Counselors describe their side of college application process

Each fall, seniors scramble to finish their college applications, the final step toward the next step in their lives. They stay up late to work on essays, ask teachers to write letters of recommendation and check off the colleges that they intend to apply to one-by-one.

Supporting them every step of the way are administrators, guidance counselors,  and office staff.

The college application process starts early for both students and counselors: beginning in the spring of junior year, counselors meet with students to explain how to use Naviance, a site for college resources, put together college lists and request recommendation letters. They prompt students to start thinking about colleges and have parents provide their input.

Naviance has greatly benefited students, assistant principal Brian Safine said. Since the school started using Naviance, students have applied to twice as many colleges as they used to.

Throughout the summer and the beginning of senior year, students narrow their college lists. At this point, counselor Eileen Allen said, counselors check in with students again and give their opinion and suggestions based on their experience with applications in previous years.

At the same time, Safine oversees the guidance department and secretarial staff, who are responsible for organizing speakers from colleges, submitting application materials for teachers and coordinating the collection of private college materials from the students. He is also responsible for Parent Night, which is when the administration communicates to parents their philosophy on how to approach college applications and the logistics of the applications themselves.

By October and November, students will have finished the bulk of their early applications. This requires students to be able to manage their time, write essays and be aware of deadlines, Allen said. Counselors play a big role in the application process at this point, since they meet with parents and students to review essays for content and write recommendation letters.

“I have close to 50 letter recommendation requests for Nov. 1 or earlier deadlines, so letter writing is a big part of what we do to support students in those applications,” Allen said.

As students finish their essays and get their letters of recommendations, they will submit their applications. After this, all they can do is wait for the colleges’ decisions.

Office staff say they notice some trends regarding college applications in recent years. The first is that more students are being more adventurous by applying to out-of-state schools. Allen said that this results from the growing competitiveness of UCs and CSUs, prompting students to look elsewhere for a better chance of acceptance.

Many students will apply to private schools and public colleges in other states, but some students will look even further for colleges to apply to. In the past, students have attended schools out of the country in Europe, Canada and Japan, Allen said. Finding these schools typically takes more research, and the application processes are drastically different than schools in the U.S.  Allen remembers one former student who was required to produce five AP test scores for one college in Europe, an uncommon practice in the U.S..

The counselors try to do their best to help students apply to these colleges.

“For international schools, we help students research,” Allen said. “We may have no idea, but we can get on the phone and figure out what they need to apply to an out of country school, but the process varies quite a lot.”

The other prominent trend is students applying for far more schools early action and early decision. According to Allen, the main reason for this is that colleges have embraced early action and early decision because it helps them have a better grasp on what their yield of students is going to be, giving applicants who apply early advantages.

At the end of the day, Allen said, it comes down to the student themselves. Some students know every essay required and every deadline, and are overall just on top of the whole process. Other students are slower to the process and may not plan to do any early applications. But regardless of the student, the application process is made much easier with the help of counselors and administrators.

“Our philosophy is to support students in every way we can so we can find the right college fit for them,” Safine said. “It’s not about finding something that’s one rank higher than another college; it’s about finding criteria that suits the student as a young adult.”