Wondering if it is absolutely necessary to get an Educational Consultant …what are the Pros and the Cons? Does having one actually make acceptance more likely? Would appreciate any objective experience, feedback etc from anyone who is not an Educational Consultant.
It’s certainly not absolutely necessary. Two of my children attended boarding schools with substantial financial aid and we did not use a consultant, but I personally fulfilled many of the same functions.
I don’t know of any comparative acceptance statistics.
If you do it yourself, you should be prepared to invest a lot of time and effort, do a lot of research, etc. I enjoyed it as a project.
Then again I’m sure there are students who just decide to apply and get accepted without any big deal at all.
You don’t need one to get in. I know a few and I think they can be helpful because they know the schools and can talk to you and your child and help a lot with the match-making. If you’re looking in a smaller geographic area and you are nearby, you can probably network your way to adequate information (although a friend found a consultant very helpful in the Boston area where she was looking at day schools. ) They also tend to be connected at some of the schools so could get feedback on how an application reads or how a child presented in an interview. I think that the good ones excel at “fit”, and as a third party, they might be better at teasing out preferences from your kid that he/she may not want to share with you. In the last 3 years, two friends have pulled exceptionally bright kids from top BS for mental health reasons and have wondered in retrospect if they shouldn’t have seen that the environment might have encouraged that fragility. Maybe, just maybe, a consultant who’d done this a hundred times before would have picked up on it. (Maybe not, too!)
I know foreign families who have found them invaluable because they’ve been “translators” for the system overall, but I think most of us could use some of that help! I think it depends on how much time you want to invest in learning yourself aND how much visiting you want to do. We did it without and DS ended up at the perfect place for him.
With that said, our school provided an awesome CC for the college search and we have built a shrine to her in our home for her stellar work. We can thank her not only for the outcome but for the fact our family is still on speaking terms.
Bottom line, though, the person has to be knowledgeable and a good personality fit with your family.
There was a lot of pressure to get one from people my mom knew back in her home country, but I insisted on doing everything on my own (which she wasn’t happy about). I ended up doing most things by myself and still got results that I’m proud of. I have a bunch of classmates who had consultants and shared the same range of results as the rest of the class did. Overall, consultants didn’t seem significantly helpful and looked to be more for “packaging.”
We did not use a consultant. Many families with successful admissions that I know from CC didn’t either. But maybe that’s why we all are on CC to begin with. Without a consultant, you will need to do a thorough research, and CC has been an invaluable resource. Good luck either way!
We used a consultant. He was definitely worth it. In our area boarding school isn’t that popular so finding someone that could guide us to schools we otherwise wouldn’t have looked at was invaluable. He was able to let us know if a school was really interested in our child, or if we should move on to the next school. Also I think his one on one with our child brought out some things he otherwise wouldn’t have shared with us as parents.
We got multiple acceptances and in the end we ended up choosing somewhat of a hidden gem, but it was a perfect fit! My advice is if you are going to use one start early. While most have connections with the BS AOs, you don’t want to overwhelm your child at the end (and you will filling out all the applications.) He scheduled all our interviews and school visits. We worked with ours for about 9 months, which was good but some people need longer.
But know you can do it on your own. It’s just a lot of work. Between both work schedules we just didn’t have the time.
We did not use one but I probably spent months researching. We targeted right fit schools and had a good outcome.
My take is that you should consider using a professional consultant if you have a special need for a particular kind of school for which extensive knowledge is hard to find in public domains, or you are applying from an area where there’s wide interest in BS and therefore potentially you have many competitors from you peers and that you don’t have an effective school placement counselor, or you are a “non traditional” applicant who may benefit from professional packaging and/or a “middleman” between you and the schools… For the vast majority, paying for a consultant is a waste. There’s so much knowledge and free help right here and elsewhere on the web. All you need to do is to spend time researching and asking questions.
@southernboyzmama – may I ask where you are from? We are also in an area where there are no boarding schools and are in an extreme minority for thinking of going to one, so I was just curious as to your area and experience. And thank you, everyone for your feedback. It is very helpful!
We found that there are three groups of people for whom the consultants are most valuable:
- If you are coming from a background/region in which you have no familiarity with the process.
- You need someone to help your family and applicant stay on task through the process
- There is something unique in the family dynamic such that having a third party is valuable. For example, we are aware of a situation where the (divorced) parents were barely on speaking terms. The consultant was a helpful and neutral arbiter to the process.
We found they are much less helpful, and frankly detrimental, in the following scenarios:
- If you are clued into the process, have friends or relatives who have gone through the process (recently) and the parents are willing to do the research put in the time.
- When they try to sell you their services as "insurance" or in the context of "you're spending $250k anyway, so what's another $5-10k to make sure you get the best outcome?"
- Have agendas in which their outcome is not aligned with your outcome. They are in a volume business--you are in a single-kid business.
- When their practices is really a college consulting business and they've added this on as an additional activity. These are different processes, and the fact is college advising is a much bigger business. You will struggle to get their attention during peak college application season, which comes before boarding schools.
So if you do decide to take the plunge:
- If you can, hire someone on an hourly basis--if it's not working out, you can pull the plug. Many sell "packages" as cheaper (plus they get a guaranteed amount of money) but honestly most of what they do is trying to justify their time beyond 5-10 hours.
- Get a very clear understanding of the consultant's practice. How many prep school candidates does he/she take on? How many college applicants?
- Don't put any stock into statements like "Last year I had 3 kids go to Exeter." Without knowing the details of those situations, you have no idea as to whether the consultant's value was positive, negative, or neutral.
- Be extremely clear as to what you want from the relationship and what you believe will be a successful outcome.
- Ask for references--both parent and students. Your kid is going to have a 1:1 relationship, so he or she should be equally comfortable.
We’re from Georgia. There are boarding schools here in the state, but I have a child that didn’t want to stay in the South. We connected with a family at an open house that recently went thru the process and they also gave us pointers along the way.
Same camp, @southernboyzmama! GoatKid has been totally Southerned out. Where is your child going to school next year?
We live in an area where very few attend BS let alone heard of them! Our D was the first student from her school to ever apply. Poor kid was so bummed when she got into schools and no one knew what she was talking about! We didn’t use a consultant- it worked out fine.
@copperboom It’s beginning to sound like Southern Mama BS Support Group, but I am painfully familiar with the scenario you describe. It definitely stings that after months of hard work and anguish, your kid can’t even share her excitement and joy! But, GoatKid has been given lots of advice on drugs by her friends, and a rape whistle. ('Cause that’s what they do in boarding schools.) I am NOT kidding. SPS, here we come!!! [Insert here lots of grinning emojis.]
Too funny! Yes, a southern support group. whistles! Wow…
We did not use a consultant - area with a
lot of private day and boarding schools. Mostly did our own research - some help
from secondary school counselor at school. Lots of administrative help from the school - send in file folder with specific info on front for math teacher, English teacher, school.
A friend who homeschooled found a counselor very helpful. Counselor was go-between. Could call schools and feel out procedures, welcomeness, have thru had homeschool kids, etc.
A consultant is not necessary but can be helpful. We did not personally pay for a consultant, my daughter was in a program that provided the matching, application assistance and had a relationship with most schools. I did do my own research as well but know that it did help to have someone walk us through the process since we had no experience at all with the process. The assumption is that these programs are for low income or URM’s but this is not accurate for all programs. We are a middle income family and this program did not have income caps, you child has to qualify through academics and interview.