Do Your Get Your College Advice From US News? Think Again

By Patrick O'Conner PhD


The long-time feud between high school counselors and US News and World Report took a new turn last week with the release of a survey measuring the value of the annual college rankingsproduced by US News.

Since the early 1980s, US News has produced ranked lists of what it considers the best colleges in the world, the US, and regions with the country.  School counselors have questioned the value of these rankings from the beginning, finding fault with just how US News compares colleges, and claiming the rankings confuse students and parents more than help them, since the college needs of each student are different.

Thanks to a new survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), counselors had an opportunity to turn the tables.  When asked to rate the rankings on a scale of 1 (low) to 100 (high), school counselors gave the rankings an average score of 29.  When asked about the rankings, counselors found fault with everything from the name of the publication (“Americas Best Colleges” suggest one kind of college is best for all students) to the factors used in the rankings.

These factors include the number of applications a college receives (the higher the better), the percentage of students admitted (the lower the better), and the prestige the college is given by other college presidents.  Since US News rewards colleges for having more applicants *and* for *rejecting* more applicants, counselors claim some colleges are encouraging more students to apply, even though the college knows the student’s qualifications are unlikely to lead to an offer of admission.

Reporters and other observers feel counselors are envious of the power of the rankings—but the results of the NACAC survey indicate otherwise.  Another part of the survey asked admissions officers at colleges to rank the US News Report, and the average score given by college personnel was a 39—better than what the high school counselors gave, but still a failing grade.

The results suggest many college officers understand they have to improve their rank because US News rankings are widely read, yet they feel the rankings don’t have any real value for parents or students in the college selection process.

The survey strikes a final blow to US News by asking college admission personnel if they believe colleges do things to improve their rank that are “counterproductive”.  90 percent responded by saying colleges make changes designed to hold or improve their rankings, but only 46 percent believe these changes occur in the classroom.

This finding suggests colleges are doing things to look better in the rankings that, in the end, don’t improve the quality of education for students. Many of these strategies require the investment of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing programs—money that comes from tuition increases, or money that could have gone to strengthen instruction or improve financial aid offers.

It’s too early to tell just how the results will impact college recruiting efforts, but the survey comes along just in time for high school counselors to tell parents, with authority, that high school *and* college personnel think the US News rankings are of little if any help when it comes to choosing a college.

More than just saving parents the cost of the magazine, this message tells college-bound families to invest their understanding of the college selection process in more reliable, individualized resources, including the advice of a trained high school counselor who knows the student’s needs. That may be the biggest pot of gold at any rainbow in this rain-soaked spring.

The survey is at http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/PressRoom/2011/Pages/collegerankings.aspx

Need to Keep Your Seniors Focused on School? Try This

By Patrick O'Conner

Seniors, I realize you’re engaged in serious academic pursuits, like planning senior skip day and sneaking a Whoopee cushion on the principal’s chair at graduation, so I’ll quickly address two issues I have for you, and you can be on your way.

First, congratulations again on your acceptance into college.  A record number of students applied to college this year, so your admission letter really is an affirmation of the hard work you put in, the risks you took in challenging yourself with tough classes, and the many contributions you made outside of the classroom. 

I’m repeating this because many students are coming by my office to thank me for “getting them in” to college. I think I know what you mean when you say that, but I’m not sure you do.

As I’ve said before, too many newspaper reporters try and make the college application process more “interesting” by shaping it like a reality TV show ( “Survivor:  Showdown on the Quad”).   This explains why your parents gave you SAT flash cards for your first communion, or a gold bracelet for your bat mitzvah with the inscription www.commonapp.org.  It also explains why your mother’s therapist can send his daughter to Cornell without taking out any loans.

Thanks to the fourth estate, college counselors are viewed as the Dumbledores of College Access, the College Whisperers who bring you into their offices only to get a sense of your aura.  Later, at a time when they sense the Force is with them, they call the college of your choice on a special red phone, whisper  the Greek equivalent of “Baa Ram Ewe” into the mouthpiece, and voila!—you’re admitted.

Of course, we make you jump through the hoops of earning good grades, getting up on several Saturdays to take tests where the correct answers always form a Scantron silhouette of Snoopy, and writing several drafts of college essays designed to get you to communicate your understanding of yourself and the world around you,--but this is window dressing.  The real work happens in our offices, when the moon is but a thin crescent in the southern sky and the wind blows towards Harvard Yard, Touchdown Jesus, orfraternity row at Faber College.

