Most of my friends that do college counseling in international schools are also certified and working as school counselors. Having said that, I know of at least three international schools (one in Taiwan, one in Bulgaria, and one in Canada) where they have hired college counselors who just do that full time without school counseling background/training.

Within independent schools in the US, there are plenty of college counselors without school counseling degrees. Usually they have previous experience working as college admission officers or get brought into the office from the English or History departments and are mentored by experienced college counselors. The UCLA course that I figure you are referring to is a good starting point for someone who hasn't worked in college admissions and some US independent schools would like people to do it, but I doubt many international schools are aware of it. My understanding is the course focused on US higher education and depending on the school, the US may be one of many countries where international students enroll for university.

While there are some college counseling positions, there don't seem to be many schools that do that yet. I wonder if in the future more schools will have separate college counselors because at least in the public system in the US, many school counselors do not have the time or support of administration to visit colleges and attend professional conferences related to college admission (NACAC, WACAC, SACAC, PCACAC, etc). None of the school counseling professional organizations or accreditation agencies (ASCA, ASA, or CACREP) are pushing for training related to college admission to be part of school counseling programs. Some school counseling programs have added one class focused on this issue, but many have not. That is why, in part, schools like UCLA have developed their program relating to college counseling. The folks who really understand college admission issues in the US have either worked in college admission or better yet, worked in US independent schools where they have been able to do college visits and attend professional conferences.

So, for the time being, I think the places that will hire college counselors are few, but it may change over time. I do think the UCLA program is good, but I don't think many international will be familiar with it and to be a great candidate, you'll want to be familiar at least with other countries where a lot of students go for university (Australia, Canada, UK, perhaps Ireland). Two really good places to learn about international admission are the Overseas ACAC conference which is held every summer in July in the US and Canada; http://www.oacac.com/. Also CIS has some admissions related events that are worthwhile; http://www.cois.org/page.cfm?p=263
. These could be good networking places and places to track down jobs. Unfortunately, the OACAC conference is already full for this year.

Good luck.

You didn't mention your nationality, but when I read what you were looking for I thought about native communities in Canada. My wife's parents were teachers in Northern Ontario when she was very young. It was a fly in community.

Many new teachers in Canada end up going to aboriginal communities to teach in order to find full time work. The pay is usually pretty good. I don't know how easy it is for someone who isn't Canadian, but you may want to look into it. My wife and I have considered it as an alternative to working overseas.

There has been some discussion of Dipont on the boards.

I'd look here; http://internationalschoolsreview.com/v ... ght=dipont

And here; http://internationalschoolsreview.com/v ... ght=dipont

Again, I would say it is going to be more like working at a Chinese local school than an international school, which has downsides.

Shenzhen is quite a bit different than other Chinese cities. Everything is very new because the city was agricultural land in the recent past. Granted the old cities are being re-build at break neck speeds so maybe it won't seem that different on the surface. All the Chinese people are from somewhere else so you don't get the prejudice of Chinese people from the city treating new arrivals "waidiren" poorly, but you do get the good old class differences. Very few old people in public compared with other places in China which I noticed immediately when traveling there because it's a very noticeable aspect of other Chinese cities.

Warm to hot weather. Easy to get to Hong Kong just across the border (but you'll want a multiple entry Z visa to make it easy) and Guangzhou is a short bus ride away.

Without a MA in school counseling or counseling will someone be limited by their choices in international schools at this point in time? Certainly. Again, I think there are most schools going to the model that US independent schools use in which you have separate college counselors and school counselors; some may not be able to because of local laws related to getting visa or for various reasons. However,Taipei American School is one that has gone this route and I believe it was American College of Sofia in Bulgaria that also hired a former college admissions rep to work as their college counselor in the past. If you want to work in US independent schools, having a counseling degree is far less important that having admission experience or having previous experience working as a college counselor. But again, we're talking about international schools here.

