I know this topic was probably covered from time to time. But it seems the landscape of admission changes every year and so do the fees. My D is a junior and we are debating about getting her a consultant. I would like to know for applying to top ten schools have you retained a private admission consultant and how much do they cost nowadays?
My thinking is that for public schools seniors counselors do not really offer much of advise or assistance. For parents and kids there is probably no way to figure out how their application stacks up with others who are also super competitive for top colleges. And I donāt think it would be wise to post a whole application for certain school on CC to get feedback and input. DIY can achieve a lot and there seems to be consensus on CC that DIY is preferred over hiring private consultants, but how do you actually get honest assessment and good advice without consultants?
If you hired consultants did they make a difference and how much did you spend?
Iām interested in seeing what others have to say. After D16ās disappointing experience last year, due to zero support from her out of country public school, we hired an admissions consultant for S14ās law school applications.
Top ten? If you are absolutely determined that your D get into a top ten school, be certain she has amazing stats AND accomplishments before you go down that road. Read this: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1878059-truthful-advice-about-getting-into-top-colleges-for-your-average-excellent-student-p1.html
If you are still determined, and you have the money, then there are some high-profile companies that will guarantee admission to one of your kidās top three choices. These companies can literally charge around $20,000. Bear in mind, they wonāt take your kid on unless your kid is stellar. They wonāt want to refund you, so itās in their interest to only take the very best students.
There are some very good private consultants, advisors, counselors out there. Do a search here on CC, lots of threads will come up. Anyone who is extremely well-connected with a good track record of getting kids into tippy top colleges is going to be pretty expensive. I live in a suburb outside of a major city. Our schools are competitive and regularly send kids to HYP, Duke, JHU, and the like. The most in-demand advisors will be at least $200 an hour, and probably even more. Many will charge a set price for a package, often about $5000. I will tell you that I definitely know that the kids in our school who got into Harvard and MIT this past year did not have advisors. There are kids here on CC who seemingly do it all themselves and just use CC, which is entirely doable.
I hired a private advisor for my āaverageā excellent student, so not exactly what you were looking for, but I will share my two cents. We didnāt spend many thousands. I already knew a lot. We wanted someone who could ensure she was applying to a good range of schools, who could help her prep for interviews, and who knew how to best fill out common app. I am not certain it was the best use of money, (around $1300) but it was useful in several ways. D got into very good selective colleges and the private advisor was able to help steer her to a couple of good-fit schools, one of which she attends. We will not be using a private advisor for my sophomore son.
You can do it all on CC. One thing you will get here is brutal honesty. I kind of wish now I had initally spent more time here, because, in fact, the private advsior really should have told her she had no chance at an Ivy League school. They donāt want to crush dreams, because no one is happy about paying a dream crusher, lol. If I had come here, people would have crushed her dreams for free, no question. And it would have saved us $85.
OP, What part of the country do you live in?
We live in Ca. I know that CC can give brutally honesty opinion on any profile. But the thing is everyone applying to top ten would have perfect stats. The intangibles like essays can not be posted on CC anyway, and they are probably what distinguishes a successful applicant from others.
So, I am very interested to know if there are CC parents out there who feel they kids would not have been successful in admission process had it not been the private counselorās help.
We didnāt get a private counselor for my daughter. The prices (over 10k) were just plain silly for the services they provide. We did get her a tutor for her essays.
I had the time so I helped my daughter instead.
Google one of the companies I suggested and ask for a customer reference.
And yes, mostly everyone at a top ten school will have stellar stats, which is why it isnāt just about stellar stats. Itās about the person and what they have achieved.
Which means if you really want to get an advisor better do it back in 8th grade not as a junior.
Didnāt hire an advisor but did pay for test prep (absolutely worth it) and did pay a small amount for essay consulting. The essay consulting was just incredible. DS did absolutely all the writing but the consultant did a wonderful job helping him come up with topics and craft them in a way that made him seem unique. Would do it again and plan on doing it again for DD in a couple years.
