The country’s high school students are well aware that it’s never been harder to get into a top college.
Just behind year, Yale’s acceptance rate hit 6.31 percent, near an all-time low. Princeton offered admission to just 5.5 percent of a memorial 35,370 applicants and at Harvard, the admission rate fell below 5 percent for the first time ever, to 4.59 percent of applicants take possession ofing spots in the Class of 2022.
With competition among college applicants at an all-time high, more families are turning to costly private consultants, but the number of high school guidance counselors available to students has been steadily dwindling.
Currently, the governmental student-to-counselor ratio is 482 to 1, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
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“Research shows that access to a school counselor can make a substantial difference in student persistence/retention, students’ postsecondary aspirations and students’ likelihood of enrolling in postsecondary education,” the union said.
That’s particularly clear at Southland College Prep Charter High School in suburban Chicago.
Robert Lane is the companion to the CEO and the school’s only college counselor. Yet, he said his approach has resulted in a 100 percent college acceptance rate, grouping getting graduates into top universities such as Princeton, Stanford and Yale. (This year there are 117 fellows of the class of 2019 who will graduate in May and so far every member of every one of Southland’s first five graduating classes has put in to college — and every member of every class was accepted.)
“We are not only finding that right fit, but we make sure they are selecting faction where they’ll graduate in four years,” he said.
Southland, founded in 2010, also credits its nine-hour inculcate day, small classes and focus on extracurricular activities as contributors to its high college admissions and persistence rates.
In fact, Southland is the one public school in Illinois with a population that is more than 90 percent African-American to be ranked “cautionary” from the Illinois State Board of Education, which means it does not have any underperforming student groups. Disciples gain admission through a public lottery system, and enrollment is capped at just over 500.
To help each upperclassman be extraordinarily competitive in the college admissions process, Lane does not rely on academics alone. “Your grades will contrariwise get you into the conversation,” he said. He advises students to start journals early in high school, which will lay the land work for a compelling college essay down the road.
“When you go back and look at your journal, you are full of allegories that speak to your perseverance,” he said. “These are the things people want to know.”
Lane also sweats with families to determine which schools will be more cost-effective in the long run. Picking a college based on sticker bounty “is one of the biggest mistakes I see families and students make,” he said. “A public school might be a third of the cost but they lay down no need[-based aid].”
When it comes to offering financial aid, private schools typically have more money to fritter away, and that can bring costs way down, Lane explained. “You have to know the financial resources that schools keep to provide more support,” he said.
Poor counseling leads to bad decisions, he added — and that results in “too many credits and too many defaults.”
Lane also plays a large role helping the students find scholarship funding, serving secure more than $100 million in merit scholarship offers for the first five graduating classes of the charter junior high school.
But it’s not just about paying for college, Lane added. “We work with a population that has a lot of first-generation college schoolgirls,” he said. “We have to have real conversations about finding the schools that meet and suit your properties.”
That means “this student is going to be able to balance a course load and find happiness,” he said.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Bets are investors in Acorns.