"My Guidance Counselor Said I Wouldn't Get In"

OK Let's talk about perceptions.

As college decisions start to roll in (monitor how we're doing here), articles tend to reach an annual peak focusing on the competitiveness of it all, minimizing the process, or how little school counselors can do to help students.

Yes, it is competitive. No, where you start isn't as important as where you finish. And yes, school counselors' impact is stunted when we have bloated caseloads or limited training and professional development in college planning.

Most aspiring school counselors pursue the career because they want to help children achieve their goals. Teachers do this, but many of the teachers who seek the role change report doing so in order to develop deeper and non-evaluative relationships with their students.

Once we are in our post-graduate master's programs to learn how to be school counselors, we learn that our roles are to break down barriers to student achievement, and to help students grow in their academic, career, and personal/social development. The typical school counseling masters program requires the following courses:

Introduction to Helping Services Human Growth & Development Use of Assessments Career Development

Counseling Theories Intro to counseling skills Multicultural perspectives Preinternship practice/supervision

Research & Statistics Methods Advanced counseling techniques Group Counseling Field placement/internship Ethics

Some programs also offer electives in Special Education, Diagnosis, Substance Abuse Counseling, Pharmacology, and some do offer courses that include college planning, but the fact remains that college planning is not even available at all master's level programs.

So here we have a pre-professional or new school counselor who learns how to actively listen to students and implement a data-driven school counseling program that incorporates individual and group counseling to address students' personal, social, career, and academic development, and have solid skills in relationship-building, because we learn from Carl Rogers in our Theories class that clients experience the most growth with unconditional positive regard and the opportunity to arrive at their own conclusions. He or she secures a position in a school by showing through the interview process with knowledge about data-driven decision making and an awareness of the process to address students who show risk of self-harm. Then, they get into a school. Thankfully, the internships gave the elementary school counselor the necessary practice to conduct lessons. And a new school counselor hopefully has enough energy to withstand the challenges presented by middle schoolers, keeping those tweens aware that there is a world beyond their school years and to keep working toward hypothetical goals.

However, high school counselors arrive at their new positions and are asked daily by students and parents how to strategically plan coursework to maximize postsecondary options and differentiate the nuances between the several state colleges or flagship and brand name universities in neighboring states. The most competitive students and their parents ask for advice in navigating the ivy-league and highly selective college labyrinth. And here is where the bad press comes from. We are taught to close gaps for the lowest-performing students and provide services to as many students as possible, but many of us don't learn until about three or four years (or longer, if we "loop" with student cohorts) about trends and tendencies with college admissions with enough acuity to help the highest-achieving and most-motivated students, the ones who end up writing articles about what a poor job their guidance counselor did.

So let's talk about what school counselors do know. School counselors know how to interpret data. We use Naviance to help students search for colleges and we also use it for transcripts. The college to which we send most of our transcripts is Towson University, which makes that the "mode" college if we were think about colleges in terms of data. The average GPA for the current seniors is about 2.6 and the average SAT score for the seniors is currently about 490 on each test. So let's look at how an "average" senior stacks up against his or her peers who applied to the most popular college in the area:

What would you tell this student? Would you say that this student has a good shot at this college? A qualified school counselor would say something like, "I think that it's a good goal to set for yourself, and you should definitely give it a shot, but let's also talk about some backup plans." A responsible school counselor would have done some reading into admissions trends and established enough of a relationship and rapport with this student to know that this institution is lacking in students whose racial/ethnic/socioeconomic/family educational background are similar to this individual, and that between essays and letters of recommendation, perhaps the "noncognitive" factors can give this person enough of a boost to transcend the data trends - if the college in question actually processes few enough applications to read the essays or monitor noncognitive factors like grit and determination.

Before we had Naviance, we kept track of student admission trends using our own spreadsheets, and could have had the same student ask "what colleges do you think I should look into?" We would have used our spreadsheet, sorted by QPA, and recommended Stevenson, Morgan State, Frostburg, and U of Baltimore, because they are where students with a similar academic background have had recent success.

If that student were to ask about their chances at certain colleges, and the school counselor were to give an opinion based on both observation and data, the student would walk away with any of these thoughts, which are actual comments from recent senior perception surveys:

I recommend my counselor to be more encouraging during the college application process

be more vocal with concerns about a student's career

don't get students hopes up. 

