Out of all the various resources that I’m going to talk about for applying to college, none compare to your guidance counselor. Not only has your guidance counselor been through the process hundreds of times with hundreds of students, besides yourself he/she has the most intimate knowledge of your academic record. Also, your guidance counselor has access to resources that you would either have never known about or would not have access to it without your guidance counselor (for example, there was a program that my high school was using that helped its students find colleges, but I first needed to get an account name and password from my guidance counselor).
As with everything else concerning applying to college, the earlier the start the better off you will be in the long run. A good time for you to initially meet with your guidance counselor would be the end of your junior year. That way you can get some basic information so you can spend some of your summer finding out more about colleges that you might want to go to. You might even want to spend portions of your summer between junior and senior year visiting various colleges, which would make meeting with your guidance counselor during your junior year even more important.
Whether or not you meet with your guidance counselor junior year, though, you should certainly try to get a meeting with him/her as soon as possible at the beginning of your senior year. At my high school all the guidance counselors sent out appointment dates at the beginning of the school year, but if your school doesn’t do this then you need to be proactive in getting an appointment. Remember that you are not the only one getting ready to apply to college. Your guidance counselor probably has dozens of other students to consider, so it is a good idea to get in there as soon as you can.
You should go into the meeting with as much information as you can. If you already have a general idea of what areas you want to study (or even what you want to major in), names of schools you’ve looked at, what your looking for in a school, etc. these are important things to bring to your guidance counselor. He/she is a wealth of information and can help make the whole process a lot easier. If you do not have any preliminary ideas, though, don’t worry. I went into my first meeting with my guidance counselor not really knowing anything about what I was interested in studying or what colleges I was interested in. You’d be surprised how prepared your guidance counselor will be for this situation.
Generally what happens in the first meeting is you will talk about your academic standings, what types of things you are looking for in a college, and in the end your guidance counselor may give you some general ideas of some colleges to look at that you will be able to get into.
The basic idea is to have colleges in three different categories: safety, normal, and reach (these terms may be different depending on where you are, but they basically mean the same thing). Safety schools are the schools you can definitely get into. On the off chance that you do not get into anywhere else, your safety schools are basically your fall-back. The normal level colleges are the schools you have a decent chance to get into – these are the schools that are at your level. The reach schools are those that a bit beyond your test scores, but you still want to try to get into.
Your guidance counselor will be able to help you decide on schools for each of these categories based on the various aspects of your academic record. He/she may ask you to do some searching on your own to find other schools that you might be interested in. You may also talk about your guidance counselor about financial constrictions that you may or may not have. This is another issue that your guidance counselor will likely be able to help you with – either with the suggestion of schools whose prices are within your range or with scholarship opportunities.
