<p>SAVE YOUR MONEY.</p>
<p>I agree with all the other posters - these people will not tell you anything that you can’t find out for free with a little time and effort.</p>
<p>In my nephew’s case, he would have gone with a lot of APs because it was the thing to do at his school. He would have been told that in order to get into those top schools he would have needed 10+ APs. He probably would have struggled through them, getting mostly Bs. But instead he was advised to take courses which were at the right level for him, and he did very well and was a lot less stressed. Without the consultant, his parents would probably have advised to do so at some point, but I think he would have worried through out Junior year if he would have been at a disadvantage. </p>
<p>In a sense, his consultant was his big cheerleader, kind of like a personal trainer. Do you need a personal trainer to exercise? Could you get better result?</p>
<p>This time around, I don’t think a counselor would have been very helpful. However, with my second son, I had no idea what I was doing with performing arts programs and neither did the school guidance counselors. Someone like Soozievt would have made life much easier in the app process. I can’t even read the archives of the MT sections of this forum without getting jealous as I was making the very mistakes discussed at that time because I simply did not know. So when your student is interested in some niche area of college, I think it does definitely pay to get a person to help you navigate.</p>
<p>This year, my son’s school got abysmal results for those kids who usually get into the highly selective schools, which I define very loosely as those that accept less than 1/3 of their applicants. I don’t think 1/3 of the kids at his school got accepted to such school which is pretty close to the case most years. I’ve been hearing a lot of dissatisfied, upset, disappointed talk from parents who used services, some of them very expensive. Yes, the kids did get into colleges, but they did not exceed expectation. That is really the key when evaluating the cost of these counselors and I know here at this schools, those families who used them did not get results exceeding expectations overall. I wish we could get some stats on this but the GCs at the school are rarely told when there are private counselors involved, and many parents keep it very quiet because there is some resentment from others when a whiff of this is detected.</p>
<p>"Take the highest level you feel comfortable in your core subjects, and pick an elective you find interesting. What more needs to be discussed? "</p>
<p>My first two kids chose all Honors and AP courses, in every subject available. What needs to be discussed about that? Nothing.</p>
<p>My third kid decided he “felt comfortable” in the easiest courses he could get away with taking, essentially. One can distinguish between “comfort” and immature laziness.</p>
<p>Everyone recognizes that taking and succeeding at all the hardest courses raises no objection, and a schedule consisting solely of all the easiest courses raises concerns regarding evaluated “strength of schedule”. The question is what point in between these extremes is appropriate, given a particular kid and what is/ has been available to them. The answer is not the same for every kid, due to their varying circumstances. So for example oldfort’s nephew had unavoidably not been on track to take those courses. My kid had no such excuse. His guidance counselor was telling him those choices were ok, which did not sound right to me but in the end I deferred. His results suggest the counselor was wrong, in the end. Maybe someone else, saying the right things as an “expert”, could have motivated him to make better choices, and work harder too.</p>
<p>I wish I’d retained an independent, qualified and knowedgable third party, with experience on the other side of the admissions table at similar schools to those he applied to, to get another informed opinion about how what he was proposing to do would actually be perceived. Because then even if the results turned out the same, I would not be feeling now that I didn’t do everything I could have done to help.</p>
<p>Of course if he remains equally immature then the state school he will be attending is possibly the best choice for him. But one hopes he will grow up and get a goal at some point soon. Which perhaps would be more likely in the company of a cohort of motivated students, who would by the way more closely match his SAT scores.</p>
<p>“I am also going to point out that a friend of mine whose husband had passed away but had left money for the kids in separate accounts was given wrong advice from a college advisor. She lost out on the opportunity to qualify for financial assistance.”</p>
<p>I also had a similar situation with an acquaintance; the local HS guidance counselor advised said parent that her son should forego a HUGE merit scholarship to Tulane because it was “in New Orleans, which is gross”…</p>
<p>I was infuriated but had no say in this matter…</p>
<p>You don’t think that this said widow could have used the help of someone outside of the son’s HS? now she’s paying full fare at a similar southern private…did not get FA…</p>
<p>monydad - boys tend to mature later than girls. If he does well in college, he could always transfer. This time around, it will be all up to him.</p>
