Mistakes I made as a counsellor – so you don’t have to

Like many other university counsellors, I started out as a teacher and then progressed to counselling and guidance. If there were mistakes that could be made, I made them.

Here are just some of these mistakes – and mistaken assumptions – I made when starting out.

1. It’s better to focus on procedure, rather than students

When I began working as a counsellor, I focused on strategy and tactics – when to apply to university, how to steer a university interview, which subjects had lower applicant-to-places ratios.

Working in a school where the students and parents are refreshingly open-minded about future options, I have now learnt to begin the guidance process by getting them to think about the communities they will be joining, the environment within and around the university, and what they actually enjoy studying, rather than going through the mechanics of an application.

The most successful session this year was when two of last year’s leavers came in to talk to our current applicants about their first terms at university. They focused on what was most important to them – things like accommodation, food, new friends, clubs, teams and facilities. They both loved their courses, and this was inspiring, but it was clear that this was because of the environment, rather than just the subjects they were studying.

2. Counsellors work alongside – not with – teachers

George Bernard Shaw said: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” He might have added: “Those who can’t teach become university counsellors.” Or at least that is often the perception of teacher colleagues. From their perspective, our job is easy: no lesson planning, no marking, no discipline problems – just friendly chats with the students and days away from school to visit universities.

Breaking down the “them and us” barrier is important, because the more involved in university counselling the teachers can become, the more the students will benefit from all-round support.

So how to get subject teachers to feel part of the university journey? I now make a point of knowing what and where they studied and thus can ask them to meet students to talk about their own experiences.

Or I offer to take one of their lessons with younger age groups to talk about career paths related to that subject. The teacher can have a spare 45 minutes to catch up with marking or have an unexpected and welcome coffee break and – crucially – is then happy to get more involved.

3. Parents are always wrong

We regularly face situations where parents have strong views on their children’s university plans, often very different from those of the students. My natural response in each case is to side with the student and try to engineer a situation in which they can follow their chosen route. But this can lead to conflict within the family and in the parents’ relationship with the school.

I need to remind myself that the parents have known their children for far longer than I have, so they probably know much more about the background to their university aspirations than I do.

Taking time to get to know the parents and their views is important so that I can better understand the bigger picture. This makes it much easier to look for solutions and to act as a mediator.

Often, this means convincing parents that they need to be more open-minded: showing a parent who wants his daughter to have a career in business while she wants to study fashion that there are business modules in each year of the fashion course, for example. But parents’ insights can also be important – for example, highlighting that their son’s university choice has been made based on where his friends are applying, or that he wants to study in Korea because he likes K Pop.

4. Using AI is cheating

I used to assume that AI is of no use to me when counselling students and is cheating if they use it to help with their applications. How wrong I was.

Using tools such as ChatGPT to suggest suitable starting points for the students’ research or to summarise their options has changed the way I work with them. My sessions have become driven by the students and their priorities and research, rather than mine.

I quickly became aware that the students would use AI to make a start on personal statements and essays (and then pretend they hadn’t). So I realised that it was better to be proactive and help them to use it to plan the structure – as opposed to the content – of their submissions, and then to create something personal and focused. (I have the THE CAP AI module to thank for this.)

5. Agents complicate your life

I know that some university counsellors dislike their students getting external help from education agents. They are suspicious (sometimes correctly) that the agents are driven by financial motives rather than what is best for the student.

However, if you take the time to get to know agents, they can be an invaluable resource to complement your counselling. Good agents work closely with universities, so you have a ready-made communication channel with institutions. They are eager to bring their partner universities into your school for university fairs or presentations, and they can offer free support with things such as visas, accommodation and travel.

As a counsellor, going to agent events is time well spent, as much to get to know the agency as to meet universities.

6. We should know everything

There is a temptation, particularly at the start of your career as a university counsellor, to justify your presence by trying to learn everything about each country’s universities and applications. Given the multitude of options and the ever-shifting sands of the higher-education landscape, this is a tall task.

I have learnt that it is better to work with students on researching options or requirements, and to use the expertise of, for example, agents rather than pretending to know everything.

Additionally, if you engage students in the process, they are much more likely to be inquisitive about options and willing to explore a wider range of possibilities.

The artist Grayson Perry said: “Your mistakes are your art.” The path to becoming an effective university counsellor inevitably involves mistakes, but these will help us to become more responsive, empathetic and approachable in our very important roles.