College Consultants - Value or Venom?

Parent Cafe
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<p>@pizzagirl,</p>

<p>The two descriptions are not the same. You are describing a scene in a sequence when you provide the waitress description. The director’s aid description is an expanded description of the tasks and each one demonstrates a specific task. It is exactly how resumes are written. One does not just write-waitress, date, location. Good resumes provide a brief description of the tasks performed. That’s exactly what the EC list did.</p>

<p>I’ll give you a description of an EC that the student wrote about working as an anchor in a TV studio:</p>

<p>Hosted newscast for TV KLM. Created, wrote and produced segments about xxx; interviewed A, B, and C types. Set up and operated the equipment in live studio recordings; directed segments. Mentored new interns. </p>

<p>Do not you think it is more impressive, as well as gives a better understanding of what the student did in this EC, instead of just listing the title?</p>

<p>@Slitheytove, who is the student who really does anything unique? The description just provides a more clear picture of the level of responsibility and tasks involved. It is exactly how one writes a resume. Everybody is a supervisor in an office, but the written description explains what tasks/responsibilities involved to differentiate applicant A from applicant B.</p>

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<p>“Hosted newscast for TV KLM. Created, wrote and produced segments about xxx; interviewed A, B, and C types. Set up and operated the equipment in live studio recordings; directed segments. Mentored new interns.”</p>

<p>This is indeed an excellent description, unlike the linked Hernandez example. This one is full of facts, not commentary. There’s exactly one adjective in the whole thing, and it’s an objective descriptor that sheds light on the task (live studio recordings). Every noun and verb is needed. In other words, the TV intern applicant is showing, not telling. It’s very good writing. The stage manager applicant is telling, and the result is not as effective.</p>

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<p>I wonder where the student was accepted who wrote that example.</p>

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<p>I don’t doubt the student may have gotten into terrific schools. Many candidates are accepted in spite of their essays. Harvard would be a lonely place if that weren’t true! Adcoms know that it’s tough to hit the right tone. If they love everything else in your package, you’ll likely get in even with a pretentious or overwrought essay.</p>

<p>But a great one never hurts.</p>

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<p>“I wonder where the student was accepted who wrote that example.”</p>

<p>Northwestern, Harvard, Duke, Rice, Colgate, and some others</p>

<p>What was more important is that the schools even commented on the ECs as the scores were average, 2250, and nothing over 750. The student described each EC exactly as if it was in a resume, instead of just listing the name as all the ECs were the typical high schooler ones.</p>

<p>I really see Hernandez’s example as fitting for the specific EC. It also resembles how the faculty have to self report their activities in many medical schools when they write the narrative blurb, as well as the descriptions for the individual assignments.
This is an example directly from the HMS faculty cv template:
“Co-PI, 2007-Present
The major goals of this study are to evaluate factors that lead to parental refusal to vaccinate and to design an intervention for health care professionals that will increase the acceptability of vaccinations. My role is to design the tool that will measure parental preferences and attitudes toward vaccination and to interpret the data.”</p>

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<p>Rewritten in Hernandez style, this would be “My major time commitment takes place outside of the classroom. Driven by my passion for all facets of health care policy, I branched out into new areas, specifically the study of factors influencing vaccination rates. In my role of Co-Investigator of a funded peer-reviewed study, I am required to design a tool that will measure parental preferences etc etc etc.” :wink: :slight_smile: :smiley: </p>

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<p>Managing pyrotechnics qualifies in my book. :slight_smile: Maybe I need to get out more. :)</p>

<p>One parent suggested that the goal of your app is to make people want to meet you. Alternatively, it’s so you acquire some sort of nickname in the decisions room, be it “BBQ Chef Guy” or “Garbage Wrangling Girl”. Sure, there are other students who might enjoy cooking over a grill or who are big into recycling, but anyone who can present this sort of thing in a catchy way is unique, for admissions purposes, anyway.</p>

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<p>"… as the scores were average, 2250" </p>

<p>Really? Isn’t 2250 around the top 3%? I wouldn’t say average.</p>

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<p>The people I know who used consultants didn’t have a good relationship with their kids ,and the consultant acted like a go -between . They even have camp consultants these days ! It can be useful,if you don’t have the time to deal with the process . Our 4 kids were their own consultants ,and we as the parents helped them look at all the various angles . PS-don’t forget the counselors at your schools ,as they can often have useful advise .</p>

