1. Mobile App — availability and App Store visibility
Question asked: The CounselMore app is not visible on the Apple App Store. Is it available? What about Google Play? And when can Keerthana join a session to talk about the mobile app?
Answer:
There are two different CounselMore mobile apps, and searching the wrong name is the most common reason one appears to be missing.
Counselors — search the App Store for "College Tours by CounselMore." That is the counselor app. Log in with your regular CounselMore credentials. It pulls the College Tours list you built under Settings > Counselor Profile > College Tours, and lets you add schools, tour dates, and notes from your phone while you are on campus. You can dictate notes with your microphone instead of typing.
KB article: https://helpdesk.counselmore.com/college-tours-by-counselmore-mobile-app
Students and parents — search the App Store for "CounselMore." That is the student and parent app, currently at version 3.0.0. Android is not released yet.
One thing that trips people up:
students and parents must register and log in through the web portal at least once before the mobile app will work. Open the counselor's invitation email, click the registration link, complete registration on the web, log in once, and then download the app. Skipping the web step is the usual cause of a student who cannot log in on mobile.
KB article: https://helpdesk.counselmore.com/for-parents-students-counselmore-mobile-app
If you have searched the exact app name and still see nothing, please send a screen recording through the Help button in the app header so we can look at it directly — regional store settings and device OS version both affect what appears.
Keerthana's Study Hall visit has been requested and is on the list.
2. App Tracker — window closes and returns to the wrong place
Question asked: In App Tracker, clicking a college name and then closing the window returns some users to Assignments instead of App Tracker. For some users the list also reorders on return. Not consistent across accounts.
Answer:
Thank you for passing this along. Inconsistent behavior across accounts on the same action is exactly the kind of thing that needs a ticket, because the difference is usually in the path taken to get there rather than in the feature itself.
If this happens to you, please send it in through the Help button in the app header with a screen recording. What our developers need to see:
- Where you started before you opened App Tracker
- The college you clicked
- How you closed the window — the X, the browser back button, or clicking outside the panel
- What the list looked like before and after
The close method matters more than people expect and is frequently the variable that explains why one counselor sees it and another does not.
And to say this plainly: nobody in Study Hall needs to serve as the bug tracking service. Send issues in directly. Every ticket goes to the same place regardless of who submits it, and the recording is worth more than a relayed description.
3. Extracurriculars — counselors using spreadsheets instead of the platform
Question asked: Members are still tracking activities in spreadsheets rather than using the activities fields in the student profile. Any update on the redesign?
Answer:
Here is what exists today, in case some of the spreadsheet use is workaround rather than preference.
Activities live inside the Student Profile. Open any student record and click the pencil icon next to the student's name, then open Participation Information. You will find six separate fields: activities, awards and honors, work experience, responsibilities, volunteering, and athletics. Enter data in whichever fields apply. The trash can icon clears an entry.
Two things counselors often do not realize:
This data builds the Academic Resume. The Student Profile is what generates it. Activities entered here are not stored for their own sake — they populate a deliverable you hand to the family.
You can export it. Click Export to Drive and the Participation Information file is added to the student's Files tab.
KB article: https://helpdesk.counselmore.com/bio-banners-participation-information
Why the export looks the way it does
Some of what gets read as clutter is deliberate, so it is worth explaining the design.
The export displays all entries rather than a filtered selection. That serves two purposes: it is a complete record of everything the student has logged, and it puts the counselor in the position of removing what is not needed for a given use rather than hunting for what is missing. Subtracting from a full record is faster and safer than rebuilding a partial one.
Each activity occupies its own row, and you will see a column labeled Use with. That column exists because a single activity rarely gets described the same way twice.
The version that belongs on a resume is not the version that belongs in an application field, which is not the version that belongs in a scholarship packet. Several description types have to be available to many different counselors working many different ways, and the Use with column is what keeps those variations attached to one activity instead of scattered across separate documents.
