Back-to-School Checklist for Counselors

Another school year is beginning! ☀️ As you plan for the upcoming school year, we'd like to share some helpful back-to-school housekeeping items to help you prepare (for counselors who use Scoir and counselors who don't).

Here's what we cover in this blog post: 

• Back-to-School Checklist for Counselors (whether or not your school uses Scoir)
• Back-to-School Checklist for Scoir Counselors (housekeeping and whatnot for counselors who use Scoir)

Back-to-School Checklist for Counselors

There's a lot to manage behind the scenes before students enter the halls again! While we know every counselor and school is different, we put together this list of general housekeeping tasks to help you make sure you've crossed all your t's and dotted all the i's.

1. Complete Student Class Schedules & General Housekeeping ☑️

Before students walk back through your doors, take time to...

• Review and finalize class schedules. Are there any conflicts that need to be resolved? And last-minute changes needed?
• Enroll new students and gather any academic or personal background information that can help support their transition
• Double-check transcripts for accuracy, especially for seniors
• Flag students with special circumstances (IEPs, 504s, transfers, etc.) who may need additional support
• Clean up student records in your system so you’re working from the most accurate information possible

2. Review Your Digital Tools & System Setup 💻

Regardless of the system you use to manage your caseload, now’s a great time to reset and organize. This may include:

• Updating class rosters and assigning caseloads

• Archiving last year’s documentation and communications

• Organizing your shared drives, folders, and naming conventions

• Setting up or revisiting your appointment scheduling tools

• Reviewing or creating tracking systems to help you stay on top of meetings, interventions, and follow-ups

3. Plan Out the Year 🗓️

This might mean:

• Drafting a high-level calendar of college, career, and academic events
• Reviewing or updating your timeline for junior and senior college planning
• Coordinating with admin and teachers on SEL and advisory programming
• Preparing grade-level guidance lessons or counselor classroom visits
• Drafting “welcome back” emails or newsletters to families and students
• Updating your grade-level lesson plans and making updates based on admissions trends

4. Prepare to Connect with Staff & Families ☎️

A new school year is a great opportunity to reconnect and realign with your school community. Here are some things to consider:

• Meet with grade-level teams and school leadership
• Connect with your school’s psychologist(s), social worker(s), or special education team to ensure support plans are in place
• Reach out proactively with resources for families of students (think information about application fee waivers, SAT/ACT fee waivers, free test prep programs, the FAFSA, etc.)

5. Do a Personal Check-In 📝

And finally, don’t forget to check in with yourself. Consider:

• Attending professional development or counselor planning sessions
• Subscribing to the Scoir blog 😉 We share all kinds of helpful content for students, families, and counselors
• Reviewing any changes to policies, graduation requirements, or testing guidelines
• Reflecting on what worked last year, and what you might want to do differently this year
• Reading up on state accountability measures and postsecondary data reporting
• Revisiting your college admissions data from last year to tailor your 1:1 meetings this fall

You've got this! The work you're doing is changing lives 💙 Thank you for all that you do!

Next, we'll walk through back-to-school to-dos for counselors who use Scoir with their students.

Scoir's Back-to-School Checklist

Completing this checklist will help to ensure you are prepared to use Scoir for your college and career-bound students this school year!

Want a printer-friendly version to refer to? Check out this PDF of the items we cover in this blog post. 

There are two main categories of to-dos:

1. Housekeeping

2. Student Engagement

✅ Housekeeping

Every year, your Scoir instance will likely need a cleaning before the school year starts. Here are the things we recommend checking in on:

1. Configure your School Account & Settings

First, take a pass at your settings, including School Reports, Letters of Recommendation, College Lists, and Acceptance Data. If this is your first year with school, go through this list to ensure your Scoir instance is configured how you want it.

✅ You'll want to enable Application Materials, if you haven’t already, and update your documents and templates, especially School Reports. You'll want to make sure everything is up-to-date

✅ Determine when students should gain access to the PrinciplesYou Character Assessment. We recommend Sophomore year!

✅ Review our Scoir AI Playbook and consider updating your Balanced Lists & Admission Intelligence Settings to meet your school’s needs

2. Add/Update your data in Data Management

This is a great chance to ensure your student roster, transcripts, and faculty are up to date in Scoir.

✅ Import SAT/ACT Score Reports. This information helps students and parents understand acceptance likelihood and powers Scattergrams!

✅ Update GPAs along with your Student Roster. Schools not syncing with Clever or ClassLink can easily bulk-upload GPAs!

3. Invite new Faculty and Assign Counselors to students

Assigning Counselors ensures Students can add colleges to their My Colleges lists! Don't forget to delete any faculty members who have left!

4. Configure your Calendar settings and availability for Visits and Office Hours

Configure your Calendar settings and availability for Visits and Office Hours now so you don't have to think about it again during the busy school year.

5. Review published plans, tasks, and forms for the new grade levels

Rather than manually creating and assigning individual tasks for students each year, use Plans to create, edit, publish, and repurpose a plan of recurring Tasks and Forms that are automatically assigned and can be reused year-over-year.

5. Stay up-to-date on Scoir training

We're always improving Scoir! Review the training videos below, and ensure you're signed up for the What’s New in Scoir email list so you will be informed of all the new features Scoir has as we head into the Fall.

✅ Review our Online Training Library and share it with any new counselors

✅ Bookmark the Scoir Help Center where you can easily find step by step instructions on all things Scoir

Rolling out Scoir to new students this fall? Our Scoir Day Guidelines provide a lesson plan for the day you introduce your students to Scoir.

✅ Student Engagement

Scoir has handy features to help you save time on communications, curriculum building, and task management with students and parents/guardians. 

1. Review Scoir’s College & Career Readiness Curriculum

It includes comprehensive, ASCA-compliant lesson plans for grades 6-12! Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for the link.

2. Explore our Communication Tools

See what we released over the summer on the What's New in Scoir blog, or check out the links below.

✅ Advanced and Scheduled Email

✅ Subscribe to Scoir Library categories for your students

✅ Explore the School Drive to organize and share resources with students and families

3. Refamiliarize yourself with the Counselor Dashboard

You’ll always have the Helpful Links section on your Dashboard on the right-hand side of the main Scoir screen!

4. Reintroduce (or roll out for the first time) Scoir to your students

Ensure students log in using their existing Scoir accounts. You can find their registered email on the Student Roster.

✅ Share Class Checklists with your students

✅ Encourage students and parents/guardians to download the Scoir app

✅ Re-invite unregistered students

6. Follow Scoir on Instagram and subscribe to our podcast

...and encourage your students to do the same! We share helpful tips and content for students throughout the school year on Instagram and tidbits for counselors and students on our podcast!

Here are our some of our favorites:

• Navigating College Choices: Counselor Tips for Student and Parent/Guardian Harmony
• 5 Essential To-Dos Before Junior Year
• 5 Essential To-Dos Before Senior Year

Want to learn more about how to use Scoir to save time on admin so you can spend more time supporting students? Check out this blog post next: How to Use Scoir to Optimize Your Counseling Responsibilities.

We wish you a smooth start to the new year, and feel free to connect with your Customer Success Manager with any questions! 🙂 💙

If you don't use Scoir yet, get in touch with our team. We'd love to show you how Scoir can help your school!

This article was originally published on July 31, 2020. It was updated on July 28, 2025 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.