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Do you think Counselors do enough to help students get Scholarships etc

Zynni

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Sep 25, 2014
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Some guidance counselors seem to be very on the ball, helping students get every available scholarship and get prepared for higher education. Others do not. One that my kids had did very little to help them. Many parents are unsure of how to proceed, and when the counselors don't help, it can be a problem. I started talking to my other kids' counselors early to try to make sure they have every resource available to them. Do you think they do enough to get kids prepared?
 
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There are so many websites available to students to find scholarships, I think it should be up to the student rather than the counselor who is only there to guide and advise. Part of the process is to see how dedicated and determined the student is to get the scholarship. If kids want to go to college they need to put the effort in too, you can't expect a counselor to do it all for you. If I was a counselor and I would help single parent families or kids that have few resources like a foster home. That's where their time should be focused on those who have no one else to ask or to turn to.
 
I think it's the counsellor's duty to help the kid by showing them what's available and letting the kid decide by themselves. I know my high school counsellor did absolutely jack unless you either approached them or like a former friend, lived next door to them and knew them already. She never spoke to students as a whole, or to them individually. The career advisor did little as well unless you approached them, she was great as a teacher but as an advisor, absolutely useless. I agree with Gabriellea that they should be there to guide and advise, but you can't expect every student to approach the counsellor if they're not even aware there is help available in the first place. There are programs, but kids are also not even allowed to be involved in the programs just because of their parents salary, not because of their familial situation.
Single parent families get knocked back all the time just because the parent earns over a certain amount, which I think is ridiculous.
Counsellors are there to help, and yes, they can't help kids if the kids don't approach them, but they should also approach the kids. The kids with the knowledge of scholarships etc are already a step ahead.
It also helps if the parent(s) or foster carers are even aware that there's a counsellor at the school, most counsellors don't even bother to meet the parents upon enrolment here in Aust. It's just 'here's the paperwork, meet the principal, sign the dotted line' and your kid is enrolled.
 
I think the danger of the counselor getting too involved is that the parents and child will sit back and expect them to do everything. Now I have looked at scholarships and it involves a lot of personal declaration of assets and also marital status. Does a counselor have time to do someone's paperwork? I think not, because people lie all the time and then they get found out and the application gets rejected.

Counselors are also there to guide people into jobs, now they can't mentor every child and also some don't want it. I'm a believer in that people who want help will seek it, but this expectation of entitlement is wrong too. There are lots of paid services where companies will help you fill out college applications and it's not the job of a counselor who is to counsel and not fill out forms, but tell you which ones to fill out.
 
I wasn't suggesting that the counselor should fill out the forms. I'm talking about helping kids find stuff that is more obscure. They have greater access and knowledge of such things. It's their job to help. Some of them are great. Others, not so much.
 
I think so much of the counselor's usefulness depends on the school. My school counselor was used to students who wanted to stay in state and could only hand me a listing of colleges in other states as help. I think the best thing you can do for a kid who does not have a proactive counselor is seek out information from sites such as college confidential or the sub-reddit r/college to make sure they are getting a lot of different perspectives.
 
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Although it's the student's job to get scholarships to pay for school, I think it's the advisor's/counselor's job to present the student with information they wouldn't have normally heard about. I've been in a situation where I just wanted some resources that I can check out on my own, but instead, my counselor led me in circles about grades and classes. I feel like I should at least had an answer to my question. My counselor stated that before I start looking for scholarships, I need to do certain things in certain classes etc. Without scholarships and funding, there was no way I could take classes in the first place. At that specific school I went to, my counselor did not help me at all, but a lot of schools have people that'll send out mass emails with generic scholarships that everyone could apply to. I don't think they do nearly as much as they can to help with scholarships though.
 
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