As far as assessing chances, we found Naviance indispensable. It also helped us identify schools that were not high choices and accepted almost nobody, so applying there would have been a complete waste of time. D1 got into two top schools early action and only ended up applying to a total of 5 schools.
Also from Naviance, we were able to assess that D2’s likely top choice was likely only attainable by ED. We were able to arrange her college visits in such a way that she was able to be sure about her first choice before she did ED.
I can give more pointers about how to use Naviance if you want to go that way.
I’m the poster who wrote about a $500 one-time consult that was very helpful, never dreaming of 5-figure investments over several years – not that I could afford it anyway!
Like CC, Naviance is a useful tool, but it’s a tool that led us to hire the (one-time, cheap) consultant because it really doesn’t give complete information. I spent three years looking at the scattergrams completely discouraged. My kid was accepted to some very competitive schools despite scattergrams that would have led us to dismiss those schools entirely. The older version of Naviance would red-light any number that wasn’t the average, and it was demotivating and discouraging. The new version seems to veer just a little too much into overly optimistic territory with the gas gauges, but I see it as improvement over what it was.
OP, did you read the link in post 2? Many of the people on this thread have kids who worked their bottoms off, including myself. Unfortunately, working super hard doesn’t give a student an entry ticket to a top ten, or even top 100 school. I have said it before, but without a hook, your child needs to be exceptional in a way that adcoms see, not in the eyes of parents. However, if a kid works very hard and has good grades and test scores, there is no reason why a student like that shouldn’t get into a really great school.
Spending a ton of money, even on a top notch consultant, isn’t going to guarantee anything. There are plenty of very qualified consultants who will help you and do a great job, but I doubt you will actually find one who will be brutally honest and tell you if they think your child has no chance at a top ten college. Instead, they will say “That college is a reach for all (true), so we should find some low-reach, match, and safety schools.” They will not say that your child has an infinitesimal chance, even if they think that.
We have nothing in it, except to give you an honest opinion. If you think it might be beneficial, feel free to share her stats with us. There are plenty of experienced people here who can give you some realistic feedback on her chances.
Here is a link about a supremely well-qualified student who was admitted to one college. It was a very rough lesson for this student. It is useful because it helps to understand that even an outstanding candidate has no guarantee. Imagine that you spend $10k only to end up with results like this student had. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1891200-asian-rejected-from-everywhere-postmortem-p1.html
Scroll to post 2 to see this student’s original post.
I have read that Asian boy story many times. Indeed it was heartbreaking! Every year there seems to be at least one on CC. I think that is precisely the reason one should consider hiring a private consultant (PC) in his case. Either the PC can douse his fantasy early on or PC could have helped him get in one of the schools. Its tragic he worked so hard for four years only to come short without proper advice. The only help he got was from his father who I imagine would be an avid CC too.
We hired a consultant for S who attended a public high school and were very happy with the results and the process. By contrast D attended a private high school where the college counseling was part of the deal, so we thought hiring the consultant was overkill. But now I’m not so sure. D’s friend who used the same consultant as our S is getting amazing admits that, given the stats, I can only chock up to a couple of years of “packaging” work. Or call it a story or whatever. The private high school guidance counselor was not doing this for D or her classmates. Ultimately here’s what I think it comes down to: at the private high school we realized there was a strong orientation toward getting kids into the UCs. As far as I can tell, you don’t need a lot of packaging or story creation to do that, you just need high GPAs with rigorous classes and high test scores. If you’re more focused on top private LACs or universities, I think packaging will make a difference. In other words, the strategy you might pursue as a student to get into UCLA (basically, devote your entire life to studying) is not likely to work so well with Wesleyan (where you would be better served becoming an interesting person).
