The SAT thread got me thinking: What was your experience with high school guidance counselors? I never heard of them telling people not to take the SAT, but I did see a lot of problems with them. I don't know how much of this was district or school policy, but here's what I experienced:
* Before school started, once you got your class schedule, you could go to the school at a certain time and request to have it changed. However, once you were taking a certain number of AP classes, you could NOT get out of them. They'd let you switch which AP class you were taking, and they'd let you add an AP, but by no means were they going to let you lower the number you were taking. Apparently, number of AP enrollment was very important to them.
* You were required to take the AP exam for any AP class you were in. Period. Not taking it automatically reduced your year grade in that class by a letter.
* They looooved to talk about how much money the senior class was awarded in scholarships. To inflate this number, they pushed students to apply for as many colleges and scholarships as possible. "It doesn't matter if you don't think you want to go there, just apply, and apply for the scholarships, and report everything you're awarded!! It doesn't matter if you already have a full ride, keep applying!!!!!" (They told this to someone who got the Morehead to Carolina, and had already accepted it.)
* They also set up a Wall of College Acceptance, listing everywhere anyone got in. Again, they didn't care if you wanted to go there, they just wanted to be able to put one more name under the list for that school, especially the more prestigious ones. I was a major disappointment: I only applied to App.
It was obvious that most of the counselors were focused on making the school look good, not on making sure you got the most out of your education and planned well for your future. But my experiences may have been affected by the fact that I had a high SAT and good grades. What did the rest of y'all experience? (Sorry this was so long.)