The generic consulting isnāt really necessary with CC and Naviance and all the other tools available online. You should be able to narrow down your selections without professional advice.
And of course, they will advise you in CA to have moved to Montana back in 6th grade, or some other underrepresented geographic area. They will advise you to have changed your childās name and ethnicity if you are not an URM. They will advise you to have cured cancer while volunteering at an orphanage in the offseason from your Olympic events. /sarcasm
I spoke with a lot of admissions counselors from all of the elite schools - as we were chasing need-based financial aid. I routinely asked in the information sessions - if others had not asked it - about students coming from public schools vs. private schools. Even though the vast majority of HS students attend public schools, the elite schools have a higher than proportional distribution coming from private schools. And this is expected since they tend to have parents from higher SES, who can afford HS tuition, etc. So I would typically ask if the HS guidance counselor at our public HS does not have a close relationship with the student, is their application looked down on? The elite schools understand the different roles of private vs. public HS guidance counselors, and they do not penalize the students for this at all.
Student are encouraged to complete the application themselves - and the admissions officers can often tell what it a 17-18 year old studentās voice vs. a more polished application that has been tweaked dozens of times by consultants/grown ups.
I donāt look down on the consultants who provide a meaningful service to some families - I have a friend who does this as part of her test prep business (I was surprised to learn she opened this business 10+ years ago, and my pups might have benefitted from it had they known, but they did it all on their own). For many families, the stress of nagging a teenager to stay on deadlines, etc. is not worth the hassle and strain on a parent-child relationship, especially when they can pay someone to help plan, and remind the student of important milestones along the way. I am sometimes amazed that folks have the money to do this, and would choose to spend it this way, but to each his/her own.
My DH once told DD that in order to get into these great schools, you have to be smart enough to figure this out for yourself. A lot of luck is needed to overcome the fact that we donāt have the hooks of 1st gen, nor URM, nor legacy, nor athletic recruit, nor are we able to donate a couple hundred millionā¦
I imagine if a kid needs parents nagging to apply to colleges, he or she would not have accomplished a profile good enough for top ten colleges.
It seems there is a lack of stories here among CC parents who have spent $10k or more for this specific purposeāto help them separate their kids from the rest in the application pool. I speculate that for top ten schools, its much like competing sports at elite level, every little edge counts. Are there good or bad outcomes to share here?
I highly doubt that the people who are paying over 10k are here on CC. That is what they are paying for, to NOT have to rely on a site like this. No doubt there are parents who have paid in the region of 5k though.
I do know folks who used private consultants to help kids with college search, selection and application to top schools.
BUT they didnāt start at the end of 11th grade. To be honest. Thatās sort of late. What do you want this oersonnto do for you? Itās a little late to help you with things like course selection, ECs, and the like. Itās alsmoat too late to make suggestions for schools to visit. And itās certainly too late to change course selections to meet requirements for some colleges.
You may find that some of these college consultants already have a full load of kids who will be seniors next yearā¦
But if you want someone, Iām sure you can find someone.
Fact is,mhowever, your consultant will advise you on choices based on what your kid has to offer on their application. If anyone promises you they can get your kid into a top ten schoolā¦I would not work be suspicious of that claim.
And you knew someone would askā¦is your kid ONLY applying to top ten schools?
We were not aiming for Top 10 universities; I hired a consultant because our public schoolās college counselor was useless. On the recommendation of friends with kids from the class above, we used a private school college counselor who did consulting on the side. It was $500 for a 2-hour consult with the student and family in order to come up with a solid list of schools to consider. The consultant charges an hourly rate for application and essay help, but we didnāt need to use him for that. (Itās nice to know the option was there, but even the $500 was a splurge.) Included in that $500 fee were answers to questions by email (which we tried not to abuse).
We were very pleased with the value, the choices and the outcomes. What we really needed was someone to get us out of the weeds; to pinpoint schools we may not have heard of; and to have someone look objectively at my kidās stats outside of his school.