Give clear straight-forward information about college and career plans

Using feedback from students, we should not get students' hopes up but should also be encouraging, yet be more vocal with our concerns. So what we are left with comes back to two major components of our training: establish and cultivate meaningful relationships with the students, and use research, data, and statistics for informed decision-making. When we follow these two principles, we are most likely to provide the support that students most need.
However, what this process lacks is imagination. Without intensive training that gets school counselors exposed to the thousands of colleges that our students overlook, or without funding to provide professional development or trips to support our own exploration of underexplored colleges, school counselors will continue to keep students in the well-traveled path. If school counselors can be provided more intensive relationships with the enrollment management professionals, we would know about the myriad special programs and admissions programs to help students get into their reach schools.
Here is what we at Pikesville do to combat this reputation so that the fewest possible graduates leave us with such a negative perception:
- The #PHSfit messaging in general
- The #PHSfit colleges of the day, through twitter and the morning announcements last year, and next year will also be posted on the blog
- 30-minute meetings with each junior to listen and help them develop college decision making plans
- increased classroom presence
- greater visibility and accessibility for individual appointments than students experienced in previous years

What do you think? If you would like suggest more to help us do a better job providing students post-secondary planning support, please email Mr. Goldman so that you can be on our advisory council next year.

Task-oriented or Time-oriented?

How do you do school work when you get home? Are you task-oriented or time oriented? What does that even mean?

TASK-ORIENTED
Being task-oriented simply means that you focus on the tasks at hand and work off of that list:

1. History: Complete the worksheet
2. Math: Answer problems 21-39, odd
3. English: Read chapters 3-4 and write sentences for this week's vocab list
4. Spanish: conjugate the verbs on this week's list
5. Science: study for TOMORROW's test!

And how long does it take to complete the tasks on your to-do list? 45 minutes? 60 minutes? What does it really mean to study? Why would you stop at the odd problems? How did you do on the last test? Will that information ever be on any other tests to come?

Have you considered becoming more...

TIME ORIENTED ??
Being time-oriented means that you focus on the time that you spend, devoting your efforts to one content at a time.

• Your parents tell you that being a student is your full time job: You're in class 45 minutes x 7 periods = 315 minutes per day x 5 week days = 1575 minutes per week / 60 minutes = 26.25 hours per week.
• A full-time job is approximately 40 hours per week.
• How should you spend the remaining 14 hours?
• 14 hours / 5 days = 2 3/4 hours per day

How can you spend 2 hours and 45 minutes on school work each day after school?

• Arrive home at 3:15, grab a snack
• 3:30-4:00: spend 30 minutes on your hardest class, while you have the most energy
• 4:00-4:30: spend 30 minutes on an easier class for a mental break
• 4:30-5:00: spend 30 minutes on a harder class before dinner
• 5:00-6:00 TALK TO YOUR PARENT(S)/GUARDIAN AND SHOW THEM WHAT YOU DID TODAY.
• 6:00-6:30: eat dinner (including your veggies) and ask your family about their day
• 6:30-7:00: spend 30 minutes on a challenging class
• 7:00-7:30: spend 30 minutes on a challenging class
• 7:30-8:00: spend 30 minutes on the class where you're currently earning your best grades
• 8:00-10:00: watch the TV shows you've DVR'ed all afternoon, check in on social media, tweet/post something positive
• 10:00 shower (if that's your thing at night) and GO TO BED!

MAJOR CAVEAT: Honors and AP classes usually need closer to 60 minutes to ensure greater success.

Now, how should you spend the time that you are devoting to each class? Take your pick:

• Complete the assigned homework
• Re-write today's notes
• Re-read today's notes
• Pre-read for tomorrow's topic
• Re-read old assessments
• If you were assigned odd problems, try the even ones
• Look up words that confuse(d) you
• Check YouTube/Khan Academy for reviews of topics that confuse(d) you
• If you still have time, do some practice problems for the SAT and ACT
• If you still have time, read for pleasure.

Sorry; simply passing is not good enough. You need to do the best that you can do in order to maximize options for after high school.
It's fine to make a mistake once in a while; that's part of life, and a big part of adolescence. But you mustn't let your mistakes define you, and what you learn from your mistakes are a greater measure of your character than any achievement that came without effort.

By the way, this post - and the concept - was inspired by an inspiring book - Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Anti-Bullying Day

Baltimore County Public Schools will hold its first system-wide Anti-Bullying Day on March 1.
In addition to individual school initiatives, students will be asked to sign a no-bullying pledge and be reminded of this pledge with a wristband that says "#TeamNoBullying."

