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| |    Precollege Counseling: Making It Work for You by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. One of the most important people in the life of your teenager is her school guidance counselor. A good guidance counselor can help a student make a fair and forward-looking assessment of her strengths and life goals, and plan an academic course to take her there. He also can help her select the right courses and extracurricular activities, based on her goals. And when it comes time to decide about college, he can help her ask the questions and find the facts she needs to make the best decision for her. If this sounds precisely like the sort of help you, yourself, are planning on giving your child, it is! Precollege counseling shouldn't replace a parent's input but supplement it. Some parents are reluctant to ask for help. Don't be. Every family can use assistance getting through the maze that is college and career planning. Teens often turn to adults outside their family to get a different perspective on the major issues in their lives. You can help make this a positive process by understanding the objectives of a guidance counselor. That way, you'll be in the best position possible to work constructively with that person. What precollege counselors do How you approach your child's guidance counselor probably depends on your own experience growing up. If you went to college, chances are your children expect to go as well. If you didn't attend college, a counselor may be very helpful in encouraging your teen to think of it as something that's possible for her, both economically and academically. Precollege counselors can do a lot for middle and high school students. The following list, adapted from a publication by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Personnel Services, outlines some of these important roles:
Income is the biggest factor that determines how much precollege guidance a teen gets. As a group, lower-income students have less access to guidance counselors, although their need for accurate, personalized help may in fact be greatest. Nearly one-fifth of high school students--most of them from low-income families--never talk to a counselor at all. Groups within the population that have the lowest rates of educational success also tend to have the most limited access to precollege and career counseling. In many financially strapped schools, the number of counselors is low, and as much as 80 percent of a counselor's time may be taken up with scheduling and discipline problems, leaving relatively little time to provide precollege guidance. What you can do Here are some steps that you can take to help your child get the maximum benefit from the precollege counselors at her school:
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