Hi so I am on Child number 3 who will be a senior this year. 3rd time around on the whole college process and I am so much calmer. I feel like I have learned so much at this point that I could be a college counselor. I was just now looking at threads and seeing how often some people have posted through the years and it got me thinking. Does anyone else feel like they know so much about colleges and applying that they could be a counselor? Has anyone actually done it?
It’s not as easy as you make it sound.
First, if you want to pursue this job, it would be smart to get some training and some certifications from some of the groups that offer it.
Second…it’s one thing to do your own kid…quite another to take money and try to help someone else’s kid get into college, choose colleges, wrote essays, complete applications, etc. it’s very time consuming.
Third, it takes a couple of years to build up a success track record.
OMG for sure it is. I was not implying that I was just curious if anyone had gone through formal training and done it. I actually helped a friend last year who needed help but could not pay a counselor. It was an incredibly rewarding process. I did not get paid or anything just helped as a friend and it was very time consuming.
@thumper1 are you a counselor?
I am not a college counselor, but I know several people who either are or were. All have found it incredibly rewarding but much more time consuming than they thought it would be.
One thing you could consider…pay it forward on this site! Any tips or info you found helpful will likely help someone here with their college search.
There are a number of posters (including me) whose kids have long been out of undergrad school, but we still contribute information.
Yes I would imagine it is super time consuming. I spent so much time with my friend and her daughter last year. I think it is wonderful that you are sharing all your knowledge on this site. I am sure your efforts are very appreciated. I have turned to CC when I need a question answered and it has been great. I am just thinking about my next steps in life and was curious if others have thought of it as well.
It may may depend where you live as to whether you can find business. The wealthy urban areas, so families in the Northeast, Chicago and the west coast cities, (LA, San Diego, Bay Area ) use college counselors and they get payed well.
Many middle income families want to pay nothing for this service, but need a few pointers, that they can often glean from talking to other parents. Lower income families need help with finances and college choices but that segment cannot afford to pay for the help they need. Thus Quest Bridge and other programs out there, do some, but they are very small and don’t reach most of the families that need help.
One way to start is to volunteer to give talks to your local high schools. Most college counselors develop large notebooks of information that they sell,along with their services, but that takes a lot of time and energy to develop those materials.
I do interviews, as a volunteer alum, for a specific college, and over the years have found that if parents get involved, it gets more difficult, so how to separate parents and their kids will be challenging I bet. I like helping students, not parents quite as much, so my volunteer work suits me.
There could be some amount of liability, as if you help a student develop a college list, they write really bad essays
and get rejected everywhere, then what? I can imagine if you have very wealthy clients, they can and will sue you
if "Johnny does not get into Harvard! "
College Confidential thrives, because most families do not want to pay for an individual counselor but
need some specific advise, and CC provides a pretty deep set of students and parents to consult on many issues.
I thought this was the coolest idea and I bet many on CC would be fantastic at it. Not a paid position but justs to share hard-won knowledge.
Most of the folks I know who are really great CCS came out of admissions offices and are very well connected in that world as well as being well-informed and cariing about the kids. Not to say that a person could not get qualified, but I have often felt that doing the job without that perspective from the other side, is a huge blind spot.
With that said,there are probably a lot of folks here who could do a much better job than the folks who are currently helping them, and I do know folks who were working in schools who found their way into the guidance office (without having worked in admissions ) and who are very helpful to the students they serve.
@93pilots I agree super cool!! I also think I know a lot of mom’s who would be great at it! Thanks for posting the link. I enjoyed reading the article.
@gardenstategal it is interesting that you think that. I am not sure I agree. Many of the top counselors worked in admissions so long ago. Last night I started reading a book called Admissions Matter (so far good read btw) and while I enjoy it I was shocked by how out of date it already seems. The copy I have, which was given to me by a friend, is not even 10 years old. Anyway my point is that I am not sure how much admissions office perspective some of these counselors bring to the table when they worked in those offices 20 and 30 yeas ago. To me it seems like admissions changes so much almost yearly now.
@colorodomama thanks for your input. Not sure I am really up for doing it, but was just curious if others felt that they also have become so knowledgeable.
Haven’t worked in an admissions office, but I suspect that although certain details change rapidly, the core function and process does not. If I were going to hire a college counselor, I would want one that had either worked in an admissions office of the type of college my child was interested in or had somehow otherwise worked in a capacity where s/he had seen thousands of apps and more importantly - the impressions they created in AOs.