The world would have you believe this, but it isn’t true.  Yes, we help you find the right mix of challenge, support and opportunity at your next school.  We also help you understand how to give colleges a complete picture of your life through the right mix of letters of recommendation, personal essays, and genuine interviews.

But we are not the ones who “get you in”—you earn the grades, write the essays, and make it happen.  That’s as it should be, since it is who you are and what you do that not only gets you into college; it keeps you there as well…

…which leads me to my second point.  I’ve just reviewed your course grades since you were admitted to college, and if this keeps up, your decision to turn down the full ride scholarship to Daisy’s Dog Grooming School will prove to have been a poor one.

If you need help remembering what it was you were studying or why finishing high school with strong grades is important, you might want to track down Dumbledore and borrow his Pensieve.  But remember, I ain’t Dumbledore—I honestly told the colleges you were a hard worker, and I’ll have to honestly tell them you’ve stopped being so, if that’s the case.

So how about if you forget about the Whoopee cushion, and get back to class?

Supporting Students through World Events

School counselors are responding to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden with a wide variety of programs for their students.  While the Sunday night event caught many counselors off guard for managing and supporting student response for Monday, many forums and discussion opportunities are planned or underway at this point, all designed to help students make sense of this event and what it may mean to the daily lives of students, both today and in the future.

If you’re in the process of creating a program for your school, consider these key elements that have helped other 

counselors meet the needs of their buildings in the past:

Don’t do this alone.  School principals are certainly wise to include school counselors in the creation of a building response to unexpected events, but the best constructed plan is one that’s team-based.  Not everyone considers this issue to be a crisis, but it’s a good idea to look at your building crisis plan for guidance here—bring your crisis team together, determine who else may have important expertise to add to the team (like Social Studies teachers familiar with the situation), and plan as a group. If you don’t have a building crisis plan, pull your principal, social worker, and two teachers you respect into your office, and start from there—and make sure constructing a crisis plan is on next fall’s “to do” list.

Think back on what’s worked before.  A good way to brainstorm possible approaches to working with students through this issue is to consider how the school addressed a previous high profile issue.  It’s been almost ten years since 9/11, yet every teacher can remember where they were, what they were doing, and how they helped students through that time of crisis (if in fact they were teachers at that time.)  This event has its own dynamics, but approaches that were successful then could be a place to begin here.

Consider your audience.  It’s clear that strategies to help elementary school students work through these issues will be different than the approaches used with middle schools or high schools, but it’s important to go deeper than that.  Does your community have a number of families with members on active duty?  Are there political or religious divisions in your community that need to be considered in developing a response?  Are there community resources in mental health facilities or places of worship that should be included in building a plan of support for your community?  These issues are important to consider when deciding how—or even if--  a response program is necessary.

How will you spread the word?  Once you have a plan, it’s important to make sure everyone knows what it is—students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members at large.  It may be that the best plan for your school is to offer an after-school discussion group, or to invite those with questions and concerns to come see you—but they won’t come if the invitation isn’t extended.  This is especially true if you’re planning to hold a larger event; if the turnout is small, or if people don’t know why they’re coming, they are less likely to prepare or participate, and the event’s potential goes unrealized.  Letting people know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what the event hopes to achieve is key to a successful event.

People turn to the helpers in times of crisis, and this week is no different.  Plan your work, work your plan, keep the best interests of 

Counseling for the Second First-Choice

By Patrick J. O'Conner Ph.D.

Is counseling for the unknown an art or a science?

It’s a question that’s plagued our profession for many years, and the dilemma only seems to be getting worse.  The recent round of college admissions decisions left thousands of students and parents (and their counselors) speechless, as acceptance rates at many colleges fell below 7%, with one college—the tuition free Curtis Institute of Music—falling to 3.5%.  That would be an exceptionally strong batting average for a baseball player, but to high school seniors, these numbers sound like there’s a better chance of getting hit by lightning on a sunny day than getting admitted to college.

The same is true for middle school  and elementary counselors.  Tryouts for the 8^th grade football team are coming up, and a student is concerned he won’t make the team.  After talking with you, he decides to give it a try, and doesn’t make the cut.  He goes home devastated, telling his parents you talked him into the tryout. 

If his 5^th grade sister comes home with the same scenario about not getting the lead in the spring play the counselor “promised’ her, you’ve got one unhappy family on your hands—especially if the oldest child is a high school senior who applied to Curtis and was rejected. In each case, the question is the same—didn’t the counselor see this coming?

