College counselors regard themselves as teachers and educators, but they are something else as well. They are links between the location of childhood and the larger, more risky terrain of first adulthood. College counselors prepare students for an actual, not merely figurative, journey, the prospect of which fill students and their parents with both excitement and fear. Every aspect of what college counselors do raises explicitly the moral issue that classroom teachers address usually only implicitly; self-knowledge and its consequences, critical judgment of the world around one, and discovery of one's own values within the ethical confusions that characterize culture are all included in the work of the college counselor. Clarification of these issues is made possible by careful description and delineation of the different roles that college counselors play in their complicated work. This article describes and discusses the four main roles of college counselors: document professors, advisors, counselors, and advocates. Each of these roles carries different skills. If college counselors give a clear account of themselves, particularly in their roles as counselors and advocates, if they can demonstrate the essential integrity of the college counselor's work, then they shall have fulfilled successfully that necessity for ethical clarity and appropriateness that must be at the core of all educators' work. [This article was reprinted in this 2006 issue of "Journal of College Admission." For the original indexing of this article in "Journal of College Admission" n118 p27-31 Win 1988, see EJ369978.]