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<p>Maybe we are the exception then, because we have very good relationship with our girls. They tend to tell us what’s on their mind and respect our opinion.</p>

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<p>I’m sure all types of families use consultants for various reasons. Can’t really generalize.</p>

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<p>@Ohiomom, Depends on the school one wants to get and whether the student has any hooks or not, then the scores would be considerated average, and from naviance at the student’s school I can say that they were below the admitted score/gpa range for some of the schools. As a good mommy friend I helped polish the application and I can say that when I first saw it, it was very dry and uninspiring. I offered suggestions based on hundreds of college applications I had seen for enrichment and scholarship programs I evaluated. That’s what an admissions consultant does. Help the student present their skills and talents in such a way to be invited to the next base and shine. Frequently as a parent we know what the child want to convey with their essay, but the reader who has never met the student and does not know how the student thinks might not understand what the intended meaning was. When a school has to go through 35k applications, any help counts.</p>

<p>Businesses hire consultants to provide expert advice on myriad of issues. If you can afford it, would not you hire an interior decorator for advice, even though you may have a perfect eye? That’s what a consultant does. The expertise is usually gained by having worked in an admissions office and knowing the inner workings. As parents we can read and study and go through all the CC threads but we have never worked as admissions officers so we lack that level of expertise. A consultant does not help you on how to get financial aid. Their job is to polish the application and help enhance the student’s assets by presenting them in a better format and differentiate them from equally top student applicants. Will also provide advice and suggestions about schools that the family may not know and be objective about the angel’s strengths and possibility of admission to the school that the parents are so sure the angel will get in since they know of whatever other student with worse stats who got in, or they have read books and CC and are so sure how to do it. The families that use admissions consultants aim for the top private schools, not for scholarships and financial aid, or for state schools. So when you think of hooks, keep in mind that at least one quarter of students in the top 20 schools have used an admissions consultant.</p>

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<p>“Frequently as a parent we know what the child want to convey with their essay, but the reader who has never met the student and does not know how the student thinks might not understand what the intended meaning was.”</p>

<p>This is key. Some students and parents are good at doing a detached reading, where they disregard all the context they know. Others aren’t so good at this. It’s a difficult skill, and unrelated to whether someone is a good writer. If you know an author personally, you can tell when s/he is joking, the meaning of an ambiguous phrase seems clear, etc. A neutral set of eyes can sometimes see pitfalls and strengths that a parent can’t.</p>

<p>Human beings were not designed to be neutral about their children or their children’s work. It’s hard to be an effective critic when you are judging your own heart and soul.</p>

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<p>Ana, the families that I have observed using private consultants are not the families whose kids end up at HYP and similar. They have kids who end up at Adelphi and University of New Haven and Fairfield U and Stonehill. The parents probably hoped the kids could get their acts together in time to aim higher; maybe the consultants were valuable in getting the kids in somewhere, I don’t know. But I think your description of “one quarter” of the kids in top schools is quite exaggerated. If half the student body at those schools is on financial aid (need only since those schools don’t offer merit in most cases), if your contention is that half of the other kids used a consultant, I’d love to see your data.</p>

<p>Unless your premise is that people who can’t afford the tuition are paying out of pocket for a private counselor? Which strikes me as absurd.</p>

<p>I understand my colleagues at work who think their kid could get into Villanova and end up with Providence College or Seton Hall or Sacred Heart. Maybe the counselor got the kids app to the point where one of those schools would take a second look. But these are- for the most part- slacker students with affluent parents who don’t want the kid heading off to college with the HS peer group (aka the “bad influences”). And I think some of them feel like the money was not well spent. But I have yet to see a parent of a kid with “the goods” for a Harvard or MIT spend the money on a consultant and have it pay off (if the pay off is indeed admission to one of those schools.)</p>