The answer is yes and no.  Yes, the counselor knew there were only so many slots for too many students, so some students were going to be disappointed; no, they had no idea which side of the decision your child would be on.  Yes, your counselor could see strengths and weaknesses in your child’s abilities and experiences that could affect their chances of success; no, your counselor has no idea what the strengths and weaknesses of all of the other students are.  Yes, your counselor has probably advised many students about these activities, so they may have some idea of the standards used by those making the decisions; no, these standards are not always consistent from year to year.

Some real-life examples can give parents something to hold on to as they grasp for grounding.  If your son was one of two fast 8^th graders to try out for wide receiver, there’s a good chance they’re in; if they’re one of twenty, the chances go down.  If the 5^th grade musical always has lots of roles for sopranos, your high-pitched daughter is in great shape, unless the director decides to change things up this year and feature the altos.  If some small college that took everyone last year is the new hot school, there just won’t be room for everyone this year.

The final, essential piece here is developing Plan B before it’s actually needed.  Seniors apply to more than one college in case their top choices don’t work out; lanky wide receiver wannabes are encouraged to think about running cross country if there’s gridlock on the gridiron; elementary coloraturas can set their sights on the church pageant or the community playhouse if the spring play doesn’t work out.

The science of counseling involves discussing facts in ways that offer clear pictures to clients; the art involves creating a host of possibilities the client can feel good about without thinking they’ve settled for second best.  There will always be first choices, and the pains that come from not achieving them, but the beauty of good counseling is that students and their parents will see the opportunities they do earn as second first choices, eager to make the most of them

On a Scale of 1 to 10, How do You Feel About Evaluating a Counseling Program?

By:  Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.


Don’t look now, but the end of the school year is about two months away.  For counselors, this means awards assemblies, school picnics, and graduation ceremonies for everyone from kindergarten to high school.  But thanks to school improvement programs and state mandates, the long to-do list for May and June may have a new addition—the collection of data to evaluate the effectiveness of your school counseling program.

Hard as it may be, measure we must—data is the lifeblood of most principal’s careers, so it’s time to review some basics for measuring the effectiveness of the department that improves students’ lives:

What do you want to know?  This may seem like an obvious question, but that happens a lot in counseling.  The key is to answer the question in a way that will show key groups (administrators, parents, your teaching colleagues) everything you do—so once you think you’ve answered this question, you’re going to have to run it past these groups to see if your answers make sense to them.

Suffice it to say, if this is the first time all year you’re thinking about this question, it may be time to do some fact gathering and hold off the evaluation until next year.  Bring your stakeholders together, gather some opinions, and begin your plan for 2012; chances are the administration will give you a year to put a quality assessment together, as long as you give them a good reason for the delay—like, you were too busy actually helping students..

How will you measure what you want to know?  Everyone may want to know if the college advising program is successful, but if the parents think the way to measure that is in scholarship monies earned, the principal thinks it should be measured by students going to Harvard, and you think it should be measured by how happy the students are about their college choice, you have a lot of talking to do.  (By the way, never—never—measure a college counseling program by the number of students who were admitted to a college in a given year.  Too many factors are involved that are out of your control; if you don’t believe me, just Google “admissions decisions 2011” and have the smelling salts at hand.) Make sure you reach consensus here, or people may insist you’re trying to hide something.

What will be a satisfactory level of response?  I’m not suggesting you do this, but let’s say you want to measure the counseling program’s stress management program by giving random students a stress level test. What kind of outcome will be considered successful—if the average score is below More Tightly Wound Than Big Ben, or if 75% of the students have lower stress scores than their pre-tests last fall.  Remember, if you decide to go with a pre-test model of some kind and you didn’t do the pre-test levels, let this go until next year—the data you get with post-test only can only be used in wrong ways.

How, and when will you share the results, and with whom?  Once the results are in and analyzed, you can’t keep it secret for long.  Decide now how the information will be shared, remembering that results can be shared in different ways with different groups that have different needs—if this sounds like counseling, you’re absolutely right.

The key here is not to rush into this.  Look at what other schools are doing, make sure everyone has a common sense of purpose, and your efforts will leave everyone happier than the last day of school.

How to Help Students Deal With College Waitlists

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

Photo by Lars Leetaru-WSJ Online

The last big round of college admissions decisions have been released, and counselors are very busy helping students and parents understand what it all means. Adding to the confusion this year was a significant increase in the number of colleges putting students on a waitlist—and with good reason.

It’s hard to be a waitlisted student.  On the one hand, you have to plan to attend a college where you’ve been admitted; on the other hand, you have to keep looking at your e-mail to see if another college still wants you. This waiting game can sometimes go on into the summer, and just like the last three months have been hard on all college-bound students, the next two months can be real agony for those students on a wait list.

