by Lukas Devlin
After years of debating and iterating on this concept, I read Robert M. Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, and this book brought it home for me. In his book, Pirsig spends a great deal of time wrestling with the idea of quality. And so it is in this way that I answer the question – what does success look like in University and Careers Counselling?
For school leaders to evaluate their University and Careers Counselling program, we need a comprehensive set of lenses – let’s think of success in this case as a 4-legged stool. Our legs will be Characteristics, Metrics, Context, and Fluidity & Innovation.
Characteristics of a successful program are:
- Student Advocacy
- Informed Skills-Based Approach
- Trust & Credibility
- Relationships
- Professional Engagement
- Evidence of Positive Impact
I won’t spend a ton of time outlining these because I think Lucien’s earlier blogs have thoroughly done so already. If you missed those or want a refresher, have a look at Three Crucial UCC Questions for School Leaders and Three Crucial UCC Questions for School Leaders. This helps us to understand the characteristics of success. Let’s examine further the other 3-legs of our stool.
Context
Context is everything when it comes to setting measurable KPI in your school. Start by considering your school/team’s resources, historical standards of service, immediate priorities, future ambitions, and additional contextual factors below. Before having a conversation with your counselling team, remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and the number of hands on deck to serve the volume and aspirations of your community is not all equal.
Scope of responsibilities: The scope of a counselling team’s responsibilities is shaped by the school’s context. Traditionally, international schools deployed a comprehensive counselling model where University and Social Emotional Counselling was delivered by the same team. In the mid-2010’s we observed a shift from a comprehensive model to a split model. In theory, I’m an advocate of the comprehensive model, but finding qualified candidates with both specialised skillsets is more challenging than finding one or the other. In any case, it is obvious that both specialisations are necessary to the health of a school community. At its most basic, the UCC role focuses on managing university applications. Effective counsellors go beyond logistics, crafting strategies tailored to student ambitions and institutional expectations while leveraging their own education systems as a “home lens” and developing a lens of understanding for all destinations where your students aspire to study. With exposure and experience, counsellors gain the ability to interpret and support students across different systems. Counsellors’ success depends on continually expanding their individual skillset, assessing personal strengths, and responding to changing demands. The role is dynamic, and success comes from providing context-sensitive support that reaches further than fulfilling basic application procedures. When counselling resources are at a premium, it is paramount to carefully consider assigning non-counselling-related responsibilities. Schools are dynamic environments which require all staff to be flexible contributors, but overextending counsellors, particularly when students aren’t in lessons, can compromise effectiveness. This includes but is not limited to teaching lessons, administrative roles, homeroom/tutor roles, lunch and break duties, leading clubs, coaching teams, organising trips and events. Counsellors need to be available for one-on-one guidance sessions, parent education events, university engagement, career/alumni programming, and off-campus learning and networking opportunities.
Community Aspirations: Community aspirations determine how complex and expansive the counsellor’s specialised knowledge must be. In international schools, where students often set their sights on multiple countries, counsellors need expertise across varied application timelines, pathway preparation, and strategies—such as US EA/ED/REA/RD/Rolling admission schemes, UK advanced deadlines, Canadian and Hong Kong priority and regular admissions, and staggered southern hemisphere admission timelines in Australia and Singapore. Overlapping timelines challenge students to manage commitments and make timely decisions, increasing the importance of counsellors’ strategic planning and communication skills. This should not position counsellors as gatekeepers, but instead, they must be able to anticipate and inform decisions in advance of students investing time and energy into conflicting schemes. Success in counselling requires clear and actionable advice in combination with sufficient resources to enable students to extend themselves and develop a competitive profile beyond their school curricula. Supporting unique combinations of aspirations allows various demographics to feel served and builds trust and credibility through the timely and transparent dissemination of information. Much of the best counselling work is unseen but profoundly influential in helping students achieve their goals and effectively invest their most precious resource – time, and ultimately thrive during a pressure-filled adolescent experience.
Curricula: Curricula create distinct challenges and opportunities in university and career counselling. Each— Advanced Placement, A-levels, IBDP, IBCP, etc.—has unique strengths, timelines, and value in university admissions. Counsellors must translate these nuances into effective advice, helping students make informed choices during stressful assessment periods or course selection windows. Schools offering multiple curricula offer differentiation for students, but leaders must recognise how significantly this expands counsellor workload. As outlined in the previous blogs, it is advisable for counsellor voices to be featured at the decision-making table.
Regional Context: Regional factors shape every aspect of UCC. In some countries, legislative or cultural norms restrict work experience options (e.g., expat minors in China cannot serve as interns or gain part-time employment), limiting personal growth and eligibility for specialised degree programs. Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan’s National Service requirements for males add complexity, such as preparing application materials years in advance. External test-prep and counselling providers can disrupt or undermine in-school counselling priorities, particularly when business interests outweigh students’ interests. At its best, these practices lead to marginal benefit with excessive test prep, prescriptive activities list participation and conflicting or unhelpful essay advice. Effective counselling in this context means understanding local policies, educating families on pitfalls and alternatives, and advocating for balanced enrichment activities that foster broader, transferable skills and personal development. Collaborating with ethical external experts and leveraging local opportunities ensures that students receive guidance attuned to their region’s unique demands, maximising student outcomes and well-being.