On the redesign: the feedback about the interface has been logged and forwarded to the product team, along with the example spreadsheet shared in session. We do not announce release timing until a feature is confirmed and scheduled, so there is no date to give you. When it is scheduled, it will be announced in the app and on the events page.
Development Requests:
That points to how we build generally, and it is worth being specific about the test we apply.
When a request comes in, the first question is not whether it is a good idea. Most of them are. The question is how many counselors would use it, and how often. Something a thousand members would touch every day gets built. Something that solves one practice's particular workflow usually does not — not because it lacks merit, but because the same development hours spent elsewhere would serve far more people.
The second question is whether there is a common solution that gets most of the way there, faster. Often there is.
A field that serves six use cases imperfectly ships in a fraction of the time a purpose-built tool for one use case would take, and it puts something usable in your hands now rather than next season.
And these decisions are not permanent. We watch what members actually do, not only what they ask for. When a request keeps surfacing and the usage data shows the need has grown, that is when it earns the budget. Several features in the platform today started exactly that way.
It is a constant balance of priorities, budget, and time. We would rather tell you plainly where a request sits in that balance than promise something and go quiet. If you are new to the community, ask a returner if they've seen development happen consistently over the years, we think the answer is yes. Please keep the feedback coming and know that we record it all.
Where is the Collaboration Lab?: We take every suggestion submitted through the Help button or email or contact form, under an internal review.
On exporting directly into Common App: this one comes up regularly, and the answer is no, for a reason worth stating plainly. It is not a common denominator problem, and building a direct push into Common App would run against our working relationship with them. We would rather be a good technology neighbor. Your data exports cleanly, ready to use.
4. College notes — AI Assist cleanup suggestion
Question asked: Could AI Assist clean up the rough notes a counselor dictates during a college visit so they read well in the college notes section?
Answer:
This is a product suggestion rather than something available today, and it has been logged and passed to the product team.
Worth noting why the suggestion makes sense: the counselor mobile app lets you dictate notes with your microphone while you are walking a campus, which is the fastest way to capture a visit and also the reason the raw text arrives unpolished. The capture problem is solved. The cleanup step is not.
In the meantime, notes entered in the mobile app sync to College List Notes and Student Research Notes and can be edited from the web portal, where a full keyboard makes tidying them considerably faster. We are moving Ai assisted notes summary into Assignments and believe this request fall under that path way and is eventual.
Seymore - AI Assistant HELP tool
- Seymore is live and in active testing — please use it this week. It sits behind the Help button in the app header.
- The single most useful thing you can do: give a thumbs down on any answer that misses. Every thumbs down is reviewed individually. That is the fastest and most direct way to improve the tool.
- When you flag an answer, we pull the exact question you asked and the response Seymore gave, then trace it back to the underlying knowledge base article and correct the source.
- If a knowledge base video is out of date, thumbs down the answer that pointed you there, or send the article URL to support@counselmore.com.
- Seymore is the first step, not the finish line. The direction is an assistant you tell what you need done — record it, send it, build the list — rather than clicking through to find it yourself.
Mobile App
- Tech Mentor is joining Study Hall to demo the mobile app and take questions live. Aug 21
- The session will be recorded and posted to the knowledge base as a complete video answer.
- Only the screen share is recorded. No attendee faces appear in the recording.
- Please bring every mobile question raised in the group to that session so the recording captures the full set in one place.
- Setup issues are not a Study Hall activity. If you are stuck getting installed or logged in, book a Tech Mentor session: calendly.com/counselmore-meetups/counselmore-meet-with-tech-mentor
- Reminder on demo records: you do not need to pay for anything additional to build a practice student. Set the record's status to Prospect — prospect and archived records do not count toward your active student count. helpdesk.counselmore.com/archived-vs-prospect
- Reminder for students and parents: they must register and log in once through the web portal before the mobile app will work. helpdesk.counselmore.com/for-parents-students-counselmore-mobile-app
Next Meeting on the Dashboard
- Today the Next Meeting field is populated by scheduling integrations — Calendly and Acuity. helpdesk.counselmore.com/settings-dashboard
- The suggestion to make the cell directly editable will not be pursued. The reason is not that it is a bad idea — it is that a broader approach is already in development that would make that specific fix obsolete.
