College Bound, Without a Map

By John E. Gallagher

To hear Marti Brewer tell it, the fact that she made it into the college she wanted is a small miracle. Although a good student, she decided she needed a special summer course to improve her chances. But the counseling office at her high school in Fayetteville, Ark., bungled the course application by reporting the wrong SAT scores. Fortunately she caught the mistake in time. Looking back on her experience from the safety of Rice University, the freshman-in-spite- of- it-all sighs, "Counselors are overwhelmed with duties. They don't know how to help."

Marti's lament is a common one among seniors now coming to the end of their labors and juniors about to start theirs. Some 60% of this spring's graduates will enroll in college, and though the choice of where to go is the culmination of twelve years of schoolwork, many will make the decision knowing little about the place they choose. They must sort through a choked mailbox of color brochures from student-hungry colleges, face down a blizzard of intimidating forms, and assess parental advice that is based either on no college experience or 20-year-old impressions. Enter the college guidance counselor to champion the student's cause. Too often, though, such a paladin is battered with overwork.

Those assigned to give guidance typically have 400 students to deal with, says Executive Director Frank Burtnett of the National Association of College Admission Counselors, and "unfortunately, in some urban public schools, you will find ratios in excess of 1,000 to 1." Many advisers are responsible as well for more dramatic concerns. "We're dealing with drug problems, alcohol, pregnancy and broken homes," notes Counselor Jean Brown of Dallas. "We've got to squeeze all that in too." Their time is also regularly eaten up by daily snags and such petty bureaucratic requirements as monitoring lunchrooms and scheduling classes.

The best counseling, unsurprisingly, tends to be offered in public and private schools attended by the middle class, but even that is often not enough. "Anytime you have a situation in which very desirable options are available to students, you have parents trying to beat the game," says Harold Howe II, chairman of the College Board Commission on Precollege Guidance and Counseling. The result is a growing industry in private advisers. Says Barbara Wolfson, who sent her son to a private counselor in Atlanta: "There's a limit to what the school counselors can do." For fees of up to $2,500, private advisers take the time to find out a student's strengths and interests, put together a list of likely choices and assist with the application process. Most stress that their aim is to help the student find a match with an appropriate college, not package him for acceptance at an elite institution. Says Maurice Salter, a private consultant in Los Angeles: "We work long hours with students. We don't do anything magical."

There is also private help -- though not nearly enough -- for kids at the other end of the socioeconomic ruler. Some poor and minority students are lucky enough to get advice from a nonprofit group like Aspira of America, where their special needs are recognized. Parents of these students "really don't understand how to help their kids pursue their education, let alone help them complete the forms," says Aida Sanchez-Romano, executive director of Aspira's Chicago branch. The organization stands ready to help its former students who call on it during the tough first year of college life.

The inability of most high schools to do the counseling job has even led a few colleges to take up the slack. Says John Ruohoniemi, admissions director of St. Olaf College in Minnesota: "If the student is not right for us, we're going to suggest ways for him or her to find the right school." To Rice Admissions Director Ron Moss, his college's effort to help Houston high schoolers is simply a community obligation. "Colleges are a resource," he notes. "They have to come down out of their ivory tower a bit."

Reports last fall from the College Board commission and the National College Counseling Project recommended that educators reshape the role of the guidance counselor and start advising students earlier. Harold Howe and others argue that the counseling system needs to be more thoroughly a part of school and not the ancillary service it often is. "Good college counseling begins to work in the seventh grade," insists Herbert Dalton Jr., an admissions officer at Vermont's Middlebury College and an NCCP director. But what about the money for enhanced efforts? Counseling jobs have been easy targets in times of tight budgets. Still, the Dallas school board is now studying ways to redirect funds to pay for additional staff in hopes of cutting the workload from 500 students per adviser to 250. But even there, the motive is less to get kids into college than to help get them through drug and other personal crises.

Successes do occur, says Middlebury's Dalton. "There are miracle workers out there doing incredible things." Freed of paperwork and unrelated duties, and with the backing of their principals, these counselors are able to focus students' attention early. Katahdin High School is in the depressed rural town of Sherman Station in northeastern Maine. The one counselor for the school's 250 students, Wayne Miller, is a key member of the faculty. He starts seeing freshmen "right off the bat" to get them thinking about careers, then eventually about how college might expand their opportunities. "Our kids are extraordinarily modest," says Miller, but by the end of junior year he has guided and goaded most into deciding whether and even where they will apply. "Everyone could do it if they had a small caseload," he says, downplaying his achievement. Next fall some 80% of the graduating class is expected to go to college.

With reporting by Richard Woodbury/Houston, with other bureaus