<p>If we push too hard, we think we are being too much of helicopter parents. If we step back, we wish we could have done more, especially when things don’t work out as well as it could have.</p>
<p>Agreed, monydad - but it’s not that you would have received advice you couldn’t have figured out on your own. You would have paid for the neutral observer to make the comments. NNTAWWT, of course.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would necessary be a neutral observer, some of those counselors work with (pay for those) consultants who have read for some of those colleges. </p>
<p>What’s NNTAWWT?</p>
<p>OP: i think a counselor might be helpful but wait until junior year. here are a few items that might be helpful:</p>
<p>1) take your kid on college tours when he’s a sophomore so he’ll know what it looks like, what he’s working for in that all important junior year of high school.</p>
<p>2) kill your tv (and since you have a boy, kill any video games) good luck monitoring fb and text use when he should be studying</p>
<p>3) to get in to hyps he’ll need 2 things: a) a near 4.0 and a SAT north of 2100 and b) be exceptional at 1 thing (math, music, sport, etc.)…exceptional!</p>
<p>NTTAWWT – not that there’s anything wrong with that. Indeed, having an “outsider” say certain things was extremely valuable. It was worth every penny to prevent us from killing one another, and I’m only partially kidding.</p>
<p>Had I knew there are this kind of service out there, I would have definitely used one. I would have more hairs, a better relationship with kids, and they might even got into an IVY league school. Wait, we might even get more than 100K a year FA. </p>
<p>Sure, we might have saved $5K fees without using a consultant. But look at what we missed out.</p>
<p>Just a reminder, I wrote before that erroneous financial advice from a college counselor cost my friend possible aid for her son so like any advisor regarding money, you still need to do some of your own homework.</p>
<p>Clearly, you can do it yourself. All you need is time and direction. But, its a lot of time, IMHO, to do it right. I started reading books about college search and admissions before my son went to public HS. I encouraged him to start the IB diploma track in his HS, when everyone was warning him how difficult it would be. (He is sufficiently a “self-starter” that it did not take much encouragement.) I explained to him that what he does determines the choices that he will have later on. I didn’t push him to take any particular ECs, but I did encourage him to eventually seek leadership roles in the ECs that he had chosen (and the leadership roles he did seek were middling ones). He took a lot of non-Honors classes because they were related to one of his EC interests (music), which affected his class standing. His summers were largely spent working on his EC interests. I kept track of his ECs (awards, roles and most importantly hours spent) which made his filling out the apps much easier. I found that he routinely underestimated by about 50% the amount of time he spent on his ECs.</p>
<p>I did look into private counselors, but they were cost-prohibitive (at least for most of the ones I looked at). So I did it myself. I probably spent hundreds of dollars on books (the library does not like you to mark them up) and many hundreds of hours in internet research (especially CC). Our HS guidance counselor was good, but she clearly had her hands full with a lot of the other students and we used her mostly to bounce ideas off of. His HS also had a good Naviance site which gave me far better information about reach/match/safety schools than USNews could (but I did use USNews). We did use a local independant counselor in the Fall of senior year for about an hour, but I found her to be relatively worthless. All in all, his results were about what I expected.</p>
<p>I have helped several HS students out with the college search and the application process. I am often amazed at how little their parents know about the process. One parent missed not one, but two SAT sign-up dates and another’s D wanted to apply to an elite-type school and was unaware of the necessity for SAT IIs for that college. The problem is that parents are not advised by the GCs about what may need to be done until late April of junior year. At that point, they have missed any opportunity to visit colleges during Spring Break (a much better time than Summer, IMO) and are periously close to missing the final round of Spring SAT/SAT IIs or ACTs. Most parents think like mine did, and assume that Fall of senior year will be adequate time to start the process. At that point, the cake is baked and iced, and the only thing you may get to change are the colors of the spinkles you put on top.</p>
<p>I know this is a thread for parents, but since I just went through the “process” I am hoping you would allow my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Why are you all doing this to your kids? </p>