The ridiculously high-priced consultants tend to cherry pick their clients and take those who they are pretty sure can get a top 20 acceptance. Most consultants are way more ethical than that.
mine was over 10k. and yes, its true… you need to have the stats. they won’t take you f your stats aren’t good and ur applying to the top 10, simply cuz it reflects badly on the consulting firm/consultant herself (success rates).
mine read over my essays, gave me critical feedback and insight into schools (how to craft supps for diff schools according to the vibe/what each school likes). she gave me a wide range of schools to apply to (I only post reaches/targets in my chance me threads bc I got accepted into my likelies and some targets already).
she doesn’t do TOO much if u think about it, meaning she didn’t write my essay, didn’t somehow help me do well on the SAT, didn’t give me inspiration for the common app, etc. based on my EC’s, she kinda told me what I should focus on writing about since I had a wide range and it’s better to excel in one thing than dabble in too many (hence why I focus on enviro and writing-- not for the purpose of college, but because I like many things and I wanted to focus on/specialize in something).
I had my consultant end of sophomore year, mostly for the EC issue. getting a consultant towards the end of junior year is a little risky cuz I feel lk the consultant cant do much other than review ur essays (which many people can do for low prices)
@suzyq7 “did you have the help of the consultant for S2?”
no, we didn’t. our school brought in a former ivy league admissions officer to talk to parents. He analyzed a number of admissions profiles during the talk and what emerged was the importance of telling a compelling and very consistent story about the applicant through the common app.
the same approach served us well this year for our daughter.
Our consultant was brutally honest. Most counselors like to manage down people’s expectations instead of up. In D2’s case, she wanted to ED at a top 20, but her counselor told her she should/could for the moon (top 3-5) because they felt good with her chances.
Such an interesting topic. I see three questions in the OP’s original post:
(1) “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?”
(2) “but how do you actually get honest assessment and good advice without consultants?”
(3) “If you hired consultants did they make a difference and how much did you spend?”
I think anyone on CC can offer an opinion on (1). I think (3) is just limited to those who hired some kind of consultant. And I think (2) is again, one that anyone on CC can answer, but with bias, who knows how accurate an answer it might be. With regard to (3), you can probably further break that down into price/type of assistance. As others have written, for those private counselors that cost $10k+, I don’t think you’re going to get many first-hand accounts (@hungrihippo notwithstanding). In the end, paying that money is kind of the point of not investing in one’s time in their own personal research, right? It’s like insurance or hiring a lawyer. Why pay and then continue to do all the work, endure all the pain and suffering if you’re paying an expert substantial fees for the same thing?
With that in mind and as someone who did not hire a consultant at all, I think I can address (1). FWIW, up until the day of final acceptance decisions, there will always be doubt. FWIW, after the day of final decisions, there’s often confirmation bias, one way or another (results that may disappoint = should have hired or paid more; results that pleased = I did it the right way).
Now that I have firmly established that this is just my kooky opinion, let me give it. If you have a child that has some kind of “shiny”—something unique about him or her that “shines” above what many high-achieving HS students do—the need and arguably usefulness for a private consultant declines (while never reaching zero). The more one has the “average” high-achieving child with no shiny, the more a private consultant can help.
What’s a shiny? Well, that’s what the highest level admissions game is about. For a student who is truly passionate in certain areas and achieves objective results in HS, that can be a shiny. For a student who has not obtained objective results, private consultants to the rescue! And by that, I mean they can help the student stand out while still presenting himself or herself as a true, unique individual.
Our kids also did NOT have a consultant. S also refused to take a SAT prep course. He did great anyway and was a NMF. He and we were interested in Us that would likely provide good merit aid for kids with stats like his. The private HS guidance counselor talked with S about his list and we toured some campuses.
S applied and was admitted to several Us on that list that he applied to–three with significant merit. S chose the U of those 3 that appealed most to him and matriculated there happily with merit that increased each year. He received 3 attractive job offers by Feb of his SR year.
D started at CC due to some chronic health issues and only applied to one private U – to join brother as a transfer and was admitted there (even though it was a high reach for her academically). She had taken a SAT prep course which was helpful for her because it taught her some math she had never previously learned. One thing that was compelling about D was she scored 4000 out of 4000 on the GED so she could go to CC after being forced to leave her private HS after JR year due to medical absences.
Our kids and we are very happy with the U both kids attended and received their degrees from, though it is not an Ivy or top 10 or even top 20.
