The need for college counselors to help high school students

The New York Times recently published an article discussing the need for counselors to work with students in finding the best college for their needs. While the article simply restated the fact that most high school students have inadequate college counseling, I was struck when actually considering the numbers.

The article addressed some of the numbers from the State of College Admission 2007 which is published by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The average public high school counselor spends only 23% of their time advising 311 students on colleges. When this is broken down it turns out that the typical public high school counselor spends 64 minutes during the entire year advising students on issues related to colleges. Even more disturbing, only 10% of public high schools provide a college counselor specialist for their students.

Surprisingly, the typical private school counselor doesn’t fair that much better. Private school counselors spend 56% of their time advising students on colleges and have 234 students to advise. This breaks down to 3 hours and 26 minutes that the private school counselor has for each student in their college advising.

In preparing for college students need to consider the courses they are taking, what courses to take, what tests to take and when, what extracurricular involvement they should have, what colleges to consider, factors to consider in deciding how to pay for college, the application process and when to apply, factors considering the college visit, who and when to ask for recommendations and the list keeps going. It is unfortunate that this country continues to inadequately fund schools so that there are not enough qualified counselors. But it is a national disgrace to think that students are only provided with one hour of advice on all of the issues surrounding the search for the right college.