Imagine Your College Counselor at a Party

You’ve probably heard about corporate meetings and conferences held in places like Hilton Head and Honolulu. CEOs mix business and pleasure on the golf course or by the pool with a margarita.

I didn’t think that educators had junkets, but I was wrong. Last Thursday (June 2), Jeannie and I attended the New York State Association for College Admission Counseling (NYSACAC) Conference at Manhattan College in the Bronx. Between the workshops, the conference agenda looked like a cruise ship activity list: golf outing, bocce tournament, karoke, 5K race, etc. Rumor had it that the overnight attendees in the dorms were greeted by a glass of wine at their bedsides and that the liquor was plentiful at the social for conference first-timers!

Neither Jeannie nor I played golf or bocce. I attended two workshops and an awards lunch on the second day of the conference. The workshops were mostly light stuff, so I don’t have much information about college admissions that I can report here that can inform LGR’s College Choice programming, except, of course, that guidance counselors party with college admission officers!

The clubby cruise ship atmosphere is an obvious disgrace to the college counseling and admission officer professions. It is not unbelievable that a guidance counselor can play golf on school time and money (conference registration: $230).

I enjoy socializing as much, if not more than, the next person. My chief complaint is that the college admission process is degraded when a factor in college admissions is whether the applicant’s guidance counselor has played golf with the admissions officer. I called Dr. Ken Barber, the head of guidance at Stamford High School (CT), from my cell phone while at the conference. (Dr. Barber and his school district have been incredible advocates for making the Let’s Get Ready opportunity available to Stamford students.) I told Dr. Barber that I was calling from the NYSACAC Conference, and he said that he was too busy at his school to attend. If he had attended and played golf with an admissions officer, would his students be more likely to be admitted to that institution?

But my time at the conference was not a complete wash for LGR. I left with a few new good contacts, especially for the new NYC LGR program. I also left wanting to improve the quality of future NYSACAC Conferences and overall, professional development within the college counseling community. Perhaps I will present a workshop next year.