College Freshmen View Counselor Help in College Selection

Little attention has been paid to the role performance of counselors in the college decision process. This study surveyed 270 college freshmen at a northeastern university in an attempt to explore the activities of their high school counselors in college admissions. The students came from 233 institutions of secondary education. Among the findings were: (1) the high school counselor has increased in importance and in potential influence in the college-choice process; (2) the helping activities of counselors were for the most part active and direct; (3) the expectations of the students for the counselor were for active involvement by the counselor; and (4) in some cases, the counselor played a restricting role in the process of college selection.     

The Impact of More Fully Implemented Guidance Programs on the School Experiences of High School Students: A Statewide Evaluation Study

Relationships between the statewide implementation of comprehensive guidance programs and the school experiences of high school students were explored. Data from 22,964 students attending 236 Missouri high schools were analyzed by using hierarchical linear modeling. Schools with more fully implemented model guidance programs had students who were more likely to report that (a) they had earned higher grades, (b) their education was better preparing them for their future, (c) their school made more career and college information available to them, and (d) their school had a more positive climate. Positive program effects were found after removing differences due to school enrollment size, socioeconomic status, and percentage of minority students in attendance. Results highlight the important roles school counselors play in promoting the central educational goals of their schools and support a comprehensive guidance program focus for university counseling faculty who train school counselors.     

School Counselors as Social Capital: The Effects of High School College Counseling on College Application Rates

Using social capital theory as a framework, the authors examined data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (Ingels, Pratt, Rogers, Siegel, & Stutts, 2004) to investigate how student contact with high school counselors about college information and other college‐related variables influence students' college application rates. In addition to some college‐related variables, the number of school counselors and student contacts were significant predictors of college application rates. Implications for school counselors and counselor training are included.     

Not a Problem to Be Fixed: Successful First-Generation Graduates and Implications for College Counselors

This article describes a qualitative study with seven first-generation college graduates who went on to complete graduate school and are now working in colleges and universities as counselors and counselor educators. The findings highlight the resources that these participants possessed that contributed to their college success stories. Relational-cultural theory is proposed as a fitting developmental model for college counselors working with this student demographic. Este artículo describe un estudio cualitativo con siete graduados universitarios de primera generación que completaron programas de posgrado y actualmente trabajan como consejeros y educadores de consejeros en universidades y otros centros de estudios superiores. Los resultados resaltan los recursos que poseían los participantes y que contribuyeron a sus historias de éxito en la educación superior. Se propone la teoría relacional-cultural como un modelo de desarrollo apropiado para consejeros de educación superior que trabajan con este grupo demográfico de estudiantes.     

Enriching the Genetic Counseling Recruitment Pipeline: A National Cross-Sectional Study of Public High School Counselors

Early awareness of careers is helpful in recruiting students into a career pipeline. School counselors are among the top resources that students turn to when seeking advice about choosing their career. Studies show that high school is the ideal time to generate interest in the genetic counseling career, especially for minorities. This novel study of 291 high school counselors working in ethnically diverse public school districts in the United States examined to what extent members of this important group discuss genetic counseling as a career option with their students. The findings indicate that the majority of school counselors in this study (83%) did not discuss genetic counseling with their students, citing a lack of resources and lack of student interest as the major barriers. Suggestions of ways to increase high school counselors’ awareness of the genetic counseling career in order to enhance the goal of enriching recruitment of ethnic minorities into the genetic counseling pipeline are presented.     

Parental Involvement in School Counseling Services: Challenges and Experience of Counselor

School counselors include parents as informants in school counseling for various reasons like for consultation and client’s intervention which could lead to a different experience. The objective of the present study was to explore the challenges faced by school counselors when involving parents in the school counseling process and the ways they handle the challenges. The participants consisted of seven school counselors, with whom in-depth interviews were conducted. The subjective experiences of the school counselors were objectively interpreted by the researcher using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The research results were categorized into master and subordinate themes using double hermeneutics. The results revealed that although school counselors have their own individual perceptions of challenges and methods of handling parental inclusion in the school counseling context, there still exist similarities in their methods of handling. The study highlights school counselors’ beliefs about parents’ perceptions and expectations of counseling as well as parents’ reaction toward their child’s problem as a challenge. The findings throw light on the need for stronger evidence-based practices and policies for school counseling programs. Training and competence-building programs for school counselors would improve the service delivery.     

