How to ensure a successful one-to-one meeting with students

The one-to-one meeting is one of my favourite parts of the college counselling job. 

Sitting across from the student, ready to get to know them fully as a unique, developing individual with dreams and aspirations, and charting the course to their future success – it’s easy to feel the joy of being a college counsellor during these moments.

Of course, it doesn't always look like this. The student may be carrying anxieties and uncertainties into your scheduled meeting, in addition to – or in lieu of – dreams and aspirations. The one-to-one advising session may turn into a spontaneous emotional counselling session, as you tell them it’s all going to be all right.

Or perhaps you need to reign in their sky-high aspirations, as you gently but firmly point to the minimum requirements of their dream university course, and then direct their attention to their most recent grades on the transcript.

Where the main substance of college counselling happens

No matter what the advising looks like, this is where the main substance of college counselling happens. Group workshops and classes are essential in efficiently disseminating information, and visits by representatives are indispensable parts of learning about a university. However, your one-to-one meeting with students is where they are advised and guided, based on your knowledge of them as developing individuals.

An advising session will go more successfully if these two elements are in place:

1. Making an effort to know the students as much as possible, in order to advise them in their future pathways.

2. A structured agenda. 

There are multiple ways to approach this successfully, and likely all counsellors have their own style and agenda. I’ll share my own agenda for my meetings with the students here. 

Also, it’s important to point out that this is a mandatory meeting. Of course, more meetings happen spontaneously and naturally, depending on need – but it’s necessary to have a meeting in which you touch base with every single student in the year. This is how personalised advising takes place. 

Year 11 (Grade 10)

Timing: spring

Goal: decide on subject choice. This process has already been detailed here. So in this article, we’ll focus on Years 12 and 13 (Grades 11 and 12). 

Year 12 (Grade 11)

Timing: spring

Goal: to get to know the students comprehensively, and to prime them to take concrete actions to prepare their applications. Prepare a timeline for extracurriculars, and give them a general idea of the application timeline. 

Preparation: have the students fill out a survey prior to the meeting, so that you can start with all the essential information in place. Here is the survey I developed. It’s broken down into: personal information; academic engagement and preferences; university interests and motivations; university aspirations; extracurriculars; and miscellaneous. I aimed to make this as comprehensive as possible, so that I find out as much information about the student in advance as I can. 

Agenda: Here is my agenda for the meeting. As the survey is already quite detailed, I use the agenda to make notes on specific parts of the survey I have a question about.

Follow-up: during the meeting, actively create goals with the students on their application to-do list. I then type these up and send them to the student. These may include: grades (for example, the need to improve grades in certain subjects in order to meet minimum entry requirements); extracurriculars (finding an appropriate summer activity or maximising impact of a current engagement); tests (taking a test if they haven’t already); preparing letters of recommendation (choosing teachers and preparing brag sheets); or simply doing more research about universities (deep dive into a curriculum or even visiting a university). 

Year 13 (Grade 12)

Timing: autumn

Goal: to let students know all the necessary elements of applications they will need to prepare. Draw up precise strategies for each element and timeline – both internal and external. If a student is applying to universities in multiple countries, they need to prioritise and balance. 

Preparation: familiarise yourself with the countries your students are applying to. Check updated deadlines and requirements. Think about any overlapping preparation (for example, if countries A and B require an activity list, whereas countries B and C require recommendation letters), and resulting strategies for the student. 

Agenda: here is a link for an agenda for the meeting. 

Follow-up: as with the previous meeting, I create goals with students and share these with students right away. The difference is that these goals are much more granular and time-specific – including weekly and monthly goals, itemising impending deadlines – than the more general directions I gave to Grade 11. Sample goals can be about: applications (start an application); essays (finish a draft by a certain deadline); extracurriculars (summarise all activities in a CV or activity list); or letters of recommendations (ask teachers to write them). 

I also highlight the regional application workshops I will run for students, and the resources they should read through.