Counselors, high school

Dr. Beverly Lenny, a college counselor at Hunter College High School in New York, says she steers her students toward the paper application. Her main objection to the online version is her students tendency to treat it casually. "The application process is about learning how to present yourself well. You must carefully show your readers your very best. The casualness with which some students approach online applications interferes with this sense of purpose."... 

The interviews revealed that high school counselors, especially in schools where African American students were in the minority, often played insignificant or deleterious roles. For some interviewees, attending college was threatened by the lack of financial aid. Accessibility to a college or university is often determined by one s ability to pay. In studies of academic persistence, financial aid emerges as one... 

A Cohort V graduate of a predominantly white high school in the Midwest recalled that his counselor kept steering him away from the top colleges, even though he was an honors student in chemistry. 

By the time she got to high school, Rachel could no longer mask her depression and, like other young people with whom I have spoken, started making some friends who were also depressed. These friends were a lifeline, Rachel told me There were times when I really wanted to kill myself [and] they were the ones who stopped me. As a preventive measure Rachel made a pact with a fellow sufferer, Alex, that neither of us would kill ourselves without the other one. At Alex s urging, she went to see the school counselors ... 

Fig. 2 provides a direct comment on how our institutions promote alienation. We see a cartoon where a junior-high-school girl talks to her school counselor. As a teacher I can easily relate to this cartoon It is difficult to teach students thermodynamics but it is more difficult to teach them that thermodynamics is a part of their daily lives. 

Basically I wanted to find out what would be the best major to go into when I go to college, because I know that sometimes people can get stuck in a major that, once they graduate they don t really know what to do with it. And so I wanted to know really what was going to make me the money when I got out of high school, because I know that was important, and so talking to my counselor, she did that for me, and then she introduced me to the programs that we had on campus. (USF Black female switcher)... 

I m not a strong math student, and these are things that my [high school] counselor knew, but I don t really feel like she took the initiative to try to show me places where I can go and try to get that developed before I got to college. So when I did get to college it was very overwhelming for me. I felt like I was very under prepared in the math section. I wasn t prepared for college math. (USF Black female switcher)... 

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