Congrats to your daughter for doing it all on her own. I've found that to be the exception rather than the rule.
As far as having a teacher or counselor at the high school assist your child, I would describe our experience as "good f'ing luck". While my daughter got some quality recommendations letters from a couple teachers, the odds of getting essay help from the English teachers were slim to none. They can barely grade the papers they assign as homework. It took my daughter's counselor over two months to submit my daughters grades to the Common App and she did it at the very last minute, which you can imagine was very stressful. We had to get the principal involved to get it done. We got zero assistance from my daughter's counselor with any part of the college process. Our public school has a fairly good academic reputation, but the vast majority of teachers are LAZY and the counselors are worthless. The students are held to a much higher standard than the teachers. Our principal dresses like a bag lady.
Thankfully we found a counselor from a private school that was amazing.