If we were to do it again, we wouldn’t have changed anything nor hired a consultant. We were happier using all our money to allow our students to graduate debt-free.
I don’t think it is a bad name, just a different service provided to a different clientele. Just on this thread it is clear there are ‘agents’ who charge $500 and those who charge 10x that much. Some think the premium is worth it, others pay only for the help they need (or can afford).
My parents offered to hire one (and probably would have worried less if they did!), but I decided I didn’t really need one. My essays were given a brief editorial skim by my favorite humanities teacher, who is an excellent writer and a self-professed “grammar freak”. She’s great
I did a lot of research and compiled my own college list. This was part of the reason why I didn’t want a counselor - I was concerned that they wouldn’t take my priorities into account, and I would end up with a list of schools I wasn’t really interested in. I narrowed the list to about eight, which my mom and I toured prior to submitting applications. I knocked five off the list for various reasons, and ultimately applied to three, all of which I would have been happy to attend! I was accepted to my first choice, and am attending this fall.
As a sidenote, I’m really happy I was able to tour BEFORE applying. I would have wasted a lot of time writing supplemental essays for colleges I wasn’t going to attend.
As others have mentioned in this thread, the best decision my parents and I made was to hire a private ACT tutor. We met twice a week (3 hour sessions) for 8 weeks, which cost about $1300. I really needed the prep, and the one on one tutoring made a huge difference for me. I tried group prep courses, but didn’t get much out of them, so it was a relief to finally have the tutor’s full attention for explanations and questions.
I should also note that I wasn’t going for top 10 schools - just private LACs and a couple of larger state schools. I’m lucky to have parents that know fit > prestige.
We hired an ACT tutor and an essay consultant. Total cost about $7000. Well worth it as our daughter’s ACT went up by 6 points and her essay was apparently good enough.
Careful here. I thought you were talking about us for a moment.
This is what DH did with DD (we had $7K in the 529 plan and $68K in his 401K -him having worked the better part of 23 years), and although we were not maxed on credit cards, we were continuing to pay off an installment plan on my medical bills.
Stanford is giving her a lot of need based financial aid, and I am delighted that they were among her most affordable options. I would not want to discourage anyone from applying to Stanford if they run the NPC and find it affordable.
I usually find @blossom to be very good with advice.
But at the risk of getting this deleted for thread jacking, let me return to the original question.
It does not seem to me that there are many people here at CC who are willing to fess up to paying 4-5 digits for a college admit consultant. Our neighboring town had a college planning info session, sponsored in part by a consultant who specialized on applying for merit scholarships, and another who specialized in test prep services. They also invited a local college admission officer, and they went through a lot of the process for a good 2 hours. While the information is available here and elsewhere, a lot of these sessions are valuable for families just starting the process. Like I said earlier, some of the consultants are very good at what they do, and families in a position to use them are welcome to do what is best for their situation.
3Puppies- I should have been clear. I am NOT talking about people who have run the numbers and are eligible for need based aid. Of course- that’s what aid is for. I’m talking about the people with a $325K annual income who “feel like” they can afford anything when the reality on the ground is that they are going to be hard-pressed to shake those sofa cushions hard enough to yield thousands and thousands of dollars every month for four years.
Yes- run the NPC’s. Figure out what the formulas say you can afford. If you evaluate your cash flow, investments, other assets and agree-- then great. It’s the families where any sort of setback- the muffler falls off, the fridge dies, etc. usually means getting a new credit card where the reality of college planning and financial planning collide big time.
In fact, “the people with $325K income” can still qualify for financial aid at top ten schools. If you don’t believe it you can plug numbers in their calculators like Yale’s. That’s the nice thing about these schools for middle to upper income families–the only thing to worry about is getting in. Once there someone will find a way to make it work for you. I personally have never heard of someone dropping out due to lack of money.
Congrats to 3 puppies D at Stanford too!
@jzducol I have never heard of a figure that high for FA at top 10 schools - based on reading many posts on CC. I can’t recall who, but there is a poster on CC that has a student at both Harvard and Yale and mentioned the top income for FA as something in the upper 100K lower 200K.