- The direction being built is scheduling-tool independent, so counselors can bring whatever tool they already use rather than being limited to two. A directly editable cell would not be compatible with that approach.
- A separate suggestion has been logged for an additional field to hold meeting information.
- The dashboard itself is also being reworked. The content is right; where it sits on the page and how it reads needs improvement. That work comes first.
- helpdesk.counselmore.com/how-to-connect-your-calendly-account-to-counselmore
Trigger and Stealth Essays
- A screenshot is not needed and will not be accepted. Submit the URL.
- This applies even when you found the requirement inside the Common Application. We still need the URL — from there we can navigate directly to the source ourselves.
- We have purpose-built tools for retrieving and validating this data. The submission screen asks for exactly what we need; follow what the screen asks and let the process work.
- You will see your update in your own account immediately. Keep working — you are not waiting on us.
- On our side, the entry is validated and posted, generally within about 24 hours. Please note we have already updated 1000+ schools
Then do the two things that help everyone else
- Record it in the Counselor Opinions column. This is the most valuable step you can take, and it is the one most counselors skip. Scroll right in your Counselor List, hover over the cell, double-click the eyeball icon, type your note, and save. helpdesk.counselmore.com/college-list-columns-counselor-opinions-tags-hyper-links-college-notes
- Why this column and not a note somewhere else: what you write there stays attached to the college itself. It does not expire with the student, the season, or the application cycle. A colleague working that same school next year reads your note, sees that a stealth essay appeared in the prior cycle, and knows to watch for it again. A stealth requirement that surprised you once becomes something the next counselor anticipates.
- Write it plainly and date it — for example, "Stealth supplemental appeared in the portal after submission, Fall 2025." One sentence is enough. Vague is useless; specific is durable.
- Bring it to the Forum too. The professional Forum is where a live finding travels fastest, while counselors are actively working that school in the current cycle. The Counselor Opinions column is the long memory; the Forum is the real-time alert. Use both — they do different jobs.
- This is the whole mechanism by which we stay ahead of schools that change requirements quietly. No vendor can source this faster than a room full of practicing counselors who write down what they see.
Parent Broadcast — Forum Question
- This refers to the Broadcast Station question raised in the in-app Forum.
- A bug was identified and has been submitted for correction.
- Broadcast Station is found under Settings. helpdesk.counselmore.com/settings-broadcast-messages
Assignment Start Dates
- Suggestion received and submitted.
- Worth understanding before it goes further, because it is not a simple addition: a start date already exists in the counselor portal, and it is doing work. It controls when an assignment row turns on and becomes visible in the student's portal.
- That is the counselor's release valve. It is how you meter the work out — opening assignments only when the student is ready for them, rather than handing over the full curriculum on day one.
- The request is to display that date to the student. Doing so requires the assignment row to already be visible, which means every assignment is open from the start. The date would be shown, and the metering would be gone.
- The counselor would be trading the ability to control the pace for the ability to show a date. That trade is invisible to most people asking, because the staging works quietly — you only notice it if it stops.
- The version under consideration is a separate, display-only date that appears on a row after it has turned on, telling a student "begin this now" on work they can already see. The existing field keeps controlling visibility. Both behaviors survive.
- It is not likely that the suggestion will be taken up. We must design for a common denominator of users. And when we cannot we offer customized development to individual users. So in the case when a user would want this specific functionality we could deliver that to that one individual. This request seems much more like a project mapping request. And that view will exist soon under the calendar view already existing in the app.
1. How does CounselMore handle "stealth" essays that only appear once you're inside a school's own portal?
Good example, and worth clarifying the vocabulary here because it changes how you handle it.
CounselMore coined the terms "trigger essay" and "stealth essay" back in 2016, and both are covered in your College Readiness Curriculum (Assignment 5A/5B, Supplemental Essays: Trigger & Stealth Awareness). They describe two related but distinct problems:
-
Trigger essay: An essay that appears because of an action the student takes inside Common App — checking a scholarship interest box, selecting a major, indicating honors college interest. It's triggered by student behavior.
