<p>I am interested in knowing the cost of a private college counselor. I realize that I can get most if not all of the information here.</p>
<p>Just curious as a friend and I were talking and wondering if it was worth it.</p>
<p>I would love to have a range of the costs if anyone would be willing to share.</p>
<p>I haven’t used one, but I think the costs depend on the level of involvement you need. Are you planning starting in freshman year, or junior year? Do you need someone to suggest colleges, or read essays? Sometimes these consultants even go WITH the student to the colleges. My uninformed guess is it ranges anywhere from $1-2M to 12M, but it’s probably negotiable.</p>
<p>I am so happy I read this post. As a generalization, most private counselors have good intentions and charge “reasonable prices” for solid advice. If you live in certain areas of the country, some counselors lack any semblance of ethics and charge literally thousands of dollars. The problem with all of this is that if you call an admissions counselor at a smaller college, they will happily give you any advice you need for free. Seriously, call a counselor at a smaller school (preferably one at an institution to which you child is applying) and they will give you advice on a a range of topics including college selection, financial aid, essays, interviews, etc. Also, most colleges and universities now have admissions blogs. Some are less than stellar, but many provide phenomenal advice on college admissions in general (go and look at UVA, Washington and Lee, MIT, The Choice–NY Times, or even Wise Like Us–a private counselors blog).</p>
<p>As I mentioned earlier, some private counselors are worthwhile, but I think in this day and age it’s extremely easy to attain information for free.</p>
<p>
M, as in Million?? :eek: If this is true, I’m in the wrong business.</p>
<p>M as in Thousand. How could anyone get away with charging $12,000,000 to get into college? You could use that to endow a chair at some lowrent directional state U somewhere and get your kid in that way!</p>
<p>Is a private college counselor helpful? Personally, I have never even come close to having one and neither have most of my friends. If you’re already an avid CCer I would think that you’re pretty well informed about the process and thus capable of making the decisions for yourself. Could someone who has had one comment?</p>
<p>We have not used one, but I know one personally and she charges $1,800 for the “complete” package or $85 an hour if you only want certain services. This is in the central New Jersey area.</p>
<p>Hourly services are often used for those who want ROTC or help with NCAA clearing.</p>
<p>You can usually find the fee information on the websites.</p>
<p>I like the mix of Arabic and Latin numbers. </p>
<p>I’m sure there are some out there who would work for 1.5(two hundred dollars) or $4(ten)(X) (sorry, that’s $300 or $400) but the services would be lesser. They might find colleges which would be suitable fits, but would be coaching or anything like that. The several thousand dollar ones should be coaching. </p>
<p>But there are so many very knowledgeable people here who can help you.</p>
<p>Bedouin,</p>
<p>While you’re correct that M=thousand in Roman numerals, most folks use K=thousand. In fact, the following are the most common abbreviations for large numbers on the net today:</p>
<p>K=thousand
M=million
G=billion (computer geek) or B=billion (normal person)
T=trillion</p>
<p>The K abbreviation comes from two sources: First, K=kilo=thousand in the the metric system, and second, as in the rest of the net abbreviations for large numbers come from modern computer lingo as in </p>
<p>K=kilobyte (about a 1000 bytes)
M=megabyte (about a 1,000,000 bytes)
G=gigabyte (about a 1,000,000,000 bytes)
T=terabyte (about a 1,000,000,000,000 bytes)</p>
<p>The actual number of bytes in each unit is really bigger, because they’re based on powers of two:</p>
<p>K=2^10 bytes, M=2^20 bytes, G=2^30 bytes, and T=2^40 bytes </p>
<p>But 2^10 = 1024, so the order of magnitudes work out to be</p>
<p>K=about a thousand, M=about a million, G=about a billion, and T= about a trillion</p>
<p>In my house, the use of a counselor would have less to do with our lack of knowledge & all to do with us butting heads, staying on a schedule and having help editing essays.</p>
<p>Naviance can provide better information for free as far as finding college matches.
The new college search on collegeconfidential is amazing.
Save your money.
I have spent money for an SAT prep class. I have also purchased AP test prep books.</p>
<p>Naviance is not free ;)</p>
<p>Ha! I meant K as in thousands. boy, oh boy, you all gave me a scolding for that oversight. </p>
<p>And in my experience, Naviance is a service paid for through the HS. Is it even a service an individual family would pay for?</p>
<p>No- but it is something that our PTA covers.</p>
<p>There are some good ones around my town, but all of them regurgitate the same thing so my mom just goes to these free seminars and sees what she gets from those.</p>
<p>We did a $75 Stats Check at College Karma and it was worth every penny.</p>
<p>We live in Texas and out of the appox 400 students in my son’s graduating class, I would guess that less than 50 are going to college out of state. We felt a lot better having an expert pair of eyes review match, safety, reach; which tests he needed to apply where and so on. She also provided some recommendations for colleges that we had not considered, including her reasoning for the recommendation. </p>
<p>I’ve said all along that if you are looking for someone to give you peace of mind that you’re on the right track, it’s money well spent. If you are looking for someone to give you an edge or connection, it’s a waste of money.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your suggestions and information. We are just finishing freshman year so we have some time. S1 knew exactly what he wanted and where he wanted to go and is happy with his LAC. S2 has loftier aspirations and I just want to make sure that he is on the right track.</p>
<p>I just posted in another thread on the same subject, so I won’t repeat myself here.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/925852-considering-hiring-independent-college-admissions-counselor-worth.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/925852-considering-hiring-independent-college-admissions-counselor-worth.html</a></p>
<p>I think it’s important to determine the experience and qualifications of the counselor you’re considering. We chose one based on a recommendation from a family friend. Before starting her own counseling firm, she had been an admissions officer in the California state university system. Her knowledge and expertise about what admissions offices are looking for and how best to present yourself to them was most helpful, and her fee was more than reasonable.</p>
<p>I hope you’re as fortunate as we were in your search for qualified guidance for your journey. Don’t wait until the last year of HS to start. We began seeing our counselor in the middle of freshman year of HS. Her guidance through the HS curriculum and prep for SAT and applications was invaluable.</p>
<p>We used a college counselor and we also found her to be invaluable. When we began the search in the beginning of junior year, we had absolutely no idea where to even begin. The counselor charged us on an hourly basis for information as we needed it and she saved us a tremendous amount of time in getting started.</p>
<p>Posters on College Confidential often say, “it isn’t worth it”. But…not everyone has the time or inclination to spend hours and hours researching schools, learning about SAT and SAT subject test prep, and trying to figure out which schools will be affordable for a specific kid. </p>
<p>After spending a year and a half on CC would I feel the same need to hire a college counselor? No, but I know a tremendous amount now that I didn’t know then. IMO, the learning curve for figuring out about colleges was steep enough and the expense of college large enough to easily justify paying for some insights and direction.</p>