What College Counselors Want

It's a tired expression of a title, I know, but I've had the pleasure and good fortune to spend the last two days with 38 other college counselors on an invitation-only tour of San Francisco-area colleges called "Best of the Bay." We have toured five campuses in three days and will hit one more tomorrow morning before they take us back to the airport.  But I won't be profiling these amazing schools in this post.  (I will later, don't worry.)  Today I want to focus on what I have learned, or been reminded of, by spending time with so many dedicated colleagues (none of whom I have met before, and none of whom I plan to see again).

While we were traversing one of the Bay Area's many bridges this evening, I managed to pull my eyes away from the spectacular scenery to take stock of my more immediate surroundings--the people sharing my tour bus.  Thirty eight people who do my job at a school in some other town but who face very similar situations on a daily basis. Almost everyone was chatting, as a bus 80% full of women is wont to do, and when I tuned in to specific conversations (sometimes called "eavesdropping") I got all warm and fuzzy inside.  Almost everyone who was talking was talking about their students. And with sincere fondness, or pride, or heartbreak, or whatever other emotion would be expected when talking about someone you truly care about.

It got me thinking that many parents probably don't realize how invested college counselors are in their students. So I am here to assure you, WE CARE.  We take acceptances and rejections to heart and really, really want students to go to their "best match" school. There are exceptions to every rule but you'd probably be surprised at how few exceptions there are to that rule.  And the majority of our interactions with families are pleasant and on-track and sometimes even delightful, and that is in the kids' best interest, but we enjoy sharing our humorous and nightmarish stories just like everybody else. Here are a few I have heard in just the past 48 hours:

• One counselor told about a mother who was so traumatized by the idea of letting her daughter go away to school that she divorced her husband and moved to college with the child.
• Another counselor from an affluent school had a father come into his office with a $40,000 check saying he wanted the school to hire another teacher in a certain subject so his son could retake a failed class and be assured an A next time.
• A young, first-year counselor said she has several mothers who call every day and talk to her about personal problems that don't involve their child or college in any way.  
• One counselor received a testy email from a mother saying her college recommendations for the daughter were "all wrong because she'll never find a good husband at any of those schools."
• A male counselor had a father tell him point-blank that he wanted his son to go to a prestigious college so he could "grow up to be more than just a college counselor or something like that."
• One woman has gotten yelled at by parents when their children don't win scholarships, because they mistakenly think she is in charge of making those decisions.
• Several counselors reported urgent calls from parents of children as young as pre-K wanting to discuss "college strategy."
• One person reported that a particularly anxious parent wouldn't allow her son to apply to a school until she visited the campus, and wouldn't visit the campus without the counselor.  Once they were at the school, she broke down in the admissions office, sobbing and begging the counselor to "make" the college change their mandatory freshman residency policy so she could keep her boy at home. Of course the admissions officer and the counselor de-escalated the mother as well as they could, but the policy stands. (OK, this one is mine actually.)

Besides sharing these for humor's sake, I also wanted to use them as examples of What Counselors Don't Want. We don't want hysterics or bribery or blame for uncontrollable situations or to be more focused on you than on your child.  We're often gentle, nurturing people who make obvious targets when the family is feeling stressed out, frustrated or disappointed, and we don't want that either.

So what do we want?  Mostly just your basic Golden Rule stuff.  Courtesy, respectful treatment, appreciation for our efforts. We want to see your child go to the right college* and we're trying to contribute what we can to that outcome, so please remember this when we disagree about something. Despite the fact that we actually can't make anything happen, we can be your biggest ally in navigating this process and we want to be on your team. 

Thanks for making it all the way through today's diatribe.  My hope is that I have planted the seeds that will help you have a more enjoyable, more fruitful relationship with your child's college counselor.  And if you are one of our model parents already, I thank you on behalf of my colleague (whom I've never met but certainly feel a kinship with).



*There will be plenty of future posts about what exactly constitutes the "right college."