Educational Consultants

Prep School Admissions
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<p>No, it was Asheville School, actually. </p>

<p>We visited Middlesex but couldn't work in a time for an interview that would work with our travel schedules. Great school. The Admission Office gave us a map and told us where we could go -- but we arrived right about 3:30 so everyone was plugged in to activities and no tours were possible. However, we kept bumping into students and they would approach us and asked if they could show us whatever facility we happened to be exploring. Very friendly place. </p>

<p>I suppose we could have done the alumni interview thing but we limited the universe of potential schools to those where we did the interview-tour thing...and even then we had to whittle down the list. But I wonder how they do the essay portion in that situation. Also, I forget...but did the Middlesex application have other essays? Or was it limited to the on-the-spot essay?</p>

<p>I really liked the approach because in that case I was sure that I was doing the right thing. With the others, you keep wondering whether you're selling your child short or whether you're encroaching into the honor code by giving any sort of comments. We just stayed out of the gray altogether. But it was an uncomfortable position. Again, I believe that a good educational consultant knows the boundaries and will define them. I don't think that the better ones would cross the line and give inappropriate assistance. But I would imagine they could help up front.</p>

<p>During the summer prior to my senior year of high school, the college counselor at my school had all of us work through a very intensive booklet that he prepared. Some of it involved creating lists of activities and interests. Other items required essays on all manner of subjects, from ourselves to the world around us. He then went through these booklets, worked with us on our answers and responses and, in the end, we had a great sense of who we each were, what our life stories were, how we clicked with the world and what types of learners we were and what our weaknesses were. Just weeks into our senior year, we had a polished set of materials collected in a book that we could work from to complete our college applications and tackle practically any essay or interview question that got thrown at us with some slight adaptations. I believed an educational consultant would provide this sort of service...and I still think the best ones would do this sort of thing, just not in my case. :(</p>

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<p>D'yer- off topic, but what did you think of Asheville? It sounds awesome. My son's checkered past and coming in as a junior made it a non-starter for us, but I thought it sounded like a real gem.</p>

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<p>@ MomofWildChild: I think Asheville School would be terrific for the well-matched applicant. According to SSAT.org, it's still accepting applications for both girl and boy boarders, too. ( <a href="http://www.ssat.org/membersearch.nsf/SCCAFS!OpenFrameSet%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ssat.org/membersearch.nsf/SCCAFS!OpenFrameSet&lt;/a> ) </p>

<p>I think it would work best for the very bright, game-for-anything types who aren't yet as polished as the majority of students you'll find populating the AESDCH's of the Northeast. By that I mean those other schools draw applicants who, by 8th grade, are hitting on all cylinders. I think Asheville is the place where boys and girls with the same raw materials grow into that student during their high school years. It’s well-suited for students for the South who, by and large, aren’t groomed for BS from kindergarten.</p>

<p>It's quite small (235), co-ed, 80% boarders, with about half the students coming from the Southeast. It has equestrian and mountaineering programs that use the 300 (or so) acre campus. The mountaineering component has everything from vertical ice climbing to kayaking and mountain biking. Students can do that, in a structured setting, in lieu of team sports -- which is one reason why I think it should appeal to the students who like to engage but aren't going to walk on to teams at jock schools. </p>

<p>There are no PGs and, competitively, the sports program is about what you'd expect from a school its size. Despite not being a jock school, it’s probably not a good place to hide from being engaged in sports. For example, the lacrosse program is brand new and many students are just learning the game, making it a place to get playing time and not rack up titles. Still, the coach is the headmaster and, according to Peterson's, he was headmaster at Baltimore's Gilman School (which is legendary for lacrosse) for 9 years...so I'm figuring he knows a thing or two about lacrosse you won’t pick up in the Southeast outside of the Atlanta area.</p>

<p>In the classroom, there are discussions in a circle, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as a Harkness classroom. But the experience is still distinctive. I particularly liked the fact that the humanities curriculum is a cross-curricular experience. From the school's web site:</p>