I think there is a lot one can pick up through research and being around the process, but only direct experience gets you that valuable extra few percent knowledge.
@college curious I feel the same way as you. I have so much knowledge from the process after going through it with my kids. Not only from their counselors, but from the school counselors, reading, following blogs, etc. Many of my friends have used me to help their kids - free of charge. It really depends on the area, and what the kids/parents are looking for. There are many in my area that started “counseling” and were neither a high school counselor or a previous AO. They just went through it with their kids. There are places you can get a credential, but when I went through it with my kids, I just went through word of mouth with a referral - I did not check to see if the counselor had any credential. I hardly believe that someone would sue if there kid did not get into a specific school. That is the reason why a “counselor” would help come up with different types of schools - the reach, target and satety type. I don’t think any counselor would ever guarantee they could get a kid into school.
I get what you mean - it is amazing how much information you gather after doing it multiple times and people ask if I have thought about being a college counselor. But that’s because they are new to the process so I seem more impressive than I am. 
Like you, I feel like I know a whole lot about the overall process (from the over 50 applications of my kids alone that I proofed to many different schools) and share it with anyone that wants to ask or listen, but I do feel like my area of expertise is really built around the two schools mine attend. So while I love playing “college counselor” with people interested in the schools I am most familiar with, I am not sure I would be as helpful with schools outside of my experience zone. General things may apply to all of them and the process, but they also have individual traits that one only gets through experience with them, or being an official counselor doing continuous research.
I tend to get overly invested in online communities having to do with whatever is currently going on in my life, to the point where I do think about going into that field as a career. If I did that I would have been a wedding coordinator, then doula or childbirth educator, followed by gifted ed coordinator and/ or math coach, and now heading into college counselor. Probably to be followed by next jobs in retirement planning advising and empty-nest counselor. ;-).
I do enjoy giving advice online and to friends. I have no illusions that I could really do this professionally, though, as a) I would absolutely be terrible at the essay-coaching portion (assuming that’s part of the package most of the time) and b) when I look at threads here asking ‘what schools should I look at?’ I find that I have something useful to add only about maybe 1 in 10 threads or so. Maybe less. Although I suppose if I did do this professionally the clients would be local so that would help.
As a parent, you really don’t know what worked, what did the trick, and really only have a limited sample. And your own local high school(s.) Look at how CC, even parents who already have a kid or two in college (or several more, in some cases,) disagree. Even on the basics like, padding vs breadth, whether spike matters, what classes or ECs one needs, what the essay should cover, etc. And a lot of being a good counseor is steering an individual kid to his or her right targets- do you know about more options out there than what you own looked at?
I’m not a private counselor.
Experience combined with passion and hard work.
But I do not agree that the experience has to be as an admissions officer because if that were true than all good litigators would have to have been trial judges.
“But I do not agree that the experience has to be as an admissions officer because if that were true than all good litigators would have to have been trial judges.”
I don’t agree with this analogy. In a trial, the proceedings and the outcome are not only open to all to observe, there are written records for any interested party to pore over to gain understanding of the mechanics, the details, the facts, the results and often the judges’ thinking behind the results. In the admissions process, all the deliberation and most of the outcomes are private and those private deliberations are where much of the sausage is made.
Using the example cited earlier, I know where my kid was admitted and I have some good guesses as to why, but those are only guesses. He could have been admitted for reasons that I’m completely unaware of. Similarly, there are other kids who I have known who have been rejected by various colleges and I have what I believe to be a good guess as to why, but it could have been other things entirely. There is no good way to gain extensive experience in the college admissions process without either having worked inside such an office in some capacity or otherwise seeing the deliberations and results of thousands of apps.
I’ve actually had more than one person suggest I should go into college counseling but the truth is, I know my lane. I think I’d be great at helping kids find appropriate schools but much less good at helping them get in.
I’ve learned a ton from my years on CC (thank you all you great posters!) and I’ve had the benefit of some strong secondary school and college counselors so I can help families figure out the process and direct them to resources. What I haven’t done is read essays until my eyeballs bled or listened to a colleague try to advocate for the 16th BWRK from New Jersey.
I do have friends who are counselors. One received a degree in college counseling; the other worked in an admissions office. One has folded her successful practice because it was doing a job on her family life. When do most kids have time to work with a counselor? Evenings, weekends, holidays-IOW family time.