Bullying is a pervasive problem that we must all continue to work together to overcome. It is something that everyone endures, but few have been willing to stand up and intervene. While there are legal definitions for bullying, we cannot forget that perception is reality, and that if a person feels victimized, then the damage is done, whatever a third party wishes to call that damage. And the damage is often more than hurt feelings. When we feel these feelings, it increases our blood pressure and causes muscle tension, loss of sleep, changes in appetite... the levels of stress impact physical health as well as mental and emotional health.

Name-calling, teasing, exclusion, slander, sarcasm, "throwing shade," physical harm... the list can go on for days; bullying looks like many things to many people.

However, with this being a school counseling blog, this post will focus more on solutions than on the problem. It is clear to everyone that there is a problem, and we all have experienced bullying of some degree at some point, we know how it feels, and we would like to do more. So let's talk about what we can do about it.

Prevention
Be a positive individual. Dole out praise to other people, express gratitude for their presence and participation in your school and your life. Show appreciation, as it may take every ounce of their strength to even come to school. Accept people for who they are, not what they can do for you. Remember that our society is built on caring for each other, and the collective grows stronger when every participant can improve upon their current situation.
In the wake of the shooting at Perry Hall High School, even one of our local heroes, Ray Rice, posted on his Facebook page:
 "Students...today when you go to school...Sit with someone who is alone at the lunch table, befriend the new kid in class, lend a helping hand, make it a point to be kind, and if you see something that is not quite right, say something!! You can be a HERO to someone, just by being their FRIEND!"
When you are online, practice responsible digital citizenship. Being a responsible digital citizen includes being personally safe by not putting yourself in dangerous situations. Additionally, as it relates to this conversation, to borrow a term from counseling, being a responsible digital citizen means that you employ beneficence and nonmaleficence. When texting, tweeting, or posting on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media, keep your posts positive and without intent to harm. The internet is a virtual arena for people to interact. Even though you can't see other user's faces when they read your posts, that doesn't mean they are not there. Only post things that you would want your grandparents, future bosses, and perhaps your own eventual children to see. If your ten-years-from-now self wouldn't be proud, then keep it to yourself.

Intervention
Assist your classmates who seem to be struggling. Listen to them. You don't need to solve their problems, but even taking a moment to listen to them is often an improvement over their previous experiences. The goal is to offer hope. If and when things get too intense, don't get alarmed. Just encourage them to also talk to an adult, and make sure that you go straight to a trusted adult to inform us, so that we can assist.
When you overhear someone being rude in the hall or in class, stand up and say something to the aggressor. Disarm them with kindness. Deflect the attention in some way - you don't need to get violent, just change scene. If that means directly confronting the person in a nonviolent way, great. It may be easier to loudly change the subject, or do something silly to distract the crowd's attention. It may serve a double benefit to overtly support the victim. The goal is to keep the environment positive. It may take tremendous courage at first, but remember how much courage it must take a person to even come to school, knowing that someone is bound to pick on him or her during 6th period. Some students even have to endure going home to emotional abuse or neglect that could be worse than what they experience in school. You never know what the person next to you really feels.
Please take the time and care to be considerate to everyone in your life. Being kind is so much easier than being rude and mean. Not to mention, you never know when you may need that favor repaid.
So, think about your role in the bullying "relationship." Is it possible that you are the perpetrator? Take a minute and think about how you interact with your peers and how that may be received by them. Are you a bystander? Are you afraid to stand up, for fear that you will also be targeted? When more bystanders do something, the act of bullying will no longer be accepted. Are you an ally? Develop that leadership and encourage others to stand up for the downtrodden. Are you a victim of bullying in any way? What resources are you using to care for yourself? Talk with your parents, school counselor, watch the videos below... do anything to keep yourself moving forward. High school is temporary, and the more you can do to keep yourself looking forward to emotional freedom, the less time and energy you'll spend focusing on the present.

This next video playlist is from journalist Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project. It is an example of many adults who have come through the struggles of coming out as being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, first to themselves, and then to others. The clear theme is that as hard as it is to be a queer teen, if you can get through this period of your life, it will get better.


Life doesn't always get better on its own, however. It takes great determination, patience, and - most importantly - the support of other human beings who sincerely care.

We are all in this together. 