Having done a MA in school counseling, I would say quite a lot of the classes and much of the training was irrelevant for college counseling issues. And most people with [b]just[/b] a school counseling degree will know little about college admission. Very few school counseling programs have any curriculum at all that helps counselors understand the ins and outs of college admission and I think it is fair to say that working with international students in the process adds a layer of complexity. It's a real weakness in US graduate school programs which ASCA and ACA have very little interest in addressing. CACREP, the organization which accredits counseling programs has done nothing to require a focus on college admission. I went to a NACAC session on this very issue at the Baltimore conference, so there are some people thinking about it, but little seems to be happening. But again, not enough public high schools in the US have school counselors who are given the time, even if they have the inclination, to attend conferences and visit colleges where they'll learn about the issues related to college admission and financial aid. Again, I would argue it is even more complex given the student body of most international schools because they're more likely to be looking at many countries where they may continue their education. Maybe other countries are addressing college admission issues better in their training, but I would argue US higher education is more diverse and harder to navigate the admission process than in Canada, the UK, and Australia (3 other countries that I am rather familiar with).

I suspect one reason that US independent schools have gone to find people with specialist knowledge related to college admission is that they could no longer find (and perhaps steal) school counselors away from the public schools who have good in depth knowledge about admission practices in universities as they did in the past.

Do some of the practical counseling skills help being a good college counselor? Certainly, but easily 1/3 to 1/2 of my classes were irrelevant for working in US independent schools and independent international schools. Could you develop good counseling skills another way? Yes, you certainly could. But would you be more limited in your choices within the international schools. For the time being, I think so.

OACAC would be the most useful of the ACAC conferences to attend if you have good numbers of students applying to US and Canadian universities. UK universities representatives attend the OACAC conference in good numbers as well. It's during the summer, so it's much easier to get to than the NACAC conference in the fall and the NACAC conference is way too big. I go to both conferences each year, but OACAC is way better. This year, both conferences happen to be in Denver. OACAC is in mid-July every year, NACAC is in late September/early October.

There is also a CIS conference in the fall which college admission representatives attend and school/college counselors as an alternative to OACAC and NACAC.

I've met relatively few college counselors at international schools who don't have a MA in school counseling, but there seems to be a trend towards some international schools hiring separate people for emotional/social counseling and college counseling. A lot of the top schools still want people to do both. Often the college counselors have experience working in US independent schools and/or college admission. I'd think you be limited by the number of schools you could get hired at without a MA in counseling. That's one reason I took the time and effort to get a school counseling degree.

Someone else had recommended this at one point. It could be worthwhile.

http://www.talesmag.com/

If you're looking at the Shanghai campus, I think Shanghai is a very interesting city to be in. And there are many other strong international schools where you could move to after a couple of years working at SMIC and making some contacts at those schools.

Having said that, I will be looking for a better run school when I return overseas.

Good luck.

I second that. Think large Asian cities where business is good (Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila).

Granted, there were not a lot of single foreign women in Shanghai when I lived there compared to the number of single foreign men and foreign couples. Most single foreign women I knew were actually teachers at international schools or teaching English at local school and universities.

I haven't read the review, but I worked there many years back. Not a place I'd recommend. Mostly, the problem was how it was managed; it was essentially run like Chinese schools. Low pay, last minute changes to the schedule (on Monday being told you'd have to come on Saturday with no compensation or comp time), lack of supplies for the classroom.

I largely saw it as a company school so they could recruit highly skilled talent for the semiconductor company. I did like the kids I worked with and the families. I would have described my colleagues as hard working and earnest, but few had much experience at schools back in their home countries or at other international schools. Administrators were hired more for their beliefs and less for actual experience.

By the way, both the company and therefore the school are very Christian, but it's very much under the table. The company head, Richard Chang, apparently saw bringing the company to China as a way to make money, develop China, and bring in Christian influence. This was not made clear up front, though they were asking me a lot of questions during the interview that later a friend of mine told me was coded evangelical language. Who knew?

If you need to break into international schools, there could be worse places to start, but after 2 years of working there, I'd recommend looking for something better.

Sounds like a pretty standard situation for a Chinese run school.

There are quite a few (31 posted) on www.tieonline.com, but you need to subscribe to view them.