I know some students who went to top ten schools without using private counselors. I feel if they used one they could be at a top three school. It must be helpful to let someone look at your application if that person is a former top school AO who saw thousands of applications and made decisions who to admit. If my son turns out to be a candidate for a top school and there is a former top school AO around Iād pay her/him to take a look at sonās application. But Iād rather see that kind of helping eliminated soon.
The significance of essays may be exaggerated. Lots of things are likely in play and for many years before junior year to make a top school contender, if the kid is the right material at all. So, itād be nice to have a private counselor or put the kid in expensive private schools early. But Iād rather keep the kid close and be involved.
Your kid needs amazing stats and a āstoryā. Perhaps a consultant can help craft the story - but I think your best bet is use CC for crafting your list (safety, match, reach) and hire a testing tutor (if you need it) and an good essay reviewer.
People that I know that have used consultants didnāt think it really helped except with selection and essay review (they will NOT write it for you, though or give you a magic idea, that is up to your kid). Again, this site is far better for creating the list than than the consultant will be - if you have the time or inclination to use it. It also gives you a huge dose of reality, especially if you read the results next week on Ivy day. Please read those threads for the reality of top 10 admissions.
@jzducol - while students do not post their essays on CC, they do sometimes ask folk to read them and send them via PM if they agree. I have read them on occasion since that is something that I do on the side (full disclosure - not a plug for your business). It is a way to get a free review. I am always amused when I see fellow applicants offering to read essays.
I have posted on this before, so feel free to try to find the older threads. But, I guess Iām the unusual parent who uses cc extensively AND hired a consultant. I felt very confident that I could help my son formulate a good list of schools and very comfortable doing lots of research on schools. Where I felt we needed help was with the essays. My son was reaching for very top schools and I knew he had the scores and gpa to get a look. But with such intense competition and the emphasis on essays and holistic admissions, I wanted to give him this help. We hired someone specifically to review his essays. After the first few applications, I felt we learned enough that he could finish the rest without having them all reviewed. But for the common app main essay, and for the supplemental answers for the first three schools, it was very welcome help. Essays that we (ds, dh, and I) thought were great, she kept saying it wasnāt really going to get the job done. In the 11th hour, he found a new topic, and the consultant said itās a home run essay. Well, we have no idea what would have happened without her help, but he is now thriving at Yale which was his top pick all along. He ended up being accepted to 3/5 of the top ten schools he applied to, along with some match and safety schools. For us, Iām glad we did it. If he didnāt get the wished for outcomes, we would have known we helped him do the best he could. He worked extremely hard for four years, and I justified the cost realizing it was small compared with the cost of tuition!
I think they are very helpful for certain students. In general, that is when:
- the parents do not know much about college admissions
- the schools that interest the student are very competitive
- the high school GC is not knowledgeable about the schools that interest you
- the student has strong ECs overall, but not one with a big āwow factorā
- there is no one who can really proof read and edit the essays well
- an unhooked student is targeting top 10-15 schools, even if they are the real deal, which most are not
D1 had a very bad college application process, so I hired a private counselor for D2. It was a consulting team, not just one consultant. The advising started end of sophomore year. They looked over her profile, and based on her interest and aspiration, came up with their first list of colleges beginning of junior year. As more stats came in, like GPA, test scores, ECs and such, they revised the list. They gave her guidance on summer activities and ECs, as well as on what courses to take in school. They had very good sense on what many of those top schools looked for in applicants because they hired ex-admission people from those schools. Those ex-admission people only reviewed students profiles, they didnāt work with students directly. In senior year, they helped with essays and applications. They were very helpful in making sure D2 was on schedule with all her tests, essays and applications. I thought D2ās final application looked a lot better than D1ās. To be clear, they didnāt write D2ās essays. They helped with topics and editing, but they were all D2ās words.
I found D2ās process was a lot painless for me and we were happy with the result. By the time D2 was going through the process I was already on CC for over 5 yrs, but I still learned a lot from this consulting firm. They got many students into their reach and high reach schools, especially during ED/EA.
I recently refer a friend to the same consultant. My friend said the price tag was 25K for 2 yrs package now. It was less for me 5 years ago.