Making plans for next year

Happy School Counseling Week!
On Monday of this week, our students received materials to request their courses for next year, and watched a video made by Mrs. O'Brien-Krack and three of our esteemed curricular chairmen:


Students are encouraged to consult with their teachers to obtain recommendations for electives, since the course request forms are already populated with recommendations for next year's primary course contents and levels, based on test scores, current courses, and teachers' observations thus far this year.
The forms need to indicate seven credits, include alternates in case students' first choices are not available or are in conflict with each other, and are due back to homeroom teachers on Friday. Then, starting next Tuesday and going through March 1, every single student in grades 9 through 11 has a prescheduled appointment with his or her school counselor to discuss these plans to ensure appropriate rigor and to check on their four-year plans.
Some students have already noticed that they have the same time as their peers. This is because some students may need 3 minutes to just verify that everything makes sense, some may not even show for their appointments, and some may need at least ten minutes. To plan for that, each counselor has six 30-minute blocks each day to meet individually with three students each. We will spend this time to review the four-year plan, enter course requests into the scheduling software, and discuss any pertinent issues like testing plans or senior year requirements. Additionally, the school counselor will be available during their assigned lunch shifts to meet with any student who needs to do so.
To prepare everyone, here are a few guidelines to remember:

• Regardless of your grade or intentions, please seek balance. You need to challenge yourself, but not at the expense of your youth and/or mental health. Make sure that you are challenged, with ample time to also pursue your extracurricular interests and family responsibilities.
• Current freshmen and sophomores are required to have two different years of the same world language in high school for admission to four-year colleges in Maryland, regardless of what or how many credits in world language in middle school.
• Current freshmen and sophomores are required to continue with math through senior year for admission to four-year colleges in Maryland, regardless of how difficult their math track was when they started high school.
• We encourage students to get their fitness, engineering, health, and fine arts completed as early in high school as possible, while also acknowledging the value and integrity of other programs like multi-media, AVID, Project Lead-the-Way, and staying involved in performing arts all four years. It always comes down to the individual student's priorities and values. It helps to write out the four-year plan in order to get a sense of when and how those priorities fit together.
• AVID is for students who are in the academic middle - students who are interested and capable of pursuing four-year college admission, but may not have the support or resources available from parents or case managers. AVID is not for students who need remediation or motivation. AVID students are expected to take honors classes in grades 9 and 10, and AP classes in grades 11 and 12. If you are prepared for that kind of challenge, ask for an application. If the AVID site team feels that you would be appropriately suited for the program, then you will be invited to join the ranks of many successful AVID scholars.
• All students have the remainder of the 2012-13 school year to change their minds about next year's classes, as once the schedule is built over the summer, no changes will be made. Staffing decisions are made based on your requests, and it is not fair to teachers or your fellow students to pursue changes to your schedule next year. You get what you ask for, so please make sure that you are certain about what you want.
• To help ensure proper consideration, we launched a "Get AP Fit" video playlist so students can hear about 14 different AP courses before taking the courses, so there are no surprises. View the playlist at http://tinyurl.com/GetAPfit
• Remember that for college admissions, the priority junior year is grades and the priority senior year is rigor, to ensure both college admission and completion.
• Current juniors who wish to have a partial schedule next year should consider several things. Such a request is not an option if service learning hours are not complete, or if there are any HSAs which you have not yet passed. Plan to be in school every day, all year. If you are eligible and wish to pursue this, be certain that it is really in your best interests. Consult with college admissions counselors and ask them in general terms what they prefer when reading high school transcripts - more AP classes, parallel enrollment at the community college, internships, or released time? You can ask them at college fairs (CCBC will hold one in the first week of March), or on campus tours, or by calling the campus and asking to speak with an admissions counselor (secretaries and undergraduate work-study students usually answer - ask to speak with the rep responsible for your geographic area). 
• Whatever plan you pursue for senior year, remember that in addition to your classwork, you will also be expected to balance homework and studying with college visits and applications, and scholarship applications, all of which are quite time-consuming.

We look forward to meeting with all of our students individually, so please make sure that you arrive on time for your designated appointment. We will resume our regular schedule in March. Again, change your you mind about next year's classes as often as you want until June; after that, they are yours to keep.

This Too Shall Pass

What is your perspective on control? Do you believe that everything in life is what we make of it; we each have control over our own destiny? Do you believe that there is a supernatural (divine, fate, predetermined, or random) force that exists, and that we are simply going through the motions or reacting to challenges that are placed before us? Have you considered that perhaps our lives are somewhere in the middle?

