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Recent research shows that school counselors have the potential to improve access to traditional 4-year college programs and community colleges by providing college readiness counseling (Belasco, 2013; Bryan, Moore-Thomas, Day-Vines, & Holcomb-McCoy, 2011; Engberg & Gilbert, 2014; Woods & Domina, 2014). College readiness counseling is defined as skills, knowledge, and practices of school counselors to support students’ ability to enter college and attain a degree (Savitz-Romer, 2012a). Several studies support the effect that school counselors can have on the college readiness of students by increasing their postsecondary knowledge, and assisting with their college applications and enrollment plans. Hurwitz and Howell (2014) found that the addition of just one high school counselor may result in a 10% increase in the college enrollment of students from that school. This may be because additional school counselors can increase the number of applications students make to 4-year colleges (Robinson & Roksa, 2016) and can provide extended benefits that can positively impact students’ college planning and preparation (Lapan, Whitcomb, & Aleman, 2012). An example of this was reported by Dunlop Velez (2016) who found that meeting individually with a school counselor could increase the likelihood that students will complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form and attend 4-year college.
School counselors are expected to support students throughout their college preparation, application, and transition processes. Although school counselors who work in college readiness counseling have been shown to be effective, research has also indicated that as a group, school counselors would benefit from more training in this important aspect of school counselors’ work. Nevertheless, getting additional training in college readiness counseling could prove to be challenging for school counselors. These challenges include a lack of college readiness counseling preparation in school counselor training programs (Hines, Lemons, & Crews, 2011) in that counselor training programs do not prioritize college readiness counseling. Sometimes, counselor education programs state this material is covered in their career counseling courses (Council of National School Counseling & College Access Organizations, 2016), but practicing school counselors state that they felt largely unprepared by their graduate programs to do this work (Brown et al., 2016). McDonough (2005) gave an example of this gap, discussing how school counselors typically do not have knowledge or training in financial aid, so...