Collegiate School College Admission Report Fall 2019 College Counseling – Helping Our Students Achieve Their Goals “Finding Great Fits” is no mere tagline for Collegiate School’s College Counseling Office. This phrase embodies the spirit of the School’s four counselors and what they do. “Walking hand-in-hand with each student and family down the path of finding an exciting set of college options that best fit them as individuals is an exceptional experience for us,” said Brian Leipheimer, Director of College Counseling. “From developing close relationships with them as we help to navigate the terrain, learning and sharing their stories, and witnessing their self-discovery to celebrating with them as they find great matches, fostering that process offers a far greater reward than tangible outcomes.” Across the board, satisfaction levels with the college counseling experience at Collegiate, and with the individual college counselors, remain steady at 98%. “Beginning our work with students during their freshman and sophomore years, in small groups and individually, puts us in a fortunate position,” said Kim Ball, Senior Associate Director of College Counseling. “By encouraging them to reflect and explore their interests and
passions, students are able to take all that they learn about themselves and apply it as they start their college search and application process. Their enhanced self-awareness affords them expanded opportunities for finding colleges that meet their preferences and support their growth and development.”
RELATIONSHIPS MATTER Research, and conventional wisdom, point to younger students not being ready to engage meaningfully with the
college process. However, given that the traditional model of starting individual college counseling halfway through the junior year has grown increasingly at odds with the acceleration of the process nationally, our counselors embrace a creative solution. For Collegiate students, individual meetings with their college counselors begin in January of sophomore year, but those meetings do not touch on college. Rather, they reflect a purposeful opportunity to begin a relationship, one