<p>Hi, I am completely overwhelmed by the college application process so I would like to hire a private college admissions consultant. I have a hard time learning on-line so I would prefer being able to meet with them in person. I live near the Seattle, Washington area. Does anyone have recommendations of any good college admissions consultants?</p>
<p>College Confidential, taken with a grain of salt, will better serve you than overpriced “college consultants.” Honestly imagine the type of person that “consultant” was in high school and college. CC is better and free.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t waste the rather large sum of money that you may need to come up with. The application process is pretty straightforward if you are disciplined. The common app can be filled out in as little as one day. You need to be disciplined about the supplementary applications to separate colleges. Your Guidance counselor and teachers should be able to get your letters of recommendation and other documents ready in time. The main effort that you will need to exert is on the essays and the supplementary applications.</p>
<p>I doubt that any frequent poster on College Confidential would choose to use a college-placement consultant. </p>
<p>But I can understand why an individual might. It’s true that you could learn for yourself what a consultant knows, but lots of us pay money to other people so that they will do things we don’t want to do or tell us things we don’t want to figure out on our own. I pay a lawn service perfectly good money to cut my grass. I could do it, but cutting the grass makes me itchy and sneezy, and I am grateful that I can afford to pay someone else to do this job that I don’t wish to do.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for honeydewmelon, but I think for many families, it’s not the mechanics of the Common Application that are the problem. It’s the search, and understanding how financial aid works, and that kind of thing.</p>
<p>I can’t recommend a consultant, honeydewmelon–sorry–but I can recommend an old College Confidential thread in which a poster gave, I thought, a pretty balanced description of his experiences working with one: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1290349-my-experience-personal-college-consultant.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1290349-my-experience-personal-college-consultant.html</a>. This thread might, at least, help you decide whether a consultant is really the direction you want to go.</p>
<p>You know it won’t be cheap, right?</p>