-
Stealth essay: An essay that isn't listed on Common App at all — it only surfaces once a student logs into that school's own applicant portal after submitting. It's hidden until you go looking for it, the way the Santa Clara example works: no Common App listing, but an optional essay waiting inside the portal.
Both are "surprise" essays. The difference is where they're hiding.
How to collect and track these:
- When a student or you discovers a stealth or trigger essay, add it to the school's essay document in Google Drive with a header noting which type it is and the date it appeared.
- Generate an assignment in App Tracker for that school so the student drafts it from existing B-roll material rather than starting cold.
- Add the discovery to that school's Counselor Opinions column in College List. This is the step that turns a one-off discovery into something the whole CounselMore community benefits from.
Using the Counselor Opinions column — the workflow shown in the screenshot (right):
- From College Data Menu, open the school's record.
- Post your note in Counselor Opinions — dated, specific, and short (see the Yale example: "Yale dropped Why Us essay – June 2026").
- Once posted, use Broadcast Station (Messaging → Broadcast) to filter for every student on your roster applying to that school and send a quick alert. This is the fastest way to get a mid-cycle change in front of every affected family at once, rather than checking each App Tracker row individually.
A community norm worth repeating to your group: the Professional Forum under Help is for asking questions. If a school-specific, time-sensitive detail gets shared there in the course of a conversation — a dropped essay, a changed deadline — copy that detail over to the Counselor Opinions column for that school so it's captured where the rest of the community will actually find it later. CounselMore isn't going to pre-decide what belongs in the Forum versus the Opinions column; that judgment call sits with the counselor who has the information. If you want the technology to do more of that sorting automatically, that's exactly the kind of feedback the AI Assistant team wants to hear.
2. Should CounselMore add a data field for a college's AI usage policy — maybe near the essay prompt column?
Not yet, and here's the reasoning so you can pass it along if it comes up again.
CounselMore doesn't take on responsibility for a new data field the moment someone identifies it as a good idea. We wait until user behavior — not just verbal requests — shows it's warranted. Counselors often say a new field would be useful in the abstract, but that doesn't always translate into consistent use once it exists.
Right now, the number of colleges publishing a formal AI usage policy for applicants is still small — comparable to how few schools were using the SAR/STAR-style reporting formats in their early days. A handful of schools moving on something isn't the same as an ecosystem-wide need. We balance the request against actual behavior before committing engineering time to a new column, so that the fields we do add are ones counselors will actually rely on rather than ones that sit empty.
3. Can we get a filter for UK schools, Canadian schools, or English-speaking international schools generally?
You already have this. In College List, click Filters → Location — you can filter by country and region today, including international options.
Longer term, this kind of search is also where the AI Assistant (accessible from the Help button) is headed. Right now it's built to answer questions about CounselMore's features and functionality. Over time it will grow to help with tasks like this — searching for schools by criteria and surfacing recommendations — but that capability isn't live yet. If you're using the AI Assistant today, keep sending feedback on it; that usage is exactly what will shape what it does next.
4. member can't log into her demo student account to see what students actually see — can someone attend Study Hall and walk us all through?
Yes — a Tech Mentor will be at the next Study Hall specifically to work through this with Louise and gather any related feedback on the mobile app from the group. In the meantime, the feature she's after is "Log in as Student," available from inside any student record — it's the fastest way to preview the portal exactly as a student sees it before granting real access.
5. The résumé/activities export only shows the SAT Math score, not Reading/Writing.
Thank you for flagging this — noted. The Tech Mentor will gather the full detail on this at the next Study Hall meeting so it gets routed to the right place. No timeline to share yet; we'll follow up once there's something concrete to report.
Have a question that didn't make this list? Bring it to Friday Study Hall or drop it in the Professional Forum under Help, and it'll find its way into the next round of answers.