College Applications Show Lack of Guidance : Education: Cuts in school counseling staffs are blamed for an increase in ill-prepared students. Many fail to take required classes or cannot figure out bewildering paperwork.

The San Jose high school student’s application to Santa Clara University had glaring deficiencies.

The senior had not taken physics or college preparatory math this year, although both are required for the premedical program he wants to attend. And his recommendation letter was from a football coach, even though Santa Clara accepts them only from teachers or counselors.

Admissions officials cast much of the blame on budget cuts, which forced the elimination of nearly all counselors at the young man’s school. “He had no one to go to to get the advice he needed,” said Daniel Saracino, dean of admissions at the Roman Catholic Church-affiliated school in Santa Clara County.

The student--who had adequate grades and test scores--was rejected and told to enroll at a community college for possible transfer to Santa Clara in fall 1994. “It’s frustrating to see a student like this one,” Saracino said. “He appeared to be a fine young man.”

Colleges and universities are bracing for more such frustration, they say, because of reduced counseling programs in high schools throughout California.

The situation is painfully apparent this month with many application deadlines just past or looming. More applications than ever before are incomplete or poorly answered, college recruiters report. More students are applying to schools for which they are not qualified. And, educators fear, more students may not be applying at all.

“We are very concerned,” said David Morgan, an admissions officer at Occidental College in Los Angeles. The many California students who are from immigrant and low-income families or who are the first in their families to attend college “need more intense counseling and more time to be encouraged to go to college. It becomes much harder to reach those students as a result of the counseling cutbacks.”

The number of secondary school counselors in the Los Angeles Unified School District has dropped from about 1,000 to 700 over the past three years, officials report. As a result, the ratio of counselors to students rose from 351-1 to 681-1. Many senior high counselors who concentrate on college admissions now must juggle additional duties, such as cafeteria supervision or part-time teaching.

“It’s a dramatic, dramatic loss,” said Charles Espalin, the district’s counseling director. “I’m afraid what the colleges and universities are saying has a lot of truth to it. Our counselors are working very hard, but they are not able to provide all the services young people need.”

The number of Los Angeles students applying to college probably has not declined, Espalin said. But he suggested that more students may opt for community colleges, with open admissions and low fees, rather than attempting to enter four-year schools that can have difficult applications and complicated financial aid rules.

Counselors in Los Angeles complain that the new year-round school calendar makes matters worse. Many schools are closed during January and most of February, important periods for scholarship and private college applications. Counselors are paid to work five days during the break to meet those deadlines, but many are working extra days without pay to help youngsters.

About 37,830 California residents are seeking University of California freshman admission next fall--1.7% more than last year. But the number of in-state high school seniors increased 3%, said Carla Ferri, UC system director of undergraduate admissions. Some youngsters may have been discouraged by higher UC fees, by the recession’s effect on families and by cuts in high school counseling, she said.

J. W. Rollings, a consultant with the state Department of Education, is most concerned about students whose parents did not attend college and who cannot guide them. “The truth is the kids who will suffer the most are the kids who are the least plugged in,” he said. Other experts predict that affluent families will increasingly hire private admissions consultants.

It may seem odd to outsiders that bright, motivated teen-agers cannot read guidebooks to colleges or follow application directions properly. But the procedures intimidate many 17-year-olds. The process may also have become more complicated than it needs to be, higher education officials concede.

“The admissions process is anxiety producing and bewildering, especially for first-generation college-bound kids. We try to demystify it,” Saracino of Santa Clara University said.

As cash-short districts try to protect core teaching functions, counselors--along with librarians and nurses--are vulnerable because those jobs are not required by the state. Even Kathleen Millholland, president of the California School Counselor Assn., was sent back to teaching this year when the Perris Union High School District in Riverside County cut counseling staffs in half.

“It’s very ironic,” Millholland said. “It’s also very frustrating personally and professionally.”

Fremont and San Jose districts eliminated all counseling this year except for state-mandated sessions for 10th-graders. Administrators try to take up slack, sometimes directing students to new computer programs that detail college choices. But that is inadequate, conceded Jesse Rizzo, who manages counseling programs in San Jose Unified.

“Parents and students are confused because of the lack of resources,” Rizzo said.

As part of recent budget cuts, “technician” Jennie Warner was laid off from the job she held for five years directing the college placement and career center at Walnut High in the San Gabriel Valley. Warner returns to her former office a few days a month, volunteering to help with applications and scholarship forms. She encourages students to call her at home.

“I just feel it’s necessary and important for me to come back. And it makes me feel good,” said Warner, who now has an outreach job at a health center. Yet she worries that youngsters are falling through the cracks because “unfortunately, you can’t reach everybody.”

Jennifer Duran is among the seniors Warner is helping. “It’s really hard for students. They don’t understand how to get into colleges and how to find certain colleges. And a lot of parents don’t know so much either,” said Duran, who hopes to enroll in a nursing program at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles or at Cal Poly Pomona. “Mrs. Warner used to be here every day to help us and guide us in the right direction. She’s here a lot of Fridays, but it’s not the same anymore.”

Walnut High still has a full-time counselor, Susan Boyette, for its 425 seniors, but she must handle discipline and curriculum as well as college recommendations. Boyette is worried that students may miss scholarships without Warner around full time.

At a San Francisco high school, faculty and reduced counseling staff said they did not have time to review student candidates for a targeted USC scholarship, said Duncan Murdoch, USC’s director of undergraduate admissions. So this year, a $10,000 annual grant will not be awarded.

USC and other universities say they are doing everything possible to avoid penalizing students, and, in some cases being more flexible in judging whether applications are complete.

In the fall, recruiters from Stanford University and other campuses found it more difficult to visit high schools because there were fewer counselors to act as hosts. Now, Stanford is seeing many applications without the required counselor’s recommendation or with just a cursory one. Stanford may drop the requirement and rely more on teachers’ comments.

Applications to Stanford are up about 2%, to 13,500, for a freshman class of 1,600 students, said James Montoya, dean of undergraduate admissions. While admissions officials at less well-known campuses fear that reduced high school counseling will hurt their application and enrollment numbers, Montoya sees a different scenario at his elite university. He conjectures that some students may have applied to Stanford this year because no one told them how poor their chances are. “In years past, we’ve really depended on counselors in directing the most appropriate students to the applicant pool,” Montoya said.

UCLA’s undergraduate admissions director, Rae Lee Siporin, reports that many more applications were incorrectly filled out this year. In listing required college preparatory courses, students are citing ineligible classes such as photography or computer programming. “It’s not that they’re lying, but it’s inappropriate,” Siporin said, adding that counselors would have avoided such mistakes or helped students choose high school courses more carefully.

Private colleges, in particular, are trying to help, partly as a recruiting device, partly out of community service, officials say. At Santa Clara, admissions dean Saracino has spoken to many more groups of parents and students about the national application procedures this year. Mount St. Mary’s and USC are among the colleges that pay their students to work as part-time advisers in high schools.

Katy Murphy, Mount St. Mary’s admissions director, who is also president of a western states association of admission counselors, said: “We’re afraid that all this budget scrambling is denying access to college to students who have great potential.”