<p>My friends and I are debating the pros and cons of using the college counselors at our kids' high school or going outside to an independent counselor. The main concern is the ratio of counselors to students, 1:100 versus 1:35.
Anyone have experience/advice using counselors outside their student's school?
Thanks!</p>
<p>Well some people do self help and use this forum and other resources to augment school counselors. Sorry I have nothing to add about using outside help but the topic comes up and there are previous threads where you can read about the experiences. Use SEARCH.</p>
<p>You have to use the school counselors no matter what. They’ll put together the package, send the transcripts, and write the school GC cover letter. Depending on the school they may do a pretty good or terrible job of advising. Our school I think does a pretty good job despite having more than 100 students each. They can do a decent job, because it’s a big school with enough kids aiming high that they want to keep. So they’ve learned how to keep those kids happy. They put together booklets that explain the whole process, have multiple group meetings with the kids and, multiple huge presentations for the parents. (One college night, a financial aid night, and a night for sports recruiting). They also meet twice individually with parents - once junior year and once senior year. They use Naviance to help suggest safety/match/reach colleges for the kids. What they are less good at is identifying specific programs. So if you know you want both music and comp sci for example, you are probably better off doing your own research. They’ll read essays, but I wouldn’t expect them to know a good one from a bad one. My older son used me for essay advice, my younger son used both me and his AP Euro teacher to give an opinion on his essays. Both kids got into schools that were all we could hope for. </p>
<p>I personally think there is more than enough good info on the CC site.</p>
<p>We were our D’s counselors for school choice. As @mathmom said, the school counselor was in charge of getting the school info in for the apps.</p>
<p>1:35 is not a very good ratio for a private consultant, IMHO. Most of us would consider 25 seniors a bursting-at-the-seams practice. But the real question is what you’re getting for your money. Are you satisfied that the individual you’d be working with is adding value commensurate with the cost? It is his/her job to show you how working together will make your life easier.</p>
<p>1:100 is a pretty good ratio for school GCs. We have about 1:333, though only 1/4 of those are doing applications each year.</p>
<p>Our school had about 1:450 ratio for students but 1:110 seniors (broken up alphabetically). The counselors were fairly strong with relationships at local colleges (public and private) but not knowledgeable enough to help with broader searches. They were great at getting all the boxes checked for Nat’l Merit.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do it. I don’t really see the huge advantage if having an I depended counselor. Your official one is the one that communicates with schools and sends information anyway. IMHO, anything that an independent counselor can offer can be found in one of the many books that they publish. </p>
<p>Use us. :)</p>
<p>The counselors at our kids’ high school were pretty useless (overworked and not real knowledgeable). And since the entire process was a complete mystery to us, we decided to use an independent adviser with our oldest. After going through the process, we realized that it’s not as complicated and confusing as we’d thought. We could’ve found the same information on our own, albeit with a lot more time and effort on our part (and at the time, we didn’t even know where to look). It was nice to have the personal attention and advice specific to our daughter, so I’m still glad we did it. After going through it once, we felt like old pros and didn’t use a counselor with our 2nd.</p>
<p>From our experience, the biggest benefit was having someone other than us dumb old parents offering advice and guidance. The counselor gave her assignments with deadlines, and made some helpful suggestions that our D would never have followed if they had come from us. That, more than anything else, made the cost worth it in my opinion.</p>
<p>My older son’s guidance counselor always told us that he was not all knowing when it came to colleges and universities. That said, he did a dang good job of making sure all the paperwork was filed with the 11 schools my son applied to. My younger son went to a different school, and between his junior and senior years, his counselor left. The lady who replaced her was very nice. We had to remind her once or twice to send a recommendation, but she never took offense to that and did so promptly. </p>
<p>As for seeking information on colleges, we did the research. Our sons told us what they wanted in schools, and together, we worked to find the right fit. For our older son, he was National Merit. We told him to select one school with a great NM package, because the economy had tanked (this was in the fall of 2008). He did that, along with a laundry list of Ivies, MIT and Duke. When things did not work out with those top 10 schools, he took the NM offer to Alabama, and it was an outstanding decision. He graduated with two majors, two minors, top of his class and debt-free. He will attend UVA Law this fall on a full tuition/fees ride. His younger brother wanted the big school, because he thought he would have the times to run for their track/cross country program. Did not pan out, either, but he is very happy to be going to a D2 program this fall, and he has a full tuition scholarship. </p>
<p>Do your homework when it comes to colleges, and just remember what my older son’s counselor said. He could not be an expert on all schools. You have to help yourself and your child.</p>
<p>There are a few other advantages of an outside counselor, if you can find one that sets up their contracts in a way that allows you to get the specific support you want without paying for time or services you don’t need., Your student can get support for some aspects of the process that a school counselor typically won’t get involved with such as identifying the topic and theme for an essay, or interview prep. It also allows you as a parent to step back more and allow an independent person to get involved with the process. This is a major plus if you have a student that is resistant, argumentative, or even simply lazy about getting through the process. </p>
<p>For us the key factor in hiring an outside person was finding someone that didn’t require some large, long term package of services for an exorbitant price. Our counselor has been a huge help so far, very flexible with the billing, and reasonably priced. </p>
<p>We also used the school counselor a bit, simply to help identify safeties based on the schools experience with different schools (a supplement to what was in Naviance). But that was really the only thing she could really help us with. </p>
<p>It depends on the costs of the counselor, the goals of the student, and how much time that you want to spend researching collage admissions. Lastly, the college counselor can nag your kid about deadlines instead of you.