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<p>A lot of people aren’t familiar with Western NC or Asheville. Asheville is one of my favorite cities in the country. It's more like Boulder than Birmingham. It's in the Blue Ridge Mountains, close to the Smokies, and it's got real winters. (You gotta have real winters to do vertical ice climbs.) For nearly all of my 15 years in the South, the Asheville area has had snow before NY/NJ. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs right through Asheville. And it’s far more progressive than most Southern cities (which isn't saying much) with a Bohemian feel most people would never associate with the Deep South. It’s got a terrific music scene, too. Where I live, a very fundamentalist community, people either fear it or are convinced it's proof that the Rapture is near.</p>

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<p>Asheville is a beautiful city. We visited there almost 20 years ago, and its one of the places I want to visit again. I worry that it will look very different because there has been so much development there.</p>

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<p>D'yer, I love your description of Asheville, particularly the last sentence!</p>

<p>And the school sounds wonderful.</p>

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<p>Wow- a 2 page reply to a once sentence topic...
I think that its a borderline conflict of interest paying people who are sort of in bed with the staffs of many institutions..while it might be well spent I think the only mistake we may have made was in formulating our target list of schools...aim high they say but aim safely..that is our only mistake and we have learned from it...</p>

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<p>hpfir---KUDOS- GREAT POST!
Now here is advice to be listened to. I never read or even edited one of mY D's essays-and if she did not get in because my opinion of her is higher than it should be- hey that makes me a good parent IMHO--if she is a big fish in a small pond and for that reason her school is a less known quantity--or if she is perhaps too young- so be it..as far as finding the reasons she did not get in outright- can not get ANYTHING back but WE LOVED HER blah blah--what am I going to do Subpoena them?--these are top 10 schools with 50 states applying where 3 of 4 kids get rejected and its supposed to be a scientific reason for her not getting in?
- and they consider diversity as a <em>geographic</em> issue (and I need to be educated?) -i might disagree with that definition of diversity but things change slowly..
I think that the post about parents who do their kids science projects or use Ed consultants who edit their English essay was by far the best post I have read here..this is NOT about status its about fit...sure its nice to brag that Muffy goes to SPs or wherever but if Muffy winds up MuffedUp...nobody gains...while its hard to accept that my D may not walk on water its not hard to accept that life goes on...
w</p>

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<p>Re middlesex: there were no other essays for middlesex! Asheville really sounds wonderful.</p>

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<p>Re: Educational consultants - we used one. Our kid felt in December, that she might be better off by switching out of her large public high school and going to a smaller private school. This was so late! Also, the public high school guidance counselor was really not a helpful part of the equation, after all, she had 400 other kids to mind. </p>

<p>The consultants were terrific, geared up right away, encouraged her to take SSAT's privately for an initial baseline. They were instrumental in helping us narrow down a list of schools (day & boarding) for my decidedly un-preppy kid. Their fees; a small fraction of amounts mentioned earlier. The important thing is; they "got" us, they "got" our kid. They were supportive and encouraging and made no promises. They didn't make-over our kid. This was critical to all of us. I'm sure we will consult them again, when the college process starts in a couple of years.</p>

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<p>jg, sounds like you had a great experience and to me that is what an EC should be doing.</p>

<p>By the way, when you go to the SSAT website, you can order a book, which we did, and it has full practice tests for both levels of the test. My daughter thought the practice tests were harder than the real test, but she did think it made taking the real test faster because you understood the testing format for each type of test question...basically what I mean is every standardized test has a "style," and so she was prepared for the different types of "styles" on the SSAT test so she didn't waste time on that during the test. </p>

<p>Thanks for the Kudos waitlistman...glad my points got through to someone out there. </p>

<p>Amazingly we didn't need the ED for the financial aid app either and got FA for each school she was accepted to. I just think people need to trust themselves a little more and take the time to do their research.</p>