At one time (forty or so years back) this was definitely so. I used to say that the closest I heard to college counseling was the obiter dictum of one of the secretaries that you needed a 1200 combined SAT to get into Notre Dame. The salutatorian of the class ahead of mine got into Princeton, deferred a year, and I don't know who put the idea in his head, but probably nobody at the school. Most of my classmates went to state schools--generally in-state, a few promising jocks elsewhere. I went to a local private university that offered some money, knowing no way to distinguish it from any other school.