I've known people who helped run summer programs for them. Based on what I heard (mostly 2nd hand knowledge here), I'd expect them to have Chinese management practices more common to language schools than international schools.

Things to expect in a Chinese-run school (based on experience that is about 5 - 6 years old): you won't know what exact days are holidays because the government sets national holidays a few weeks before they happen, your duties and obligations may change regardless of what your contract states, resources to teach may be hard to access even when they are at the school because of internal school politics, not being consulted about changes to school policy or procedures even when they have a direct impact on your teaching situation, a lack of long term planning/scheduling by the school administration, lower salary than international school with international students (non-Chinese passport holders) and generally a heavy handed top-down management style.

Being willing and able to cope with the above issues would be useful. I would be surprised if a place like Dipont Education had a lot of teachers who stay there long or those who have spent much time teaching internationally, because after 2 - 3 years of experience I think they'd have better options if they were willing to search.

They seem to be a company that gets hired to run O level/A level/AP/IB programs at well-regarded Chinese local schools to prepare them for overseas study at the university level. These schools almost certainly have tough entrance requirements, so the students will be much better than average. In fact, you will probably have intelligent, motivated students, but I suspect the students' English abilities will vary quite a bit based on the students they had at their summer program.

I would not choose to work for a school like this one, but it's really a personal decision based on what you are looking for and what options you'll have given your experience and field.

Good luck.

I haven't made this transition back to teaching in the US, but I suspect it's a real concern returning the the US public system and probably US independent schools as well.

I was speaking with a college counselor at a US independent school who had worked as a school counselor overseas. He ended up coming back to a college admissions job in the US first and then returning to an independent high school college counselor position. He pointed out that most US independent schools want to have college counselors visit campus which is difficult to do if you are overseas. I suspect the same is true for teachers at independent schools and I would think public schools are even less likely to hire without an in-person interview.

The world of international schools by contrast is quite small. You're likely to have former colleagues (teachers, administrators, other counselors) who move on to other schools. They are people who you can ask about other schools and who can put in a good word for you (or sink you as an applicant if they don't think you're competent or if they don't like you) for other jobs. They are also likely to know if folks from their schools are planning on moving on and let you know. The colleagues at your current international school will also know people other places. It's also a good idea to get to know other international school counselors at conferences so they can let you know if they're leaving. It can be a bit like musical chairs, but good, talented people in high need fields are going to get a chair (at least I think so).

I think as a school counselor you are in a better position that a lot of subject teachers. Being flexible in terms of looking at middle school or even high school counseling positions will make this easier when the time comes.

But there is a risk....

I can't think of how a counselor could have IB experience other than an understanding of the curriculum demands, how IB diplomas are awarded, difference between standard level vs higher level classes, how different universities/university systems consider the IB diploma/exam results for admission and credit, etc. None of this is challenging to learn. I had a pretty good understanding of this from working in university admissions evaluating transcripts even before working in counseling on the high school side.

Additionally, none of my friends who are counselors within international schools have mentioned having difficulty getting jobs at IB schools who hadn't worked at IB schools in the past. Has this come up or are you just looking at the general information they are posting for all job applicants?

I agree that good international schools in Asian don't care about ethnicity as Android says. It can be be a factor for those teaching in private EFL schools or as a native English teacher in a local school. Having said this, I worked for several years in China in a university program that had lots of foreign English teachers, and a good number were Chinese-American, Chinese-Canadian, and Chinese-Australian.

However, those same colleagues definitely were treated differently by locals than those of us who were obvious foreigners. Often there was an assumption that they understood/spoke the language and customs which could create issues for them if they did not. At the same time people assumed I didn't understand/speak the language and customs. There were definitely times I received special treatment for being a foreigner, which annoyed my "huayiren" colleagues when they were around and didn't get the same treatment. At the same time, they could in the right circumstances "blend in" and not receive the same attention I had constantly. Some days I felt more like a big walking money sign than others and my "huayiren" colleagues tended to get better deals when bargaining even when my Chinese was better.

Good luck.