College counseling
The key to success...
...in college counseling is communication among all the constituents involved - colleges, parents, counselors, teachers and, most important, students. The student who is well informed and actively involved in the college search process will make the best college decisions.
How does Episcopal facilitate communication? We have developed a four-year curriculum that helps to guide students and their parents toward individual college decisions. The program begins with an eighth-grade night to help students establish academic and co-curricular goals and ends with a spring senior program to work with the issues of transition. Along the way, the college counselors offer a variety of formal and informal meetings that include a freshman day that features a nationally renowned program called "Making High School Count," sophomore and junior workshops featuring admissions officers from a score of colleges, an 11-session mandatory class for juniors to help them understand the college application process, as well as an assortment of daytime and evening meetings with parents and students. This curriculum is augmented by a variety of contacts through our web-site, eBoards, emails and our quarterly newsletters.
The counseling office also has created a publication, the Comprehensive College Planning Guide, now in its second edition, which is given to students during the beginning of the freshman year. It provides a workbook format, allowing students not only to plan but also track their extracurricular activities and academic results throughout their four years of high school.
This structure is important because it allows us to reach every student; however, nothing can replace the rapport that is established between counselor and student. Episcopal's college counseling office consists of four counselors who collectively have more than 100 years of experience in college counseling. Counselors have other responsibilities on campus, helping them to get to know their college advisees well so that they can help each student make an informed decision about colleges. The counselors are knowledgeable about hundreds of colleges so that we can assist in finding the right match. To remain current in our profession, each of the college counselors attends yearly national and regional association meetings and spends time on college campuses during the year. The match between the college and the student should not be seen as an arranged marriage, but rather a union that each student enters with eyes open, a knowledge of what to expect and a commitment to make it work.