People ask me what I do as a college counselor.  

Actually, no one asks me what I do as a college counselor. The only ones who are interested are the parents of Sixth Formers, and they already know what I do—or rather, what I darn well better do: get their kid into college.  

Otherwise, yawn. 

When I say I’m an English teacher, I can count on the response. Everyone says “Oh, that was my worst subject in school. I’m going to be quiet so I don’t make some mistake.” As if I judge people for their grammar and vocabulary.  

Which I do.  

But when I say I’m a college counselor, the conversational ice remains unbroken. It’s not like saying “I’m a cage fighter,” which at least gets me spontaneous, scornful laughter, until I take them down with a Reverse Anaconda Armbar and make them tap out.  

Anyway, since no one ever asks, I thought I’d dispel some of the misconceptions about what I do as a college counselor, and what I don’t do.  

I’ll start with a don’t, since debunking is more interesting than . . . bunking? Is that a thing? 

I don’t call up Harvard and convince them to accept this or that student. If that sort of string-pulling were possible, Harvard Admissions’ phone lines would be jammed 24/7 with counselors from around the world desperately trying to get through. 

Harvard Admission doesn’t pick up the phone. As John Updike wrote about Ted Williams’ relationship to his fans, “Gods do not answer letters.”  

I do talk to college admissions reps. More than a hundred of them visit the Abbey campus every fall, and I try to have a conversation with as many of them as I can. We’ll talk about what’s new at their school and ours, and about the dazzling applicants we’ve got for them this year, but for me the real point is to get acquainted and create some rapport.  

Because I may talk to those same reps later in the year, on the phone, after they’ve gotten those Abbey applications. Now, reps hate and forbid what are called “advocacy calls”—basically, a sales pitch from the college counselor, trying to pressure the rep into accepting a kid.  

Do you like unsolicited sales calls?  

But the rep may call me—especially if we’ve gotten acquainted, have some rapport, and there’s trust. The rep might just need more information or clarification about an applicant. The rep can ask me honest questions and get honest answers.  

I can explain that GPA dip on the transcript—how this kid is on the sailing team and she suffered a serious concussion when the boom swung around and clocked her one week before finals.  

Or that this other kid wants to go into social work because of the foster brother his family adopted to save the little boy from an abusive home. For months, this kid climbed out of bed every night to hold the little boy while he screamed in leftover terror. 

True stories.   

The idea is to give the rep what he or she needs to read the application insightfully.  

Reading. That brings up another misconception.  

I don’t write students’ college essays for them. I’d like to. I love words, rhetoric, poetry, stories. After a lifetime spent studying and teaching English literature I hope that I know how to turn a dull, clichéd, impersonal, error-filled student essay into something lively and memorable: green room-temperature Gatorade transformed into Champagne.  

And any good college rep would see through my rewrite immediately. They wouldn’t say “That’s a really great essay.” They’d say “That doesn’t sound like a seventeen-year-old.” 

But I do help that seventeen-year-old write something that sounds like him. I ask questions, watching for this kid’s enthusiasm to flash into the open. When you talk or write about something you genuinely care about, your voice and personality come through. I say “tell me a story” about that interest, sport, job, turning point. And that story can become a good college essay. 

It has to be them.   

That’s why I don’t apply to college for our students. A lot of parents of students—let’s be honest, some parents—let’s make that the mothers of some teenaged boys—very much want me to fill out the applications. They feel entirely justifiable anxiety that Junior is too disorganized, unmotivated, churlish, or just plain space cadet-ish to make that application deadline.  

Crisis! 

Mothers are worst-case worriers: if Junior, who rarely does his homework, doesn’t do this homework (i.e. the Common Application), Junior doesn’t go to college. He moves back home, binge-watches all the Fast and Furious movies on his iPhone 29 and eats Red Vines. Probably he ends up a street person.  

I’ve had a mom rent a hotel room near campus and move her son out of the dorm and into the room with her. For the next week she held that boy hostage at the computer until he finished those applications. 

I like that mom.    

Mostly I do data entry. My life, sad to say, is spent filling out and managing forms. In a typical year our 90 or so Sixth Formers will send out almost 800 applications. For each application, we send out an electronic file of supporting documents. So, in the College Counseling office we will prepare, write, upload, transmit and track some 8,000 forms, letters, transcripts, profiles and reports to 275 different colleges, while also monitoring all those applications before and after the students click “send.”  

The IRS could not do this.  

Speaking of worst-case scenarios, I don’t predict the future, good or bad. The students want me to give them definite outcomes. They submit their applications and then freak out non-stop until the decisions come back, months later. Desperate for reassurance, they want me to say, “UCLA? You got this. Slam dunk. No worries, bro.” 

I can’t do that. In one recent year UCLA received 113,748 applications—more than any other university in the country. Their acceptance rate was 14%. The average applicant they accepted had a 4.31 GPA. I can study the five-year application results scattergram and try to estimate the odds. But as they say about the stock market, past results are no guarantee of future performance. 

I do help the student come up with a reasonable, balanced list of colleges where they’ll apply. That means a few colleges where it would be great if they got in (and it might just happen). Along with a good number of colleges where they’ll be good, qualified applicants, and a school or two that might just offer them a big merit award to enroll. Every shot shouldn’t be from half-court.     

Finally, terribly, college admissions is a human endeavor. This particular kid is telling his particular story, and that particular admissions officer is reading it (maybe too late at night, maybe after having read to 65 other kids’ stories) and leaning yes or no.  

No grid, no graph, can plot intuition, doubt, sympathy, burnout, delight, or the impulse to take a chance on this kid.  

I do try to help the students keep things in perspective. That, finally, may be my most important job. Teenagers aren’t very good at taking the long view. They fantasize and catastrophize from moment to moment. Their mood is like a stunt plane, zooming straight up to the vanishing point, then stalling out, hanging there for a second, before corkscrewing back down tail first.  

If I get into Duke all my dreams will come true. If I don’t get into Duke my life is over. Duke is evaluating my soul. Duke is deciding my worth as a person. 

I tell them that even if they get into Duke, or Stanford, or Harvard, they might still end up unhappy—because what it takes to get into one of those schools sometimes turns great kids into joyless achievement machines.  

I also tell them that they could get into a school that isn’t on US News and World Report’s “Best Colleges” top ten list and still end up deeply happy, wildly successful, and well-educated (which, after all, is the point, isn’t it?).  

It’s a big country with thousands of colleges. There are great professors and interesting students everywhere. 

They might sign up for a class and discover their intellectual or artistic passion.  

They might even discover their lifelong love sitting next to them in that class.  

I did.  

And the person you say I do with is much more important than the college decal on your car’s back window.  

Teenagers don’t know these things yet. But maybe, with a little help from a counselor, they’ll figure it out.