Girls' School College Counselors Meeting a Success

03/07/2008- By Joanna Schultz, Director of College Counseling, The Ellis School

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- Twenty nine college counselors from girls' schools across the country converged on the Ellis School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 21 for the second annual Girls' School College Counselor Conference (GSCCC). 

The first conference, hosted in February of 2007 by Jenny Byers at the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee, was so successful that the participants decided to make it an annual affair. 

The Ellis group had equally spirited and soul searching discussions about how to help girls throughout their high school years and through the college admissions process. 

As Mary H. Grant, Head of the Ellis School, said, "The energy, commitment, and delight with which these counselors have addressed the issues surrounding working with girls is extraordinary."

The conference program consisted of two outside speakers and five discussion sessions led by conference participants.  The issues addressed by the group included competition among girls in the admissions process, the changing programs in college counseling offices because of changing times, how girls advocate (or don't advocate) effectively for themselves, opportunities for girls in science, technology, engineering, and math, and best practices in the counseling of girls. 

On Thursday evening, the keynote speaker, Beth Slattery from the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, spoke on the findings of her doctoral thesis, which examined self-esteem development in women transitioning from single-sex high schools to coeducational colleges. 

The talk was followed by a response from a panel of recent Ellis and Madeira alumnae who are students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. (Interestingly enough, they agreed with Ms. Slattery that the thing that was hardest for them in their coed university settings was duplicating the group of close, female friends they had had in high school.) 

On Friday, Dr. Jean Ferguson Carr, Director of Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, addressed the group on the subject of "Women's Studies and Feminism in the University Today."  As Dr. Carr said, she had seldom seen a group of people so willing and anxious to continue the discussion after the formal talk was over.

The responses of counselors in evaluating the GSCCC were overwhelmingly positive.  As one said, "It's validating to know that other people are having the same issues and it's helpful to hear their solutions." 

Everyone came away with lists of ideas about how to improve their own counseling programs, ammunition for helping their schools change, and an electronic network to continue the discussions.  Although we are from very different schools and different regions of the country, conference participants felt that the similarities of the issues we face outweigh the differences in size, location, selectivity, and culture of the individual NCGS schools that made up the conference. We ended by talking about the book we would like to write, a book entitled, "Only at a Girls School."

The third annual conference will be hosted next year by three schools in the greater Washington, DC area:  Holton Arms, the National Cathedral School, and Madeira, and other schools are lining up to host in subsequent years. The grand plan, discussed with the group by Jenny Byers, who made the first GSCCC become reality, is to move to different geographical areas every year so that the counselor participants can tour a variety of colleges. 

We raised as many questions as we answered, and we all look forward to another conference in 2009.  We will also share what we've learned with the larger community.  Jenny Byers, Terry McCue (from Hathaway Brown in Cleveland), and I will draw on the outstanding expertise and insight  of the group to discuss college counseling issues in girls schools for the annual NCGS conference in June.