Target, and Reach schools are now just filler in a CA-60, as seniors show their proclivity to be—well, seniors, and think they will live forever, so why not take a few risks with college applications?

The real challenge here is that you get it—you understand why seniors don’t really want to deal with safety schools. Despite your best efforts, seniors don’t see safety schools as Plan B. They see them as Plan G, as in “Gee, too bad you couldn’t get into a good school.” You tell them a good Safety School is a place where they’d love to go to school where their chances of admission are incredibly good—but at the same time, you also know that since getting in is a given, that’s somehow seen by them as one less reason to want to go there.

What to do? Try this:

Stop calling them Safety schools. College is all about stretching to discover more about yourself and your relationship to the world, a place that is the right mix of challenge, opportunity, and support. Safety is in there somewhere, but calling a college Safe portrays images of maternal smothering, paternalistic decision-making about “what’s best for you”, and tapioca pudding.

A Likely college conveys a sense of a school that would *love* to have you, that would welcome you to the fun, frazzled world of higher education with a slap on the back and a crème brulee. Yes, that’s basically tapioca pudding exposed to a blowtorch, but blowtorches are cool. No more Safety schools—they’re Likely schools.

Create a new Likely list. You might be tempted to email Melody and say, “Here’s the list of Likely schools we talked about last spring”, but that list is old news she’s trying to run away from for some reason, and she isn’t coming back. Instead, review the list of schools she’s already applied to, find some common themes, and create a new list of Likelies. Make sure at least one of them will send an admission notice before Christmas, and try to get one that will offer merit money. Students are thrilled by the first school that says yes, and by a school that will pay them to go there. That makes two Likely schools that will remain in play, in case the other schools say no.

“Why Isn’t the Transcript There?”

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

There are very few things in life that make high school counselors wish they were still changing schedules, but this is one of them.

“Counseling, how can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m calling because my daughter applied to college this morning, and the college doesn’t have her high school transcript. What’s the hold up?”

“I can help you with that. What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Wendy. Wendy Thomas.”

“Thank you. According to our records, Wendy hasn’t applied to any colleges. Has she reported her application to her counselor?”

“No.”

“Did she tell her counselor she was thinking of applying to college?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But look, I’m telling you now. Why haven’t you sent the transcript?”

Technology has certainly allowed counselors to meet transcript requests with new levels of response time, but there are still some practical limitations to what we can do—especially if the student hasn’t told us they’ve applied to college. If your goal is to limit the number of irate transcript calls you get, try these strategies:

Get ahead of the curve A surprising number of counseling offices are very good at reminding students when *their* part of the application is due, but fewer offices are as up front about when the counseling office sends in the transcript, counselor letter, and other forms-- or the need for students to tell counselors they've applied to college. Now is the time to check your counseling handbook, newsletters, and website to see just what you tell students and parents about the deadlines you have to meet.

Give a brief explanation of the big picture It’s likely parents and students will want to know just why the student has to submit applications by October 15, but you don’t have to send a transcript and counselor letter until November 1. If your office does this, the answer is really pretty simple--- while the student may be filling out 3 or 4 applications, you are sending out hundreds of letters and transcripts, and simply can’t meet every request in 24 hours. That may seem pretty obvious to you, but it probably isn’t all that obvious to them. Make sure you explain this early, and often.

Keep a close eye out for unusual deadlines Explaining all of this ahead of time will really cut down parent and student stress, but it might also raise the anxiety of some parents who think their child is a special case. If they contact you, be sure to do your homework to see if they may be right—some colleges outside the US have earlier deadlines, and a few colleges have special deadlines that are scholarship driven.

If the student is truly an exception, work with the parent to create a turnaround time that’s going to work for everyone. If your research shows that the student really isn’t an exception, you’ll want to explain that “State U has a November 1 application deadline for all students, and they don’t start reading any applications before then. As long as we get the transcript in before then—and we’ve done that for every application for the last 15 years—your child’s application will receive full consideration.”

Make sure you tell everyone about this The best way to get a rumor started that “counseling doesn’t know what they’re doing” is for a student to complain about a missing transcript to a teacher or administrator who isn’t familiar with your policy. It’s always wise to send a reminder to them, or discuss this at the first faculty meeting of the year. This also makes it easier for teachers to send their letters with less stress.

Two Important College Application Trends

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

School counselors are starting the college application season with the discovery of two trends they may not have seen much of in the past.  While these two trends have been popular in certain parts of the country, they seem to be taking hold nationally.  So it’s worthwhile to take a closer look at them, and how to advise students on how to best handle them.

The first trend is self-reported grades.  After years and years of holding up application decisions until the student’s high school sends a transcript, several colleges have decided to let the students report their own grades on the application.  Using the self-reported grades means colleges can make a decision sooner on the applicant—and if the student is admitted, they must have their high school send an official copy of their transcript before they enroll, so they can confirm the student’s grades.

This approach is seen as a win for all kinds of reasons.  In addition to speeding up the process, the responsibility of reporting grades now lies with the student, not the school, meaning the student takes more ownership of the application process in general.  Students tempted to report grades that make them look a little smarter than their transcript might suggest know that they have to send their real transcript in for verification—and if the two transcripts don’t match, the college won’t let the student in.  Add in the savings of clerical time, and the trees saved by not printing paper transcripts to schools the student doesn’t want to attend, and this idea’s time has come.

The key to explaining this to students is to gently remind them to tell the truth when they fill in their own grades.   You’ll also need to make sure students have access to an accurate transcript, but that’s likely easy enough to do.

The second trend that’s popping up is self-reported test scores.  Test scores made a big splash a few years ago when a number of leading colleges made test-score reporting optional—in other words, if you weren’t a great test taker and didn’t want to report your test scores, you didn’t have to.

The list of test optional schools is well over 800 now, and other colleges are thinking about giving students the chance to self-report their test scores.  The process is the same as self-reported grades; the student submits their test scores as part of the college application, and only has to send an official copy of test scores to the one college they plan on attending.

The plusses of self-reported test scores are similar to  self-reported grades, along with one other big bonus—the money students will save.  Once you take the SAT or ACT, it costs serious money to send test scores to colleges.  A student applying to five or six test optional schools could find themselves saving enough to pay for another college application fee—and, once again, this is one less piece of the puzzle to go wrong.

Counselors advising students on self-reporting test scores will want to make sure they thoroughly understand which test scores each college wants.  While most colleges tell students to only send their best scores, some colleges require students to send the results of all test attempts. Failing to disclose all scores at these schools could lead to trouble later on, so it’s important to be clear.  It will also be important to make sure student send official scores to their one college in the spring.  Given how crazy spring of senior year can be, that could prove to be a very important task.