It’s the end of the 2014-2015 school year. Freshmen are done with their first year of high school, sophomores are getting ready for their busy junior year, juniors are preparing for college application process, and seniors are making preparation for their new journeys in college.

Except for seniors who are graduating, all the remaining students including rising freshmen will be spending a decent amount of time with their counselors especially at the end of summer break and beginning of each year, counselors get busy talking to many students about their new school year schedules. However, after that, most students rarely have any contact with their counselors.

It is genuinely significant to keep close relationship between students and counselors. Counselors are there to listen to students’ any stories and concerns that are either personal or related to school.  However, throughout the four years in high school,  most students barely spend time with their counselors and actually get to know each other well.

One problem with not being able to get a chance to have a deep conversation with counselor about school, future, and any other concern is because each counselor has too many students to take care of. McLean High School is a big school and according to the last year’s statistics’ 2050 students were enrolled. However, there are only eight counselors in McLean HS, which means roughly each counselor has 256 students.

Even when students go to the counselor’s office to talk to their counselors, there is almost a long line of students waiting. Then, students have to fill out a form to arrange an appointment, but the counselors usually pull out students during classes to talk for just a few minutes.

“Most of the time I go to Mr.Kashdan, there are at least three people waiting so I always leave a note or come back later, otherwise I will be late to class,” junior Jenny Jang said.

In order to give chances for counselors to be more involved with students, McLean HS must hire more counselors so that each counselor will have smaller number of students to take care of. Then, the counselors will be able to devote their time more to each student; students and counselors will get to know each other better at the end of the four years of high school.