College counselors are better if your kid wants a top 20 type of school or if you are looking for schools with finances in mind.
The college counselors can help package your kid and carefully review their essays.
I know 2 people who used a college counselor. 1 attends northwestern and 1 attends swarthmore. The 2nd kid, they had to pay for about 4 two hour sessions.
Your HS GC is helpful because they usually know the adcoms and they know safety, match, and reach schools within the context of your HS.
If you do use as college counselor, I wound not tell your GC because it may upset them. Or at least if would at my kids’ HS.</p>
<p>Also do a search on cc because this topic has been discussed many times.</p>
<p>Yes, we have a lot to offer and are more available after hours, on the weekends and in the summers.</p>
<p>I think it depends. Some families find that the private counselor can more customize their student assistance in the college search. Some families have situations where the kiddo will actually listen to the advice given by an independent counselor, but not their parents. </p>
<p>Some kids need help identifying target schools, writing and editing essays, and figuring out finances. Some private counselors can do the finance thing, and essays…which HS counselors don’t do. </p>
<p>I think the key is how you structure your contract with the private counselor. I would want the flexibility to choose the services I needed, and also the ability to pay a certain amount up front but be able to cancel if the service was not what I expected.</p>
<p>One thing that a private counselor who is knowledgeable can help with are finding colleges that are a good fit. I see parents and high school students who are spending time visiting Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Penn and Cornell, when they have no realistic chance of being accepted at a top State Flagship, except their own. A college consultant can help you get on track, and better align the student with the schools. Their lighter student load means they can spend more time getting to know the student and discussing options, than may be possible for a school counselor. </p>
<p>On the negative side, occasionally, I have seen college consultants being too negative about a student’s chances. They are so used to lowering expectations for students and parents that they can go to far. Some can begin to believe, or at least say, that top schools will accept no one who does not have a specific talent or a hard hook. That is not true at all.</p>
<p>Therefore, if your student who has top grades and test scores and strong ECs, but no hard hook, you need to be careful about the consultant being too negative. Consultants want to be able to say that all of their clients got into one of their top x choices, so it is usually beneficial to them to convince you to apply to lesser schools. So while the consultant can help align expectations, you still need to check Naviance, and compare your students profile with the results threads on CC to understand whether this may be happening. If you see students like yours being accepted to schools that the consultant thinks you have no chance of being admitted to, screen grab the information, send it to the consultant and discuss it. </p>
<p>So, there can be significant benefits to hiring a consultant to help guide your college search and selection process, but remember that in the end, you still need to be involved, and be careful.</p>
<p>If your kids don’t get into Harvard, they have to refund you the money. :D</p>
<p>1:100 is not a bad ratio – at my kids’ school it’s 1:500, and because there’s also very little support staff in the guidance office, those counselors have to spend a lot of their time just dealing with students’ class schedules and such, so they can’t devote much time for college advising. We’re using an independent counselor for that reason and because it does help to have someone other than the parents giving our daughter deadlines for things like writing essays. I do know a lot more about colleges and college choice than I did back when we engaged this counselor, and maybe for my younger daughter we won’t use her. But she’s been very helpful so far with suggesting different colleges for D1 to look at.</p>
<p>She charges by the hour so it’s easy to decide how much we want to spend – we don’t set up appointments with her unless there’s something to discuss. I wouldn’t use any independent counselor who charged a flat fee.</p>
<p>My kid kept her own deadlines of things, I wrote down the deadlines on a calendar, no spreadsheet, nothing too complicated.</p>
<p>@Drgoogle,
I’m so envious that your kid followed these deadlines without incident… My kid and I battled constantly.</p>