<p>Your analogy to an interior decorator is cynical beyond words- and I think really reveals why I think many private admissions consultants border on unethical. Put simply- when I hire a decorator to buy a couch, I’m not taking the couch away from someone more deserving. My neighbor wants the same couch- he shows up at the furniture showroom, pays his money, and gets that couch. There is no scarcity issue with the goods and services that the decorator obtains for me. (despite the claims of exclusivity.) And there is no “social good” being claimed by the couch manufacturer.</p>

<p>A kid with wealthy parents can game the system with the consultants help- and obtain a seat at a school where scarcity means that his seat could have been taken by a thousand other kids whose parents couldn’t afford a private consultant… really. Just like an interior decorator?</p>

<p>Everyone claims that they’ve hired a consultant to tell them about schools they didn’t know about on their own. And then the kid goes to Hofstra? When half the people in town graduated from Hofstra? It’s such a hidden gem on Long Island that you had to pay someone to tell you about it?</p>

<p>So your description:
Their job is to polish the application and help enhance the student’s assets by presenting them in a better format and differentiate them from equally top student applicants.</p>

<p>is sort of refreshing although somewhat nauseating. Really? All they do is format? Set bigger margins? Better fonts?</p>

<p>Do tell.</p>

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<p>That was in 2007 from the business week article linked before:
“According to the Independent Educational Consultants Assn., 22% of first-year students at private colleges—perhaps as many as 58,000 kids—had worked with some kind of consultant.”</p>

<p>From the Chronicle of Higher education:
"Taking a humorous approach to a process that is often filled with anxiety, Andrew Ferguson has enjoyed unsolicited publicity for his new book, Crazy U. Jenna Johnson, who blogs for The Washington Post, wrote on March 10th that she found the book “absolutely fascinating.” She summarizes a few of Ferguson’s assertions, including the one below:</p>

<p>“One out of four students enrolled in a private college or university hired a private counselor to help through admissions, Ferguson reports. Often these are former admissions office staffers (Ferguson compares it to Capitol Hill’s ‘revolving door’) who swear they know what it takes to get into a fancy school and scare parents with low admit rates, high tuition prices and tales of ‘SuperKids’ with perfect test scores, high GPAs and amazing resumes filled with service work.”</p>

<p>Polishing does not mean margins, I think that’s very clear. They suggest which areas need rewriting, suggest how to present an idea better, etc. It is just how organizations hire consultants who edit grant applications or bid submissions. The application is not written by the consultant but by the staff. There are many top students that have the stats for an ivy and hire consultants. Do not forget that as ad coms have said, they could fill multiple clases with students with top stats. There are only 1900 spots at Harvard and 35k applications. If you can afford it you will do it. Some companies also have admissions consultant services offered as an employee benefit. Private schools are not there for the public good or societal benefits. I am cynical but that’s life. I know of families that have hired consultants and managed to get students to schools from the ivies to Williams and Carleton. I was not even aware that it was so widespread until at dinner one of the moms clue me in when I was amazed by the number of students and the level of aptitude of some of the students that got accepted in top schools. These families do not hire a top consultant to get into Hofstra, or Stonehill. They hedge their chance of their child will go to a top school. When you plan to pay 250k in tuition, 15k is nothing. These are the same families that pay 38k per year tuition to send their child to private school since kindergarden. While the college level consultant is still clothed in secrecy, there is more information for professional schools where it is widely spread. But the services seem to be the same.</p>

<p>"Admissions consultants range from independent operators to larger firms with consultants scattered around the globe. The consultants insist that rather than writing the essays, they advise clients on which schools to apply to, help them find and present the true stories from their careers and lives that will most impress admissions officers, clue them in to the preferences of different business schools, and edit essay drafts.</p>

<p>’'The schools refuse to admit there’s any formula," said consultant Sanford Kreisberg, founder of Cambridge Essay Service. ''But the fact is, if you know the schools, there’s a real formula."</p>

<p>Julie Ha hired Kreisberg, whom she has never met in person, to help her with her Stanford application in 1999. ''He didn’t write anything," recalled Ha, who received her MBA from Stanford in 2002 and is now chief executive of Prospect Colleges LLC, a chain of private colleges based in Los Angeles. ''He just told me if what I wrote sounded stupid or hokey. He pushed me to do a better job. I got a sense that a lot of the students used consultants, but it wasn’t cool to admit it."</p>