Counsellor Student Ratio: There is no universal formula for determining the ideal counsellor-to-student ratio; it depends on a school’s desired level of service, the diversity of university destinations targeted, and the intensity of programming offered. More counselling is needed when students pursue applications to multiple countries, when schools aim for personalised parent engagement, and when frequent university and industry exposure events are offered. The ideal ratio must also consider the additional non-counselling duties assigned, the office model (comprehensive vs. specialised), and counsellors’ ability to effectively use technology. Lower ratios facilitate deeper, personalised support, while higher ratios risk limiting counsellor accessibility, reducing individualised attention, and timely identification and implementation of intervention needs. School leaders should analyse their unique community needs, historical standards, future aspirations, and resources to set a ratio that ensures counsellors can meaningfully support each student’s journey.
Metrics
Provided below are a sample of items that can be converted into quantitative or qualitative Metrics used to evidence a successful UCC program. These are separated into UCC Domains and Foundational Skills to enable student development and success. Remember, these domains are specific to UCC, and as referenced in Context, will differ from a comprehensive model that combines Social and Emotional Counselling, a strictly focused University Guidance model, or offices that provide students with guidance beyond traditional university pathways (trades, military, technical, pre-professional, etc.).
Keep in mind, employing these metrics and any metric for that matter must be contextualised and consistent with the expectations that have been established in your school. This structure captures the main domains and the practical, identifiable factors within each, providing a clear and actionable breakdown for use in hiring, training, self-assessment, or program development.
Collaboratively establish clear KPIs—like targets for student (group and individual) sessions, parent information sessions, parent education sessions, university visits or large-scale fairs, career-path exposure, psychometric assessment deployment— to help measure the counselling office’s impact. Leaders should make intentional staffing choices, limiting non-counselling assignments so counsellors remain accessible and focused on student success. Their unseen but valuable contributions, including after-hours work and professional representation, are essential to the school’s reputation and students’ development.
Now that we understand the characteristics of success, context, and have an outline of possible metrics, let’s dive into Fluidity & Innovation.
Fluidity & Innovation
A successful counselling program is constantly evolving and learning. The office embodies your school’s values and models what it means to students. They establish positive relationships with students, parents, staff, and the broader community. They are proactive and strategic in their year-to-year reflection and calibration of program service innovation.
I was employed in a school with more than two decades of history and an established reputation that had undergone significant challenges in the years leading up to my placement. This included a reduction in their counselling team, a full team turnover, and a year of staffing complications that resulted in a single counsellor serving the community on-site. This effectively presented us with a full reset. Upon arrival, my team member and I were faced with limited notes on seniors, a full schedule of lessons for our grade 9-12s, without a curriculum to deliver, and a demanding community with little trust in our office. We worked tirelessly over the following years to establish a well-sequenced UCC curriculum, establish a standard for tracking student growth and aspirations from grade 9, and, most importantly, we won the trust and credibility of the parent community. Once we set a solid foundation, we began assessing opportunities to enhance our program. This included establishing an onboarding program for new high school students, hosting large-scale university events, delivering a comprehensive UCC parent education certificate, supporting an extension pathway for Oxbridge hopefuls, regionally focused online university events (Australia, Netherlands, Hong Kong) to serve our minority demographics, UCC Student Leadership Program, Careers Day, 2-day Senior UCC Boot-Camp (in August), asynchronous staff education modules, 4-year tracking of student growth metrics (confidence, control, curiosity, concern) and more.
I share this to provide a blueprint for leaders and counsellors alike to understand that, regardless of how well-established your program is, there are always ways to innovate and adjust to the changing landscape in your international school community.
In ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, the author, Pirsig, ultimately concludes that quality is a process, a source of meaning, and an intuitive presence in all aspects of life.
In an attempt to define quality, he says, quality is fundamental yet indefinable; that recognising and seeking quality leads to a richer, more harmonious existence; it requires caring, attention, and meaningful engagement with both activity and object; it exists on the knife-edge between rational, analytical and intuitive, emotional approaches to life. While it cannot be strictly defined, it can be intuitively and somewhat universally recognised, and so it is with counselling. This is not one size-fits-all.
Debating success or excellence in counselling is like debating the greatest athlete in sports: you may differ on who is #1 – be it Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Kobe, Lebron, Curry or Messi, Pele, Ronaldo or Brady, Montana, Manning – but we can all agree on who is in the conversation and why they belong there. Success=wins and/or championships; Metrics=stats – wins, points, goals, touchdowns; Context=eras, supporting casts (teammates, coaches, etc.); Fluidity and Innovation=longevity, impact on the sport, ability to adapt to rule changes and father time.
When counselling offices demonstrate the characteristics of success and contextual understanding, co-create KPI metrics with leadership, consistently innovate and are responsive to the fluid nature of your international school community, success will follow, in the form of community trust, strong school-home and student relationships, student-first advocacy, continuous improvement, and school values alignment. My hope is that this will spark productive conversations with your team and lead to enhanced services in your community. And remember, Amiata Co is always here to offer an experienced, objective, outside perspective to help enhance your program.
Lukas Devlin, Co-Founder, Amiata Co.
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