<p>It was MY decisions that went into if I applied to college, where I applied to college, even how I did in my classes and tests. Yes, I did have the financial talk with my folks. I am not going to my next year’s school for free. I am paying a percentage of the costs each year, so I “own” my investment, my choice. No one outside of my public hs counselor ( my amazingly wonderful but overloaded counselor was always supportive and thoughtful, never pushy) advised me on anything. My extracurriculars were mine to choose, my essays were mine from beginning to end. I did my own editing. Why can’t you TRUST YOUR CHILD that they can make their own futures? I have a cousin whose parents are going the same route many of you are doing or contemplating. She is miserable. She is really not part of the process. She is dictated to and wanting to please her parents she is going along but you know what, her smile is gone, she feels the pressure- FROM HER PARENTS. You bet she looks forward to going away to college in the next couple of years, she thinks it will be her relief from being hounded over what she needs to do to “tapdance” her heart out to college admissions at the college of her PARENT’S CHOICE. The parents can’t see beyond their dreams for her. She IS smart and she deserves the right to make her own choices and the trust that she can present herself honestly for who she really is and not feel packaged. It is hurting her last couple of years with the parents she loves. Can’t you just let us kids be who we are and trust that the Admissions Gods can see it as good?</p>
<p>Bluegrassgrl - are you happy? Are you pleased with your outcome? If it’s yes, then good for you. You should be pleased. Your cousin maybe miserable, but it’s not necessarily the case with other kids. As I am typing right now, my younger daughter is working on her common appl sitting next to me. Every once in a while, she would ask me about an award she has received few years back, or ask me how many hours she spends on a particular activity. She is working on her application because her private counselor wants to see it by tonight. </p>
<p>I always love it when kids get on parents case because they think because it worked for them then it must be universally correct(or wrong). I wished both of my kids were exactly the same, so I could re-use the same parenting technic over and over again. Life would be easier. </p>
<p>Bluegrassgrl - just for your info, both of my kids are very happy, confident people. The older one just graduated from college, and she even managed to get a job on her own.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why- would an Ivy league school have been a better outcome than Stanford and the University of Chicago? Dad II - this is what raises hackles about your posts. Your kids HIT THE JACKPOT TWICE. (As did mine.) You couldn’t have done “better.” Just not possible.</p>
<p>Yup, I am happy. I did it my way and it came out as I hoped it would. I have no doubt that some parent/ child combination using consultants can come out well. I am hoping that some of the parents who MAY be able to recognize some of what my cousin feels and is experiencing might take a step back and realize it isn’t just the money cost that needs to be considered but the relationship cost. Not every kid fits into the situation as you describe for your own. When my Aunt talks to my Dad about their current happenings with their paid consultant I never hear my cousin’s name or viewpoint being mentioned (the conversations have not been secretive, it happens every time my Aunt comes over and has become just about the only thing she talks about). That is what caught my attention. Where is “Sally” in all this? She is the kid in the background who is definitely smart and capable and one-on-one is developing some questions in her mind like: If I do get accepted to “the school” is it really me who they accepted or someone sort of like me, but slightly manufactured?<br>
Will I disappoint my parents if I don’t get in, especially after they have spent all this money (thousands in this case).
Then we have fun (to relieve the stress) talking about the next step is that the Consultant continues to help out in college- 'cause you know getting into the right master’s program is next. </p>
<p>I know people hire consultants. I know of one Mom who was trying to convince my Mom to make use of a consultant for my older sibling. Both those parents and the kid seemed good with the whole thing. </p>
<p>I am just saying, be sensitive to how you do it, if at all. Don’t let the real cost be the relationship with the kids who love you. We are all individuals. Some personalities will be fine with it and some may be neutral and some it may not be a good way to go.
My own family let us do it own our own. It worked out and I am not any more special then any of your own kids. It’s a free country. If you want to hire a consultant, go ahead. Just don’t lose sight of those kids you said you loved for who they are.</p>
<p>Sorry for the typos!</p>
<p>Bluegrassgrl- it is a shame about your cousin, but I think it would still be the same with or without a private counselor, your aunt would still be driving it. Our daughter’s counselor works with her, he always asks her what she wants. Sometimes when I think he is pushing too hard (like asking her to take SAT one more time senior year), I told him to back off. </p>
<p>I am sure D1 could manage on her own to get her applications done, but for some of tippy top schools, I think it’s helpful to have someone who is more experienced to guide the way. She is still doing everything she wants to do, but just a bit more focused on certain ECs.</p>
<p>PG, you have no sense of humor. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nothing!!!</p>
<p>That was exactly my point - My kids went to great schools of their choice. These expensive consultants might not do any better both in terms of admission and FA.</p>