Students' preferences for male or female counselors for social and educational problems

Fifty-eight male and 66 female junior high school students were examined to determine their preferences for sex of counselor under personal/social and educational hypothetical counseling situations. Girls demonstrated a definite same-sex preference for both counseling situations, while boys preferred male counselors for personal/social counseling and had opposite-sex preferences for educational counseling. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of earlier contradictory results from research on college students.     

Surviving Toward College Graduation

This 5-year longitudinal study with a diverse sample of 405 graduating high school seniors examined the person, behavior, and environment (PBE) factors that increased student chances of deciding to attend a 2- or 4-year college, enrolling in college the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and then returning to that same college a year later as a retained college student. Survivability across these three critical college-going transitions was a function of two different kinds of PBE patterns. First, certain PBE factors played prominent roles at specific transition points and then more minor support roles at others. Second, several factors provided consistent support at each transition point without being the primary determiner of success at any single transition. Students are more likely to succeed in college if school counselors help them to learn and take advantage of those PBE patterns that promote postsecondary success.     

Damaging information and the college application

When experienced high school counselors and college admissions deans obtain information about a nonacademic personality problem, or sexual or legal misbehavior of a senior student applying to college, how do they use the information? A 20-item situational-case questionnaire was devised to study attitudes of counselors and deans on this issue. The results obtained from a nationwide sample of colleges and universities and an Ohio sample of counselors raise major questions regarding the rationale, ethics, and legal basis of the behavior of counselors and admissions deans     

Student Perception of Counselor Role

A semantic differential and a Thurstone-type rating scale of satisfaction with counseling were used to measure changes in the perceptions held by students regarding their high school counselors over a period of 2 years. During this time, the large suburban high school that was the locale for the study changed from a system of deans who had both counseling and disciplinary duties to a system of counselors who did not discipline students. Factor analyses and non-parametric change tests were conducted. It was found that, especially during the first year, students perceived their counselors more negatively than they had perceived their deans. Some signs of movement toward more favorable views were noted by the end of the second year. Satisfaction with counseling, however, was favorably perceived by students throughout the two years. Students tended to perceive their counselors in evaluative terms. There was no relationship between perception of counselors and satisfaction with counseling. The evidence suggests that discipline may not be the crucial variable in either student perceptions of counselors or student satisfaction with counseling.     

Longitudinal Changes of Planned Happenstance Skills by Gender,Community Types,and Employment Status in a Sample of College Students in School‐to‐Work Transition

This study examined the characteristics of college students who are transitioning from school to work by measuring their mean differences on planned happenstance skills subscales at 3 separate time points. The results indicated that the mean of planned happenstance skills changed across the 3 time points and are somewhat different through demographic factors, such as gender, community types, and employment status. In addition, 2‐way and 3‐way multivariate analysis of variance results showed that the interaction effects of 3 demographic variables on 5 planned happenstance skills were not significant. Practical implications for career counselors are discussed.     

School counselors as gatekeepers: guidance in poor versus affluent neighborhoods

Previous studies reveal that career guidance is usually based on a mixture of meritocratic criteria (academic ability and achievement) and nonmeritocratic considerations (students' SES and their social labeling by counselors). The present study argues that school counselors in affluent neighborhoods emphasize the meritocratic criteria, while those in poorer neighborhoods tend to focus on the more nonmeritocratic. This hypothesis is examined in a random sample of 210 male, primary school graduates from the 10 state schools of an Israeli town, 125 of whom are from schools in affluent neighborhoods, and 85 from schools in poorer neighborhoods. A path analysis of determinants of guidance to specific high school tracks shows that students' ethnicity and labeling as problematic directly affect guidance by counselors only in the poor neighborhoods. The effect of students' "problems" is due to their being labeled as problematic with respect to psychological or physical attributes rather than to behavioral problems at school. The findings are subsequently interpreted as reflecting a patronizing attitude toward lower status students by counselors. Additional studies which may further elaborate the determinants of guidance in poor versus affluent neighborhoods are proposed.     