Counselors can help waitlisted students by asking these simple questions:

If you were called off the waitlist today, would you still want to go to that college?  Since the student applied to the college, you’d think this would be an easy question to answer—but it isn’t.  If a college says “maybe”, the student may think twice about how good of a fit this college is after all, or the student may simply look at the two or three colleges that have said “yes” and decide that’s good enough.  Asking this question can help the student focus on what matters to them now, and that can only help.

What are you willing to do to still show interest in the college?  Colleges sometimes tell waitlisted students to send back a postcard or an e-mail to indicate an interest in staying on the mailing list.  In most cases, this is an unspoken invitation for the student to make another brief contact expressing their interest in the college (check with the college).  A two or three-paragraph update of the student’s achievements and accomplishments since they applied is a great way to show continued enthusiasm, and some students even ask another teacher for an additional letter of recommendation.

These are great communication tools, but they also take time.  With AP and IB tests coming up, not to mention prom and other social events, waitlisted students simply may not have the time or interest in putting this update together.  If all they want to do is return the postcard, that’s great, but it’s fair for them to know other students may not be going quietly when it comes to the waitlist.

Is financial aid a factor?  It’s hard to tell what will happen in this very unusual college admission season, but waitlisted students in past years often found little or no financial aid waiting for them for their first year.  It could be that the student’s interest in the college is so strong they would go anyway, and of course the student may get much more aid in their second year, but students and families should know that a waitlist admit can decrease their chances of getting of getting complete aid.  If this is an issue for the student, have them call the college and ask.

Do they have a Plan A?  This last question is also simple, but important.  A student MUST have a college to commit to come May 1st—without one, they may have nowhere to go come fall.  Be sure to find out.

Waitlisted students have a lot to think about, but these guiding questions can be a huge help in getting students to focus on what matters most as March Madness threatens to extend into May.

Doing Our Work with a Spring in Our Step

By : Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

April is indeed the cruelest month for school counselors.  While it’s wonderful to hear the birds singing and to see some flowers in bloom, this is the time of year when our workload is at its busiest, no matter what grade level we serve:

*   Counselors at all levels are leading their schools through required standardized testing;
*   Middle and high school counselors are working with students on schedules for next year;
*   Elementary counselors are dealing with students who have simply had it with winter;
*   High school counselors are doing some major hand-holding to support seniors disappointed with college decisions

Taken individually, these tasks might be manageable—but add them all together, throw in a request to make a presentation to the school board or chaperone a basketball game, and this is more than enough to put you over the edge.

This kind of frustration is common among teachers, so what is it that seems to make it so acutely felt by counselors?

Because we are the integrity center for our schools.

Think about it.  When a student mouths off in class and the teacher asks them to stop, does the counselor see that student if they do as their told?  Of course not; we only see the students who talk back to the teachers, so we can help the student sort out their priorities and consider their behavior.

If a senior decides to drop an Advanced Placement class for a gym class, who has to tell them they have to report this class change to the colleges where they’ve been admitted?  Right—us.

Who’s called in to mediate a tense principal-parent meeting?  Who’s asked to come to the Spanish class and explain the importance of learning a language other than English?  Who is supposed to help every student grow every day?

No wonder we’re tired.  When it comes to taking a stand on an issue, we spend more time on our principled feet than the Statue of Liberty.

What’s the best way to catch a breather and stay standing tall?  Let’s practice what we preach, and remember these three things:


*   Keep the big picture in mind.  Talking with Joey again about his failing report card may not get him to leave your office as a changed person, but it may give him something to think about tonight, or this weekend when he’s deciding if he should do his homework.  We are Johnny Appleseed, planting ideas for growth in life, and they might not be hydroponics; give them the support and time they need to grow.
*   Consider the alternative.  Leading the charge for right over wrong may seem more like working in the Alamo than a counseling office, but the two can have much in common if we remember the importance of principle and commitment.  It’s what we want the students to demonstrate, so these are our behaviors to model.
*   Cherish the victories.  With the enormous caseloads we carry, there has to be at least a dozen students a day who show some kind of personal growth.  Focusing on the 400 who don’t seem to get it yet will keep us depressed, and won’t help anyone grow; be prepared to yell, whistle, and high five every piece of good news that comes your way.

April showers may bring May anxieties about who’s taking who to the big spring dance, but if we follow our own advice and are good to ourselves, the growth of all things dormant since the winter won’t be the only beautiful signs to dot our landscape in the next two months.
Patrick