In school as in life, there are stressors. We get injured, either due to freak accident or to miscalculation. We find ourselves in scary social situations, either due to poor judgment or unfortunate timing. We experience setbacks. It happens. Some believe that if you walk the straight and narrow path, you are sure to succeed. Some believe that challenges are inevitable, and we are ultimately being judged by how we handle those dilemmas.

There is only so much control that we have in our lives. You can choose to do your homework or troll Facebook.  Every day, or several days a week, or never. You can choose to limit your studies to exactly what you teachers assign daily, or you can be more proactive... or do less than what it takes to be successful - by whatever measure of success you choose to use. When misfortune occurs, you can work to overcome the adversity, or you can globalize the problem and get overwhelmed, responding with denial or worse.

In any case, there are some things that you can do to improve your situation, and there are some situations about which you have no external control. In those cases, you do have control over you how you internally respond. When you implement behaviors to prevent or react to problems, it usually helps ease your mind to believe, "Well, at least I tried." You may also sometimes choose to approach the problem with uncompromising standards, resolute that your position is the right one. However, when you don't get your way - in your family, your social life, your experience in school - you don't have to completely give up. You can choose to take a step back and consider that maybe this is a chance for you to try a new approach to a new (or even familiar) problem. Does ignoring the problem help? How about blaming others? At the very least, take a minute to slow down and process the situation.

Just keep trying new ways of dealing with unforeseen setbacks. Even if a strategy worked once, it may not work every time. Learning how to overcome adversity is a major part of growing up, and adults can tell you, the learning never stops. Even Socrates said, "The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know." It's incredibly important that we all remember the centuries-old adage This Too Shall Pass. Ultimately, whatever is bothering you will either go away or be replaced by the next thing. There will be another problem to tackle tomorrow. You will always have new and different accomplishments and challenges. The wonder in life is understanding and remembering that nothing is ever so big that it's worth derailing everything else.

Please, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, feel proud that you tried, and keep trying. As the famous college basketball coach Jim Valvano said, "Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

What is #PHSfit?

What is #PHSfit, exactly?

"PHSfit" was born last summer out of a brainstorming session that was focused on finding ways to get more students to take rigorous courses such as AP, but not necessarily to imply that students should take more AP courses than what is appropriate. We determined that, just like we are encouraging students to look for colleges that "fit" their skills, interests, and needs, and careers that "fit" their interests, values, and skills, students should find balance in their course requests that reflect an overall goal of being college-ready, but not at the expense of one's youth. And from there, we agreed that finding "fit" makes perfect sense for helping our high school students make rational choices amid the many pressures they feel during these turbulent years.

Career Development
First of all, it's important for teenagers to understand that people change careers frequently. For that reason, our goal in high school isn't so much to help students decide what they want to be when they grow up as much as it is to empower and inform them with the skills to make educated choices about potential fields they would like to pursue. There are numerous assessments that are available (John Holland, Myers-Briggs, ASVAB) to help people find careers based on their personality types. Something interesting about learning one's career-related personality type is that you can discover roles in plenty of career environments that satisfy your needs and priorities, without being linked to one specific (obscure, even) career. This comes with open and honest conversations with one's school counselor, parents, and professionals who work in those different fields.

College Completion
Once a student has a broad idea of what type of career he or she would like to pursue, it becomes easy to narrow down the post-secondary choices to four-year, two-year, technical, or military training. For those students who don't choose a military career, technical training, or enrollment at community college (which is hardly deserving of some students' unfair classification as "13th grade"), finding the right four-year college for them becomes a seemingly daunting task. Many of our students perceive that they "must" get into the "right" college, which is patently false. Also, many others feel overwhelmed by all the choices. Because young adults undergo so many changes during their college years, it is almost silly to pick a college solely based on a 16-year-old's 10- or 20-year objective. Rather, students are much better served having a half-dozen conversations between winter of sophomore year and the beginning of senior year with their school counselor about their geographic, cultural, and academic priorities for college, and being open to understanding during that time that their grades and, yes, standardized test scores have a significant impact on their college options.
The goal needs to be more about college completion than just college admission. When looking for college, an article by the Illinois School Counselor Association and the Illinois College Admissions Counselors astutely notes that "the best college for a student is not necessarily the most competitive college he or she can get in to." It is true that there is an element of a game (full of rules, should's, and should-not's) in the college admissions process, but if you talk to an admissions counselor longer than the quick college fair marketing sale pitch, you'll see that they sincerely work to identify students who will be successful at their colleges - after all, a university's retention rate and four-year graduation rate are just as important to the vaunted rankings as its acceptance rate. That being said, students will eventually graduate from a college that they ought to. It just makes more sense to put one's resources into visiting and researching prospective colleges than toward applying to a dozen (or more!) that are impulsively identified.