Nine Critical Questions About Selective College Admissions

The misgivings of college faculty, college administrators, and high school counselors about selective admissions are focused on 9 issues. Data relevant to those issues reveal that: (1) prediction of grades is sufficiently accurate to be useful; (2) prediction equations from one year are sound for use in the immediately succeeding years; (3) predictions of first-year grades are related to performance over the 2-year period at a junior college and the 4-year career at a senior college; (4) there may need to be separate prediction procedures for widely different majors, such as science and nonscience; (5) accurate predictions can be made before the student has completed high school; (6) the nonacademic courses students take do not reduce prediction accuracy; (7) introduction of selectivity has not been found to decrease diversity in educational opportunity; (8) grading practices in an institution will tend to fluctuate with the degree of selectivity; and (9) procedures are available to set admissions cutoffs, to provide students with sound counseling information, and to provide a second chance for those who do net meet minimum admissions standards.     

University Students' Perceived Self‐Efficacy in Identifying Suicidal Warning Signs and Helping Suicidal Friends Find Campus Intervention Resources

Currently, suicide is the third leading cause of death among youth 18 to 24 years of age and the second leading cause of death on college campuses. A sample of students (N = 1,019) from three midwestern universities were surveyed regarding their perceived self‐efficacy in identifying suicide warning signs and campus suicide intervention resources. The results indicated that 11% strongly believed they could recognize a friend at suicidal risk, while 17% strongly believed they could ask a friend if he or she was suicidal. Students who had received high school suicide prevention education and who had ever had a family member or friend express suicidal thoughts to them were those most confident in recognizing a friend at risk, asking a friend if he/she is suicidal, and helping a friend to see a counselor. Most (71%) were not aware of on‐campus help resources. These findings underscore the importance of suicide prevention education throughout the high school and college years.     

Utilization of college students to improve inner-city school children's academic behavior

A program using college students as tutor/counselors with low-achieving, inner-city, junior high school students is described and evaluated. The college students, who were primarily ethnic minorities, played a multifaceted role as tutors, counselors, and role models of academic achievement. The evaluation assessed program effects across groups (program versus control), two schools and two program administrations, using analysis of covariance. Results supported positive program impact in the students using teacher ratings of classwork effort, quality, and attitude, and in the students' self-reported attitudes toward education, educational aspirations, and expectations.     

Black students/white university: different expectations

This article identifies the kinds of problems that are experienced by black students who attend a predominantly white university. There are explicit and implicit assumptions and expectations that the students and the university staff have about each other, but these assumptions and expectations are often incompatible. The black students have many problems of adjustment in academic, social, and personal areas. The author proposes some suggestions on how to minimize the adjustment process and foster improved communication between the black students and the university officials. Also examined is the role of high school counselors in aiding black students in making the transition from high school to college.     

Intervention for Multipotentiality: Effects of a Career Counseling Laboratory for Gifted High School Students

Career counseling effectively enhanced high school students' desire to engage in discussion about their career development with counselors, parents, and peers. They also were somewhat more likely to plan to go to college. A total of 59% changed or confirmed their career plans.     

Community-based college guidance for the disadvantaged

New techniques of counseling and guidance must be developed in order to increase substantially the number of disadvantaged students going to college. One major effort should be an organized community guidance program whose essential elements are: (a) professional school and college counselors operating outside the school; (b) key community persons acting as links between potential college students and professional counselors; and (c) ongoing programs providing literature, speakers, and special services geared to motivate and help disadvantaged students to enroll in and be successful at college.     

College admissions assistance by secondary school counselors

Information was collected over a three-year period dealing with college admissions assistance received by 2,500 (27 percent) of the entering freshmen at the University of Massachusetts. This information concerned the timing of various student decisions about college admission, sources of information, and reactions to the assistance provided by high school counselors. Entering freshmen perceived the counselor as being a helpful source of specific information but having little effect on their decisions to continue in higher education. The authors make interpretations related to the University, and they compare the results to Kerr's similar study in 1961.     

Estimating Causal Impacts of School Counselors With Regression Discontinuity Designs

This article presents a causal regression discontinuity framework for quantifying the impact of high school counselors on students’ education outcomes. To demonstrate this method, the authors used data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). Using high school counselor staffing counts and 4‐year college‐going rates collected through the SASS, the authors found that an additional high school counselor is predicted to induce a 10 percentage point increase in 4‐year college enrollment.