With college application season in full swing, hundreds of seniors find themselves knocking on the door of the College Center, only to be met by the same realization: The college counselors are busy.
The college counselor’s role is not only to just write letters of recommendations and send transcripts. They also program college visits, building plans for the diverse student body, conduct workshops, and building relationships with hundreds of college representatives.
The biggest challenge for the college counselors is the amount of students in this year’s senior class leading to a limited amount of face-to-face time with individual students.
“There is just not enough time to sit really individually with students,” said Dr. Reynsha Scott, one of Venice’s college counselors. “If you spent one meeting, one minute, with 270 students alone, that’s three hours.”
This is the taxing nature that the college counselors deal with with such a large class compared to only two college counselors. There is simply not enough time to both handle your responsibilities and try to individually connect with each student.
The college counselors also face the challenge of addressing the diverse needs of the many different types of students we have here at Venice. They help every student from first generation college students to students who are attempting to continue family legacies at ivy league schools or even students who may go directly into a career.
The college counselors here address these needs in their college access programs like UCLA EAOP and Upper Bound, and also through their many workshops held in the college center.
The college counselors here have also largely built up the representative visits that we now know today. “When I first started here at Venice, it might be two rep visits a month, so I utilized and leveraged relationships that I had before at previous schools reaching out to people to check out the students at Venice,” said Scott.
Throughout all of this though, the counselors have still been able to make the college application process smooth for students. “I think they do a great job at what they do for the amount of staff we have,” said senior Kavi Seidman.
The writing workshops hosted in the college center have also largely contributed to the success of the seniors application process.
“There have been a lot of opportunities for me to grow as a writer,” said senior Ryan Shepherd, “people are always willing to help me when I need it.”
College counselors have also used their experience to give feedback on the seniors writing for their applications.
Senior, Nathan Berman said,”I find them very helpful because there are a lot of people here who are willing to read my essays and give really good feedback.” He also said,”They help with the overall process of applying to college.”