Academic Appropriateness
In our high school, we have such a college-going culture that students who are at or above grade level ability have a choice of pursuing rigor on their core classes at either the honors or Advanced-Placement level. Students are urged to discuss their options with their teachers, who offer recommendations for the following year's courses based on the students' current effort level, test scores, and analytical ability. We also use AP Potential to identify students who may have been overlooked by traditional recommendations. It is no surprise that in our school, students know the benefits that AP courses offer. However, two areas that our #PHSfit campaign seeks to rectify are some under-identified students' aversion to academic risk-taking, and other students' underdeveloped sense of moderation. We address these by encouraging students who have a statistical probability of passing the AP Exam to "take at least one" in their junior and/or senior year, and by devoting the school counselors' time in February to meeting with every student to evaluate their course requests and discuss whether or not that student is overextending him or herself, considering the student's many other obligations - be they academic, familial, or athletic, for example. Just because five teachers recommend you for AP courses next year, that does not necessarily mean it is in your best interests to take five AP courses next year. Balance, moderation, and fit are key terms, understanding that the students and parents make clear commitments to stand by these course requests when they become the course schedule the following year.

Extra-curricular enrichment
There are two main reasons why students get involved, and should get involved, in co-curricular activities. The most popular one is that it helps students find an artistic, political, physical, or service-minded outlet through which they can express themselves and take a break from the daily academic grind. By interacting with students who have common values and interests, they establish a support system and community that transcends the intellectual stimulation traditionally found in school. The other motivation for involvement is that students accurately understand that activities, service, and leadership are a "look-for" in the admissions process, and they sometimes become generalists who dabble in many areas without pursuing any one passion. It makes sense to use ninth grade as an exploration year, but our hope is that they will finish that year having found a group (or created their own!) that offers them an extra-curricular fit and gives them the chance to seek a deeper understanding of their values, strengths, and weaknesses by challenging themselves in this safe support system.

Social Development
Adolescence is a time for many changes, as we all know. However, many teenagers choose to stay connected to peers and groups with whom they've grown up since elementary school or earlier, and choose that allegiance without considering that some of their childhood friends have chosen paths which are incongruent with their own long-term plans and interests. Unfortunately, the result is frequently a regression to the least common denominator, slowing all involved students' progress toward their potential. The more we can teach students about personal accountability and understanding when certain behaviors are appropriate for time and place, the more we can ensure responsible decision-making and knowing when - and with whom - your peer relationships fit your current and future value structure.

The high school years have many layers and challenges. It is our hope that by maintaining the #PHSfit message, our kids will be better equipped to understand who they are and make decisions that are consistent with their own individual values, priorities, skills, talents, and interests.

Is my score good?

We are over half-way done distributing and explaining the PSAT and ReadiStep scores to students. Today, several students asked me individually, "is my score good?" The most truthful answer I can give is that as long as you tried your best, it's your score.

We have many students who are conditioned to believe that you "have to" get into a "good" college, and lose sight of the fact that there are thousands of post-secondary institutions, many of which will be "good" for each individual student. The students' PSAT score reports show how they did at taking this test. It isn't an indication of their value or worth as a human being, or even just an assessment of the quality of student that they are. While it is true that PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores have some predictive validity related to students' success in college, it is only part of the picture. Success in high school courses plays a much larger role in college admissions, and success in academically rigorous courses is even more important.

Regardless, it is extremely important for all of us to remember that even if your grades and test scores are not  in the range of a particularly coveted college, there are still options. Perhaps there is something about this college that the student admires which can be attained at any of dozens of similar colleges in (or outside) our region. It just takes some time to schedule an appointment with your school counselor to discuss best-fit colleges, beyond just the "best" colleges that we hear about so often in the media.

Further, if a student is really so determined to attend this dream school (think "Rudy"), remember that what matters in life is how you finish, not necessarily how you start, and that the journey is more valuable than the destination. Students can start at one four-year or two-year college and then potentially transfer to a different college. Many who plan to transfer end up staying where they are because they eventually learn that being where they are is actually in their best interests!

It's not about a "good school," it's about a "good fit" school.