College Counseling at Exeter

At Exeter, our college counseling officers receive endless criticism. Even as each year of seniors graduates, rumors of how the officers worked against a student, failed to properly attend to another student or even jeopardized someone’s application appear to never leave, even after the seniors do. As I go through my upper year, and my class starts to interact with these officers more often, I already sense our lack of comfort for them.However, I also realize that this odd dynamic presents a classic “don’t shoot the messenger” or a “don’t hate the player; hate the game” situation. It’s not the college counselors that are against us, it’s just that they have the burden of helping us through what may be some of the most difficult and stressful parts of our young lives. So, the officers become an easy target for us to throw our anger upon. As a matter of fact, it would benefit the counselors if all Exonians could go off to the prestigious colleges we hoped to attend. A college matriculation rate full of Ivies and other great schools would bear a large application pool and would thus help Exeter’s business endeavours. In fact, I applied, and I suppose many other families still apply to Exeter, hoping for better success with the inevitable college application. Sure, there’s the building of morals and character we all undergo these four important years, but the concern over college holds tremendous weight.And so, for some, counselors have the sad task of delivering students through the unfulfillment of a previous hope, but before that they quantify us all. For three years Exeter has encouraged me and my peers to not focus on numbers but rather quality. Classics teachers do not write numerical values on our tests, counselors have previously encouraged us to think of the quality of the clubs we do and not how many and English teachers grade us for the depth of what we say and not how much we say. Thus, Exeter molds us into very distinct people, who focus on our personalities and not just GPAs. However, college applications no longer place an Exeter education over others, and we are forced to go through the process just as any other student. Imagine, years of following your passions and interests just to have them brushed aside due to a bad grade. It’s in the interest of us all that the officers focus on our poor numbers before we receive even poorer news come decision day, and for this they receive plenty of criticism.Besides just quantifying us, college counseling officers have to also bring us down to size. Most Exonians bear a certain degree of self-worth, which surely leads us to accomplish a lot, yet also makes us vulnerable to failure. Many alums have spoken at assemblies on their first or a big failure of theirs and how they bounced back up afterwards. These assemblies, perhaps, serve to allude to our potentially upcoming failures, but it’s the job of the officers to bring our impending failures to light. The college application process gets fiercer by the year while our egos only continue to inflate. I understand the anger we all possess toward the officer's attempts at deflating us, but it’s only fair that we all acknowledge that they do so for our own benefit.I must admit, however, that the hostility between students and officers does not only arrive upper year or due to the anticipation of upper year. The little interaction during prep and lower year creates the initial friction between us. Often the officers dissuade us from taking standardized tests during these early years and instead encourage us to focus on clubs and passions. Most Exonians, on the contrary, know the significant impact that such standardized testing will have on our applications, and so they strive to take these tests despite the officer's words. Both parties are genuinely concerned over our futures, but the different priorities on what parts of the application to focus on causes a discord. I surely grew impatient over how unwilling the college counseling officer was to allow me permissions to take an AP test my lower year, yet as aforementioned, I knew the officer only sought to help me. These officers have spent years helping or training to help us go through this tough process, and so they are surely acquainted to the harm of stressing over standardized test, and work to prevent us from receiving such stress.Our College Counselling Office knows that these conflict of interests will arise, and they are definitely privy to their infamous reputation on campus. Perhaps instead of going on and waiting for these hostile relations to grow, they and we should all bring out our frustrations on the onset. These officers are definitely busy, but only through further interaction with these officers will students understand their wants for us and why they act in ways we believe our counteractive to our college hopes.Halfway through my upper year, I still have talked very little to the college counselling office. The few emails I have received from them concern standardized testing and a survey that compartmentalized my personality. These acts seem to only transform me into some quantity, but I understand that this feeling summarizes the college application process overall. We need to, and officers should work to, distinguish them from the overall negative application process. For it’s the application that’s the enemy, and they are our helpers through what can be an uncomfortable and degrading process.