Host: How can your school s college counselor support you with selecting a college? Jerome Cole: I think the school counselor is a great resource for several reasons. The school counselor is going to have some insight into who you are and that s because you are going to come to this personally, you are going to talk to him and you are going to share things with him. That school counselor also has access to the teachers in the building and so from time to time, we have conversations with your individual teachers. What kind of student is he, how was she doing in Math? How was she doing in English? How was the Spanish coming, so in having those conversations they are getting more insights into, who you are?

The school counselor also knows about curriculum at your school. So, when you are choosing courses, he or she can say to you, there is a higher level of course here, have you thought about honors this or AP that or IB this okay and if so you might want to consider taking that higher level course. So, they can advise you on making sure of that you are challenging yourself and you are demonstrating rigor, because the first question that every college will ask about a perspective student is the following.

Is the student prepared based on the high school work to come to this college and university and be successful? That question in most cases will be answer based on what they see on that transcript. Specifically, the course work and then of course the grades.

So, the counselor can help with that piece. The other thing that the counselor has knowledge of is, they understand the process, they can help you sit down and put together a strategy a game plan if you will, and you mean that. The last thing which is arguably the most important thing is the counselors has relationships with those colleges and universities out there and ideally the schools that you are interested, your high school counselor knows that school, knows people that works in the admission s office and if he or she doesn t, has the ability to contact that school in cultivate a relationship to say, I am school X I know you don t know whole lot about this, but can I take a few minutes to talk about my school and then I want to talk about this particular student is interested in your school.

So, that counselor is also acting as in advocate on your behalf. So, I would say that the high school counselor is a very valuable person in this whole process, is some one that you as a student and as a family should be taking full advantage of.