How to be an effective university counsellor with no budget

College counselling takes place in a diverse range of schools. Some schools are fortunate enough to have a seemingly unlimited flow of resources. Many schools aren’t. 

Yet equally effective teaching, learning and college counselling can take place in offices with relatively few resources. Thanks to the internet and the generous college-counselling community, there are many valuable resources available online to adapt to our counselling needs.

Here are some ideas about how to develop and deliver college counselling on a budget. 

Look for free resources online

College counsellors are very generous in sharing their know-how. Lean on this to deliver effective college counselling. 

You can always start with THE Counsellor’s wealth of articles. 

International ACAC has a low-cost membership (US$55 for high-school members), and members have free access to all the monthly webinars from its Webinar Wednesday series, from 2015 onwards. 

You can also survey the public resources offered by specific schools. This can either be a superbly organised website (for example, IS Düsseldorf) or resource-laden college-counselling handbooks that schools make available online (International School of Paris; Kazakhstan International School – Almaty; Concordia International School). 

Universities or third-party platforms (such as Initialview Tuesday Talks) offer helpful webinars. Sign up for mailing lists and news of these will land in your inbox. 

YouTube also hosts a surprising amount of knowledge on niche admissions. For instance, I use YouTube to learn about Korean university admissions (Onglish; HyperReview; Fred) – which are all in Korean, but which AI can translate and summarise (I suggest Brisk).

YouTube also hosts universities’ official channels. For example, the University of Toronto provides videos explaining its potentially confusing admissions categories. 

Universities also use other forms of social media to disseminate information, so follow the top destinations of your students for their latest news. 

Take up free professional-development courses

Some professional-development courses are certainly pricey, but there are also free – and fantastic – ones. And you can take all of these at your own pace.

The clear example is the THE Counsellor Accreditation Programme, which provides a comprehensive and insightful look into the world of college counselling by experts in the field.

Another is the British Council’s counsellor and agent training, which offers insight into the world of UK admissions and logistics. 

If you want to brush up on the social-emotional side of our work, Toronto Metropolitan University offers free resilience training for counsellors. Join its mailing list to receive the notice to sign up for this annual course.

Use free tools

If you’re looking for a college-counselling platform, BridgeU is entirely free.

If your school has a Microsoft Office subscription, Excel can be a powerful tool to track student data and offers. 

Padlet and Google Sites are great – and free – ways to share resources with your students or community. 

Connect with local counsellors 

Even if you can’t fly across the ocean to attend exciting conferences, collaboration with colleagues in your own city is easy to arrange. 

Identify fellow counsellors and arrange a termly meeting where you discuss college-counselling matters. If you’d like to introduce more structure and opportunities for leadership, you can organise the chance for counsellors to deliver professional-development sessions to one another. And maybe even invite a guest speaker – such as a renowned university rep who would rather speak to a group of counsellors at once than visit a single school.

Collaborate with university representatives

If university representatives visit your school, ask them to give a session for your students that is in line with your college-counselling aims. If your school isn’t on the circuit of university representatives yet, ask them to give an online session. In-person sessions are preferable, but reps can still be happy to connect with potential students online, should the opportunity be engineered proactively. 

Make use of online networks and connections 

There are a range of counselling Facebook groups, on which you’ll find the hivemind of a global-counsellor community. You can ask any questions and likely they will be answered in days, if not hours, by counsellors from around the world. 

Or you can find or create a WhatsApp group of counsellors united by a common denominator. This can be shared location, shared work set-up (for example, solo counsellors), shared experience (for example, a fly-in tour) or just mutual appreciation and friendship.

Look for scholarships and grants 

There are opportunities for counsellors with limited resources. BMI/THE workshops are free, so take note of the deadline and apply. 

Fly-in tours aren’t technically scholarships or grants, but are a generous opportunity organised by university, and will often be free. 

Advocate for a bigger budget 

Even if you’re starting out with a small – or non-existent – budget, you may consider advocating for a larger budget after building up recognition in your school. Pitch this formally to the senior leadership team, showcasing your efforts and outcomes. 

If expanding the budget is not a possibility, advocate for other directions, such as professional development or time off to attend a conference. 

But what truly matters for students is your willingness to be there for them and guide them in their university application journeys – which can be done effectively and successfully with no budget at all. It only requires your full presence and willingness to learn.