School Report Forms

Thank you to all of the students and parents that attended tonight's Senior College Night! Luckily the rain held off and we didn't get wet in the auditorium... although I am sure that would have been entertaining too. :-)

I was thinking about everything that I hit on tonight and realized that there was one area related to timing of turning in your school report forms that I didn't discuss. As a reminder, these forms are what most of the colleges will require that I complete for you. These forms have lots of different names - School Report Form, Counselor Report Form, High School Information Sheet, etc. They all ask some of the same basic information - what is your GPA, what classes are you taking, and many ask for my feedback on you as a student/ person. Like we discussed tonight, you will turn these forms in with your transcript release forms to Mrs. Hoyt and she will print your transcript and forward them on to me for completion.

What I forgot to mention was the timing related to turning in these forms... I need to ask you to hold onto these on your own rather than bringing them to me really far in advance. For a moment, I am going to ask you to do the math. I have about 100 seniors. Let's say that 85 of you apply to college. Of those 100 some will apply to 1 college, but others will apply to a dozen or more. So, let's guesstimate an average of 3 to 5 colleges per student. That would be approximately 250 to 425 forms that I need to keep track of vs. you keeping the couple of forms on your own and turning them in when it is time for me to actually complete them. You have a much better chance of keeping three forms organized than I do to keep several hundred organized. My goal is to turn around the application materials within a day or two of receiving them from Mrs. Hoyt. I make every effort to fill them out as soon as I receive them and then they will be on their way to your college. The biggest hold up in sending the applications is finding that they need a recommendation letter from me or holding them for a recommendation letter from a teacher.

To help make sure that your college application doesn't just sit on my desk, please pay attention to see if your college needs a counselor recommendation letter. I am more than happy to write the letter for you, but as I have mentioned, I write them in a first-come, first-serve basis in order to be fair, so if you turn in your forms and then when I am filling out your school report form I realize that you need a recommendation letter and we haven't met yet - your application is going to sit on my desk for a while until we can meet and I can write your letter. So, help me to help you by checking that out on your own in advance. If you aren't sure where to look, stop in and see me and we will figure it out together.

A special thank you to Evan Alexander, Molly Burton, David Busch, and Marissa Minichello for volunteering their time to help put together the folders for tonight's meeting!