When Should You Start College Counseling?
At CounselHero, we receive a lot of emails from high school students asking when they should begin the college counseling process.
At CounselHero, we receive a lot of emails from high school students asking when they should begin the college counseling process. The fact is there’s no right or wrong time to start college counseling.
We’ve seen students who started it late but still enjoyed the field and the college they chose.
However, the question is, when should you start searching online something like, “college counselor near me?” The ideal time to start the college counseling process might vary from one student to another, but generally, you should start it during your freshman or sophomore year.
Here’re a couple of reasons behind this.
1- You Can Create a Comprehensive Strategy
College admission is a complex process and involves lots of critical factors that you need to consider to enter a field that aligns with your passion and interest. Choosing the right path from a number of options takes a good amount of time as well.
With the guidance of a reputable counselor that you’ve found by searching “college counselor near me,” you can build a robust foolproof college admission strategy.
With continuous advancements in technology, many career fields are available today that one couldn’t even imagine a decade ago. Even if you’ve identified your ideal career path before approaching a college counselor, it’s quite difficult to gain an in-depth understanding of which institutions in your area offer the best programs related to it.
For instance, if you reside in Dallas or a nearby area, it’ll be quite a difficult and time-consuming task to gather all the essential information related to a particular program offered by the colleges in the city.
This is where a good college counseling service in Dallas can greatly help you out.
A college counseling service in Dallas, whether online or offline, typically maintains a solid database of all the institutions in the area, along with comprehensive information on the programs they offer. Therefore, you can start creating a thorough strategy based on that information, as long as you contact the counselor during your freshman or sophomore year.
2- You Can Choose the Right Career Path
When you start the college counseling process early, you get enough time to thoroughly understand the application process and how you need to prepare to enter a preferred field and/or college.
With the help of the college counselor, you can identify the fields that actually interest you.
You can also discover whether or not you’ve got the strengths to pursue that field.
In case you lack them or need to improve them, starting the college counseling process in your freshman or sophomore year will give you sufficient time to prepare. Also, many parents think that they clearly understand what’s required to get their kids admitted to a good college. However, the reality is that admission requirements keep on changing from time to time, and a student can only adequately prepare when they get sufficient time.
So, if you’re in your freshman or sophomore year, starting the college counseling process is perhaps the best thing you can do now.
