<p>A thread I was following seemed to have metamorphosis into educational consultants. I wanted to give my brief take on the subject and hear others. I was very hesitant at first in recognizing their benefits. The idea that sold me was that they do this for a living and cannot afford to consistently not make the right fit. They'll go out of business. If a consultant, with a good track record, nominate and push for a kid at a particular school, the admissions people notice. Another hook and more the better. It is an expensive alternative. I do sometimes wonder if the consultant was really ever needed and I'll never know. But I did feel at least that I had someone on my side working for my S and did prevail in the end.</p>
<p>I think more importantly, that the Ed Consultants make sure that your child applies to a selection of schools that will give a good chance of being accepted somewhere where the child would fit in well.</p>
<p>After a number of years, they get to know what schools like to take and what kids fit where. Even with the opportunity to visit schools, the consultant can give you a list that will keep you from visiting too many poor match situations, once s/he knows your child's needs.</p>
<p>And for parents with no practical knowledge of specific schools, this can be valuable.</p>
<p>The thing about educational consultants is that most of them advise for college. I find it hard to believe that someone who advises for college and does a little prep school on the side, knows the prep/boarding market well. I think it would be best to find someone who specializes in the prep/boarding market -- someone like the educational consultant who posted here a few times is ideal because he/she places children for a feeder school. This consultant must know the market. </p>
<p>My only other comment is that if you have your heart set on Choate, you might consider Howard Greene who is a trustee and an educational consultant.</p>
<p>The other thing to consider is to work with a clinical psychologist who is involved in school placement.</p>
<p>We used an educational consultant who was well known, written up in a local city magazine and found that our money was pretty much wasted!</p>
<p>We were never in a position to hire an ED, but without it, my D is going to be attending a tt school next fall.</p>
<p>If you can afford the price -- I think this is money well spent. And I don't have a problem with the one consultant for both prep and college processes. Of course, the only consultant I'm familiar with is my neighbor who's consistently mentioned as one of the best consultants in the US. </p>
<p>(And he has given me some wonderful free advice at the mailbox over the years! In exchange, I help him locate puppies and other pets for his kids!)</p>
<p>local ed consultants here are charging 8500 to help with high school placement!</p>
<p>I held off on responding because my experience with an educational consultant was not good, but I still believe they can be ginormously helpful. In retrospect I think my crash landing with an educational consultant was for the reason Burb Parent mentioned. Many of the parents here would run circles around this person in terms of the quality of advice they have to offer.</p>
<p>But I firmly believe they can be a great asset. They can provide intelligence (which is both the gathering and analysis of data in practical terms to you, generic to the process and specific to your child's qualifications). They can provide a dispassionate, third-party perspective because it's hard for us to divorce ourselves from the healthy bias that our children are the the best. They can develop strategies for the various hurdles of the process. The best ones might even be able to bend the ear of admission people and intercede when appropriate. They can help compensate for the parents' weaknesses in terms of the many skill sets required to navigate the process from beginning to end.</p>
<p>Of all those traits, all I got was the unbiased third-party observer. But then again I got that much for free from my neighbor who is not a highly regarded educational consultant but, instead, the owner of a small chain of independent convenience stores.</p>
<p>The moral of the story is that as wonderful as many educational consultants are, you can't write a check to anyone who claims to be one and hand it all off to that person.</p>
<p>You need to first do your homework on educational consultants and find one who comes highly recommended with regard to boarding school placement and admissions. Then, once you've found the right person, you need to be a full-fledged partner in the process. It may even mean more effort on your part as the parent (you might get lists of schools that you have to research and assess and get back to him/her about as to your impressions) and very likely more effort for your child (in terms of SSAT prep for instance).</p>
