Meet with Your Guidance Counselor

How to use this crucial resource to the application process.

Your guidance counselor is an advisor and an important part of the college admissions process. This person will be writing a recommendation for you to colleges and advising you how to choose your schools and apply to them.

Your guidance counselor has information you need - he knows about the admissions process, has a sense of the admissions history of students from your high school and what profile gets in where, and can help you plan your courses and applications. Additionally, schools request a "Counselor Report" attached to the transcript, so it's really important to get to know your counselor (and have him like you!). At your appointment, make sure to ask:

• How competitive are my grades and courses for the schools I want?

• Can I provide you with any info to help you in writing my recommendation?

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR instead of going in blind and thinking, "Oh, that school sounds nice." I applied to a lot of schools I wouldn't have wanted to go to. The counselors at my school tried to make it seem you had to go to a school they thought was good. I was trying to apply to swanky schools even though they didn't offer programs I wanted or were too far away.

THE WORST PART was that I felt as if I was by myself in the search process. At my high school, if you weren't interested in the stereotypical big state school, you were pretty much on your own. Our guidance counselors tried to be helpful, but they were pretty clueless. I had to figure out a lot by word of mouth and the Internet.

HoH Tip Your high school guidance counselor is not there to make decisions for you. He provides resources and helps you find outlets to information, but the choices you make are for you, not for anyone else.