<p>The main thing I got out of the article is that the use of consultants is becomng much more common. Most of the examples of the consultants' advice mentioned in the article did not seem like rocket science to me. </p>
<p>College consultants: Price of admission
More parents pay to give applicants an edge.</p>
<p>By Kathy Boccella</p>
<p>Inquirer Staff Writer
The season of college admissions is upon us, and savvy parents know that what's at stake here is nothing less than their child's Entire Future.</p>
<p>That explains why families are shelling out thousands of dollars to people such as Joan Koven of Haverford, a former marketing manager turned college consultant who guides kids through the increasingly competitive and uncertain admissions experience.</p>
<p>Koven helps students compile lists of target schools, tells them which entrance exams to take, coaches them through practice interviews, edits their essays, and basically holds their hands - as well as their parents' - through the entire agonizing process....</p>
<p>I really wonder whether a college consultant is needed to gain admissions to West Virginia, Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., and the University of Tampa.</p>
<p>Seems like a big ol' waste of money to me, but fortunately, it is not my money being wasted! ;)</p>
<p>Allmusic - From the article, it sounded like the consultant advised the student against colleges she had in mind which were too selective for her, and brought West Virginia, Lynn, Tampa to her attention. I guess this is a useful function on the part of the counselor, if the student and her parents couldn't find schools she liked and could get accepted into without professional help.</p>
<p>There are 8 thumbnail sketches of recent applicants in the 2008 USN&WR issue. Three of them used consultants. Two of them called it their "best move", and the other referred to the hire as his "ace-in-the-hole".
I think the use of consultants is much more pervasive than I had thought.</p>
<p>I think consultants can be very effective for a lot of families. You have to keep in mind that parents and students who frequent sites like CC and others represent a miniscule sliver of college candidates. For the average person, the process can be very confusing and time consuming. Look at how much time some people spend on CC. If a consultant can direct a kid to even a single scholarship that he/she would not have otherwise been in the running for, the service pays for itself.</p>
<p>If we look at the plumbing strand (don't ask if you haven't read it, but it is funny) we can see that some of us are do-it-yourself and some hire consultants.</p>
<p>I found college research and the whole process so fascinating that I actually "advised" many friends of our kids. A bunch of them are in schools I brought to their attention. </p>
<p>However, I am hopeless at computers. Without H setting everything up for me, I don't I'd be talking to you now.</p>
<p>Those things that are easy for us are usually intuitive. The other things feel like talking a foreign language. I can see why families would hire consultants.</p>
<p>Another example - When my daughter was in high school and she and her friends were getting ready for proms, I told them that if they wanted someone to proofread an essay or help them with chemistry or math hw, I would be glad to do it, but if they needed someone to do their hair or their makeup, they needed to find one of the other moms. I am just not very talented in that area.</p>
<p>What worried me about that article was the implication that having a consultant was becoming the norm. It reminded me a comment awhile ago by someone else on this forum who talked about how her child's school changed once afterschool tutoring became the norm. SHe called it a breaking point, and noted that if HALF the kids in your child's class have already seen the math before at their afterschool tutoring center, then your child automatically starts out in the bottom half of the class. </p>
<p>I'm more worried about these consultants now that they're no longer considered the province of fringe lunatics. I'd be more concerned if I knew that my neighbors were all using them and that my child therefore might be disadvantaged -- than I would be if I knew that weird wealthy people in NYC were using them. </p>
<p>I was also curious about the statement by the counselor at Bryn Mawr who spoke about 'fingerprints' on the applications by the consultants. I would have liked to known what tipped her off -- was it something as blatant as someone else writing the essay or something more subtle? Awhile ago I read that book by Janet Wissner-Gross who packages students for a living, and I remember thinking some of her advice sounded kind of wacky (If you have a lazy kid who's mostly sat around for four years doing nothing, have him take some digital pictures then convince your friend who works at the bank to hang them up in the lobby, then convince someone else to review your son's "photography exhibit" in a local newspaper, then submit this to colleges so that your son is no longer a slouch, now he's a photographer). I'm wondering if this is the sort of weirdo advice that an admissions person can spot a mile away. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>The kind of hoodwinkery described in the last post is just maddening. There are kids who are legitimate photographers, and their work is being compromised by these liars like the one described above. A slouch is a slouch, and I hope the adcoms could see right through that (although I doubt it).</p>
<p>Well, some people who grow up to be wonderful and contribute amazing things daydream their adolescence away. (Charles Darwin's father was convinced that he would never amount to anything and almost didn't pay for his journey on the Beagle.)</p>
<p>I wish there was a way to say "I love to daydream" or "I was so anxious I watched way too much TV" and have it be alright because the kid tells the adcom what s/he wanted to do.</p>
<p>I spent my adolescence reading. Doetoyevksy, Stendhal, Satre's philosophy, Gide, Rimbaud. Omnivore for literature. I would have had difficulty mustering up EC's kids need now. Since I went on to earn honors in the English dept. I graduated from and a PhD in English this was probably an appropriate activity.</p>