<p>Fortunately, I didn't hand it off to that person. That was fortunate: the suggestion that my son would need to sign up for the SSAT was proffered on Thanksgiving weekend, the same day he got back his results. But I did fail to get recommendations about this person from BS users before signing on. And I don't think I ever asked if this person had done this ever before for BS. Considering some of the advice given and the way that I was leaned on for intelligence, I wonder if we were not among this person's very first clients in the BS market.</p>
<p>In the end, it didn't hurt anything. But for all the effort and energy I put in to the process, I can see how totally awesome it would have been to have had an educational consultant as the co-pilot, ready to take over the yoke and always there to keep my course true. Even if it meant doing exactly the same thing -- but without all the self-doubt and hand-wringing -- it would be worth the cost (at least what I paid).</p>
<p>Also, I think this is a good topic because if I was going in to a search next fall with a child, this would be about the right time (on the front end) -- I think -- to shop for an educational consultant. It's not too late to do it later, but I think it's better to be taking care of this part now...as a long lead time procurement so that, say, SSAT preparation can begin over the summer if that's desirable.</p>
<p>@ drnancie: OW! If I had paid that much my above answer would be materially different. Perhaps, then, I got what I paid for. And I wonder...can someone hire an educational consultant at those rates and apply for FA?</p>
<p>Don't forget some of the college ed consultants who charge 25000 (yes all those zeros)</p>
<p>Well, I didn't think to hire an educational consultant to help with my daughter's selection/application process, although my sister did with her son and he ended up at a great school (St. Andrews, Delaware) that my sister, from the Deep South, would probably not have looked at had the consultant not suggested it. He was applying for 11th grade and they started looking around March of his sophomore year. Yep. But the consultant knew what schools had openings and St. Andrews had just kicked out a bunch of boys for drinking, and this kind of intelligence was probably the only reason they found a great school at the 11th hour.</p>
<p>This was several years ago, and I kinda forgot about her experience with the consultant when we started thinking about boarding school this past fall for my 8th grader. I just started investigating schools on my own, using primarily boardingschoolreview.com and its wonderful search criteria. (At first I thought we would ask for financial aid so I decided to look only at schools with the largest endowments. Later on, I decided we did not need nor would we qualify for aid, but I kept that same list.)</p>
<p>I guess the one thing the consultant might have done would be to suggest an SSAT prep class. Who knew these existed? Not I. I just signed daughter up online and drove her to the test site the morning of..... She did do some looking at the sample book the SSAT provides but that was about it. So I think she might have done a bit better overall had she actually studied for the test more, but maybe not. </p>
<p>In the end, if I had realized how stressful and life-changing the whole experience would be, I might have used a consultant only because I often doubted decisions we made during the process. My daughter only applied to what I guess are "reach" schools in any book - 5 of them. I basically said to her that if she couldn't go to a school like one of those that was so much better than what we had at home, she could just stay home with us at her current very nice local prep school. But I did not take into account the devastation that she might have experienced had she opened up 5 rejection letters. (Happily, she only got 1 rejection letter and ended up with 4 superb choices.)</p>
<p>Having said ALL that, I think an involved and diligent parent with some basic computer skills can get all the information (except for the St. Andrews type situation above) about how to select, prepare, etc etc. without the aid of a consultant. A parent knows her child much better than a consultant ever could and whatever knowledge the consultant brings to the table, s/he cannot bring that knowledge. So even if you spend the money, it will require very active participation from you as a parent.</p>
<p>A big bonus from a well qualified consultant is that it is very hard for parents and students to evaluate their competitive level. Big fish in a small pond -- It's easy to assume that the child is a big fish in the ocean. I imagine that a great consultant would help level-set the parents and student. But I also think it's a field that anyone can hang up a shingle, so buyer beware.</p>
<p>drnancie,</p>
<p>Can you say more about using a clinical psychologist for school placement? In what situations does this make sense? Does this route only apply to kids who have learning issues? Is the cost more reasonable than the figures that have been mentioned here?</p>
<p>Burbparent wrote: "A big bonus from a well qualified consultant is that it is very hard for parents and students to evaluate their competitive level. Big fish in a small pond -- It's easy to assume that the child is a big fish in the ocean."</p>
