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In a report (by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling), the association attempts to wrap a measuring tape around various aspects of the frenzied admissions process. It finds, for example, that nearly half of all public high school counselors have had students added to their caseloads this year — with each of those counselors experiencing an average increase of more than 50 students.  Jacques Steinberg, The New York Times, October 20, 2009

Ask most admissions officers, and their consistent message is that your standard high school college counselor will probably do just fine. Yet, according to a National Association for College Admissions Counseling survey last fall, at public schools the average student-to-college counselor ratio had soared to 331-to-one, and it’s 250-to-one at private schools. “At my daughter’s public school, her guidance counselor had to repeatedly read her name off the file when we came in,” says Margaret Renault, the mother of two high-school students in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I’m certainly not counting on her advocacy.”  Kathleen Kingsbury, The Daily Beast, January 9, 2009

Many high school guidance counselors say they would like to spend more time helping students plan for college but are too busy with administrative duties and paperwork, a survey of high school guidance counselors shows. The 2008 Michigan High School Counselor Survey, released Tuesday by the Joyce Ivy Foundation, also found that student caseloads are higher for counselors in public schools than they are for counselors in private schools. The counselors in the survey reported spending 30 percent of their time "absorbed in administration and paperwork," such as proctoring standardized tests; 29 percent of their time working on college plans with students and their families and 25 percent of their time responding to "incidents and immediate needs among their student caseload." According to the survey, an average caseload for a public school guidance counselor in Michigan is 362. In contrast, private school counselors carry a workload of just 250 students.  Liz Cobbs, The Ann Arbor News, February 20, 2008

In an interview, Jim Jump, a high school college counselor who is president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, echoed the the report's findings in expressing his concern that "so many other things are tossed on counselors' plates that actual counseling takes up a very small part of the time." "I worry that's just going to get worse, as school districts encounter the economy and don't see counseling as essential instructional personnel." Jacques Steinberg. The New York Times, March 3, 2010

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