<p>Momtszie, I'm sure there is some subset of so-called consultants that stoop to the depths you describe, but that's very unlikely to be the norm. As for being at a disadvantage if others use consultants and you don't - I don't think so. At the end of the day, those consultants can't do anything more than the parent or student can do for themselves. However, people hire consultants because they either don't want to or can't do for themselves. I'm very confident that a student using a consultant would have no advantage over most of the parents and students learning and working their way through the process using resources such as CC.</p>
<p>Momzie, a friend gave me that book -- Gross is a nutjob. I read the whole book because it was actually funny. I was always amazed that she would top herself with one crazy and deceitful move after another. I kept imagining how all her son's teachers must have had a huge celebration the day he graduated & they were free from her annoying manipulation.</p>
<p>There's a consultant in Fairfield County, Connecticut (former headmaster of a prep school) who recently advertised that as part of his fee, he would place personal phone calls to regional admissions officers of colleges. Doesn't that seem unethical? Would colleges be happy to hear from a paid consultant?</p>
<p>I've read that colleges only want to deal with HS GCs and it would be a negative for a paid counselor to be involved directly with the admissions office. </p>
<p>Only 2 of my friends used paid consultants, as far as I know. One had had a bad admissions experience with D #1 and didn't trust herself with D #2. The other grew up in a welthy CT family and that's just what people did.</p>
<p>I'm guessing most folks in VT are do-it-yourselfers, but I've helped numerous people here expand their horizons beyond the NE, because too often the GCs only mention local schools.</p>
<p>This is a true story, although I cannot say for certain how much money changed hands....</p>
<p>Girl: fancy schmantzy prep school. Good solid B-B+ student. Scores in the high 600's. Rejected everywhere she applied ( all top 30 or so schools).</p>
<p>Parents hire some college consultant in CT, who manages to get this girl admitted (in MAY, well after deadlines and waitlists) to a number of LACs in the 25-50 kind of ranking. I think one of them is one who rejected her outright in the beginning.</p>
<p>So OBVIOUSLY, this college consultant consulted the college adcoms directly.</p>
<p>I wouldn't have believed this stuff as anything more than folklore, but I know for a fact that this one is true.</p>
<p>I'm not suprised at all that more and more people are using College consultants. I found the college admissions process fascinating and wouldn't consider handing that off to someone else. But like mathmom said, there are other things that I not only am not good at but that I really dislike doing and it's worth money for me to have someone else deal with it. </p>
<p>Another analogy is planning a trip. I'm planning a trip to China in April so we can visit our daughter. An easy option would be to book a tour for some of the areas I want to see. However, I am enjoying researching the areas and while we will probably hire tour guides for certain places, I love picking out the places to stay and making lists of things to do. For me, the process of trip planning is part of the enjoyment of the trip. </p>
<p>When I was researching colleges for my kids I looked for Colleges that had certain majors, suburban or rural locations, Academic criteria, etc. After I narrowed down the search a bit, I would go over the information with my kids and see what they thought. That usually led to them suggesting other schools and we would look for more info about them. I loved doing that with each of my kids and the thought of unknown possiblities made the college search so much fun. I couldn't imagine turning that over to someone else - and paying them for it! Now, the nagging to get the applications in, that might be worth a certain amount. I wonder if I could sub-contract that part for my #3 child?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Parents hire some college consultant in CT, who manages to get this girl admitted (in MAY, well after deadlines and waitlists) to a number of LACs in the 25-50 kind of ranking. I think one of them is one who rejected her outright in the beginning.<<</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>This seems more a case of schools scrambling to fill gaps created by a lower than ususal yield - in which case the regular rules are off and the school might be perfectly willing, even eager, to talk to some private consultant or anybody else shopping around a reasonably-qualified warm body.</p>
<p>I think the more meaningful question would be how well connected are the private consultants and how much influence do they wield during the regualr admissions process? (And I don't know the answer).</p>
<p>These were not podunka low rated schools, but ones that obstensibly accept under 35% of applicants, have waiting lists, and no shortage of qualified students to choose from! Remember...one school had rejected her already, only to accept her after this consultant was hired, who contacted the school.</p>
<p>I think there is lots more of this going on than we realize.</p>
<p>My first reaction to Allmusic's story is "eewww, gross." But I could tell the same story about a kid from a fancy private school, and the only difference would be that her private school worked the magic, not a private counselor. What difference does that make, really? If parents pay $25,000/year tuition to a private school which has gold-standard college counselling bundled in to the package of services that comes with enrollment, vs. paying an independent consultant for services a different school is not offering? </p>
<p>Why should that make a definitive difference to colleges? Sure, school GCs need to be honest with admissions staff, because they have to protect their credibility for next year's class, but the same ought to be true of a private counselor, too. Unlike school counselors, private counselors can't help out colleges by subtly sorting out how 20 or 30 applicants from the same school compare to one another. But that's not very relevant in May.</p>
<p>I love the ideal of a level playing field for all applicants, no matter what their background. But in reality there is no such thing. No matter how neutral the rules, sophisticated families and sophisticated high schools will have at least some edge. What's wrong with an unsophisticated family whose high school doesn't provide that kind of help getting it somewhere else? And if colleges will take calls from high school GCs or principals, why not take them from someone who may be equally, if not more, respected and respectable?</p>