Roslyn Fletcher Expands Her Role in College Counseling

Roslyn Fletcher will become the full time Director of College Counseling for Great Hearts Arizona beginning in July.  Fletcher has been with Great Hearts as a College Counselor on the campus level for the last 13 years. She has provided support to College Counselors across the network while still maintaining a full caseload of students and families at Scottsdale Prep. Fletcher said she is happy to really be able to spend  more time on academy campuses next year, and to be able to be there for special events. “I’m excited to be able to provide support, training, and guidance, especially for our new college counselors. It’s really exciting to be able to provide that kind of guidance and training.”

Fletcher was introduced to Great Hearts while she was the Assistant Director of Admissions at The College of Idaho. “Arizona was in my territory, and it’s really kind of funny, we had a counselor fly in, Vicky Davies who was serving in a college counselling kind of role back then at Chandler Prep. She encouraged me to come down and visit a few Great Hearts Academies in Arizona and told me how they host colleges on the campuses. Arizona wasn’t a territory that we were traveling to, but I did work it into my travel schedule, and I came down and visited Chandler Prep. I saw Vicky again and she said that a few of the academies were hiring college counselors. She told me I should really think about applying and I smiled again and thanked her without a lot of intention. I thought about it more and ended up applying, and now here I am 13 years later. Vicky is a big part of my story and now we work really closely together with transcripts and it’s great to still have that connection.”

Fletcher says there are three distinctions that really set Great Hearts apart from other schools when it comes to college counseling. “One is the quality of service and the personal relationship that you get to build with your college counselor. To be able to see my students come through the Great Hearts education… it’s just really something that’s unique. To have that personal relationship with the student and to be able to grow with them as they go through their education and to see them through this journey and off to college. The letter of recommendation that we write on behalf of our student is unique and personal and has information that we have experienced with students, not just about the student but it’s really about the interaction that we’ve had which is on a deeper level that you would probably get at most institutions.”

“One little specialty that we deal with as well is that we expose our students to a lot of college visits. That’s something that is really unique. We have over 100 visits that take place on our campus each year, primarily in the fall.” Fletcher says that exposure is available to all grade levels. “We invite 9th graders to the graders 11th graders to come to those visits in most of our schools. Our campuses are doing those visits during Lyceum or during lunchtime, so our high school students aren’t missing class time typically to attend the visits.

The final piece that sets Great Hearts College Counseling apart is the intentional exposure to standardized testing. “We do a great job of opening that up to all grade levels. Our 9th graders take the ACT Aspire, our 10th graders take the PreACT, and our 11th graders take the school day ACT. Our 10th and 11th graders will take the PSAT, and across the network they have a lot of National Merit Finalists each year. I think exposing students to testing early is important, but I also think it’s a testament to our teachers and our curriculum.” Fletcher explained that although a lot of colleges and universities have moved away from using test scores, most of our students are still applying to the most selective schools in the country who still use them. “We feel strongly that most of our high school students should plan to be prepared to submit a college application with an SAT or ACT score.” She said the student and counselor can always reconsider using the score before the application is submitted.

Fletcher has not only inspired great-hearted scholars through counseling, but also as a coach. “I grew up playing lots of different sports. I was a basketball player, a cross country runner, and a golfer in high school and then I continued to play golf in college, so that was a big part of my life for many years. I did a lot of coaching when I first started at Great Hearts in both golf and basketball for middle school and high school.”

When Roslyn and her husband, who is also from Idaho, married and had kids of their own, she moved away from coaching a little bit. “Our oldest, Kaylee, is in first grade at Archway Scottsdale. Cameron is four, and so a lot of my extra working activity now is centered around them and their activities. They’re involved with swim lessons and soccer league, and we try to expose them to a lot of different things.” She said their family really enjoys the outdoors. “We do some snow skiing in the winter and some wakeboarding and wake surfing in the summer. We have two dogs and so getting out for a walk with the pups is always a nice way to enjoy that sunshine.”

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