<p>Kreisberg, who taught an essay-writing course at Harvard College in the 1980s, handles hundreds of clients each year and said he has developed a sense of what schools want over a decade of coaching applicants. He said many mistakenly view essays as a way to crow about themselves. ''A lot of people think Harvard’s looking for a victory lap, but they’re not," he said. ''They want to know how you were effective in different ways with different people. It helps to have a slightly therapeutic vocabulary, to know the right buzzwords and personalize them."</p>

<p>“If half the student body at those schools is on financial aid”
You need to check what they mean financial aid and need. One might mean real need and unable to attend without financial aid, but Harvard and similar schools that they do not give merit aid consider the following as financial aid: “Our financial aid program includes an array of financing options beyond our need–based scholarship program, such as a parent monthly payment plan, various loan programs and the opportunity to pre–pay tuition for four years at a student’s freshman year rate.”
Is financial aid the option to prepay tuition? Prepay 220K? How exactly does a family with over 150k income qualify for need based aid? That’s why it is an illusion when the schools claim half the student body is receiving financial aid.</p>

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<p>Ana, it’s well known that Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford have exceedingly generous need-based financial aid, encompassing family incomes up to $180k or more. College Navigator reports that for the 2009-10 year, 66% of beginning undergrad Harvard students received institutional grants or scholarships, accounting for roughly 94% of all grant or scholarship aid offered to Harvard first years by any source. Stanford awarded grants and scholarships to 64% of first years; Yale and Princeton helped 60%. </p>

<p>This is easy information to find and confirm. There are clear definitions on the College Navigator site about what is meant by financial aid, and no, it does not mean that over half of all students are pre-paying tuition.</p>

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<p>@SlitheyTove,</p>

<p>I am well aware of that and that’s not what the College Navigator say. It does not state anywhere that it is “need-based” financial aid, read the small print
“Any student financial aid1
1 Grant or scholarship aid includes aid received, from the federal government, state or local government, the institution, and other sources known by the institution.”
Look H for example, federal grants are 26% and only 15% gets Pell grants. </p>

<p>And when you expand for all undergrad students, those receiving any type of aid are 47%. Again, it does not say anywhere that it is need based aid.</p>

<p>Even we said, OK, 70% receive “need based aid,” that they do not, there is a sufficient number of students full pay, 30% to be in the 25% of the class who were aided by an admissions consultant. As I said, if I was paying $38,000 per year in tuition for the last 18 years, would I hesitate to spend $15k, if not 40k, for a consultant so I can increase the odds my child will go to a top school?</p>

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<p>@cptofthehouse When I say “single working parent” I really mean “only parent” as my son’s dad passed away 10 years ago. As such, I probably underestimated my ability to handle this process on my own. </p>

<p>I paid $2500 for the consultant (would have been $3500, but we worked with a pair of tutors she recommended and got a discount as a result). </p>

<p>I thought I’d need her for the selection process, but did more of that through my own research. My biggest motivation was having her doing all the scheduling and pushing (as another poster stated, kids often respond better to others than parents when it comes to deadlines, etc.), as well as having her partner help him with the essay. </p>

<p>Even $2500 is a lot for many families. The only reason I was able to do it was because of the Life Insurance money left to my son by his dad. I can’t imagine paying $6K or $40K for this kind of help.</p>

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Yes. When is the Writing portion of the SAT going to count? Most schools still ignore it, seven years after it was added. </p>

<p>I remember reading where a college consultant admitted to “gazillions” of edits for an essay. Isn’t that where “editing” crosses the line into “writing”? In an environment where cheating is commonplace (and overseas cheating on US college applications and testing is documented repeatedly), who really believes that many of these consultants don’t cross the line for their US applicants?</p>

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<p>Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but we recently purchased the Fisk Guide to college essays – and both my son and I were appalled at how poorly written many of them were, and how hokey and silly the topics and subjects were. All of my kids, including my sixth grader, could write better essays than the ones in that book. What gives?</p>

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<p>Note that “private college” does not necessarily equal “elite college”, as in some of the colleges mentioned in blossom’s post above. Also, if we believe the 22% figure, the vast majority of students in this survey do not use consultants.</p>