<p>Amen. That's EXACTLY what I was guilty of. I literally said to myself (and to my husband and daughter "who do they want if they don't want her?" Chuckle, chuckle. Ah, the critical distance of a mother......</p>
<p>NYMOmof2--- the issue with using a clinical psychologist is that they can do hours of assessing your child to know exactly what the child's learning and emotional needs are. Ed consultants will go by what the child and family say and only have grades and ssat scores. </p>
<p>In addition, it is way less expensive, and insurance may cover part of the cost of testing.</p>
<p>My only hope is that parents use consultants only to figure out where their child should apply to school and not hire someone to read and take apart every essay on the application, which is what a friend of mine did. Yes, they did get into the schools they wanted their kid to, but then when the child had to write in English class, the teacher was pretty astounded. I don't think they were doing their child any favors when he got a D that first semester. </p>
<p>For those of you who are paying people to "get" your child into a certain school, I'm sure you are the same people who made all your child's science projects in elementary school or paid someone to do it.</p>
<p>Do your child a favor, allow them to be who they are in the application process. The schools don't want to see someone else's work, they want to see your child's.</p>
<p>My child is going to a tt school next year, and I couldn't be more proud because I thought she wrote some rather "unique" comments in the essays, but we did not make any comments or make any changes. The work was just sent in the way she wrote it. There was even one spelling error, but guess what, we didn't tell her or change it. It was HER responsibility because it is HER application to a school SHE is going to. I think any AO can see through the boring and scripted essays, but if you are going to be there for the next 10 years to take care of everything for your child, then go ahead and have someone else do the essays and make everything perfect for your child.</p>
<p>One school that "we" applied to had the students write essays after their interview...while the parent was with the admission officer (and longer if needed). Neither of us were aware that was going to happen. Then, later, when we went through the application materials there was no essay. It was the easiest application of all. And I liked it because they got the student's initial work product -- which meant for a level playing field, even if my son's handwriting is atrocious and it couldn't be a polished effort. A good educational consultant would have at least alerted us to that circumstance. There's no need for that sort of thing to be a surprise.</p>
<p>On other essays, we did remind him to check for spelling (which was actually ridiculous because Word and his web browser put red underlines all misspelled words) but, yes, beyond that they got an accurate picture.</p>
<p>I don't see anything wrong, however, with brainstorming sessions and coming up with ideas, concepts and other points that the applicant wants to emphasize and highlight in the essays. That's something an educational consultant would be able to intelligently help a student sort through. Not an outline for an essay, but talking points and a checklist of ideas about the applicant that can be used for essays, interviews and beyond. A parent can do that, but a parent getting messages through to a young teen can be much like trying to push tomatoes through a brick wall. It's messy with little to show for the effort. That's not reason enough to hire an educational consultant, but it's one of many items for the list of benefits.</p>
<p>But, yeah, I'm very much of the mind that I did middle school and high school once and I'm not interested in going through the homework alone, let alone feeling vicarious thrills for grades my child gets on the plaster-of-paris book report. Before I'm going to waste precious time on my kids' school projects, I'm going to waste it here, on CC.</p>
<p>I thought the essay during the interview was great. I had not heard of that before. </p>
<p>She did type her essay in Word, but when copying it in her own handwriting she wasn't careful enough, hence the spelling error. </p>
<p>I think some parents also probably don't feel that they themselves have the knowledge or educational background to be helpful at all to their kids through the process, so they turn to the consultants. I did hear of a parent (during revisit) who went through a consultant because they (the parents) illegally entered/snuck into the US and never took the time to learn the English language, even after 10 years of being here, and so they felt they could not complete the parent's statement appropriately.</p>
<p>I guess every family has their reasons to use a consultant or not use a consultant, whether it is for the benefit of the student or for the parent.</p>
<p>D'yer was it middlesex? we were told prior to the middlesex interview by the person who scheduled the interview that my son would be writing an essay there, so it was not a surprise.</p>