Have you used a private admission consultant, if so what is your experience?

Parents Forum
61

Harvard: “Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances. Families at all income levels who have significant assets will continue to pay more than those in less fortunate circumstances.”

So check again. At 300k income, no assets, full pay.

When it comes to tippy tops, the wise dig deep, rather than go on a cursory glance.

62

I think the variables are many, a $300 salary income with three kids in expensive Ca would not be the same as in Omaha, Nebraska.

63

I hired an admissions consultant to help finalize the college list and formulate essays the summer between Junior and Senior year. She was someone that a friend used, with good results. I interviewed her and she seemed to know what she was doing and I liked her very much. Unfortunately, she didn’t really “click” with my daughter, so ended up not being very helpful. I think the big issue was that the consultant was “rewriting” the essays instead of giving feedback, which irritated my daughter and seemed like a bad idea to me. I think the consultant had too many clients, so she just was editing essays to save time. In the end, the gc at school was amazing and helpful with the essays and the paid consultant was useless. If I had it to do again, I would either skip the consultant or have my daughter interview consultants to make sure there was a fit. Also, I would ask specifically about the process for tuning the essays.

64

My personal thought is that if you need to “game” the system (extensive SAT prep, consultants) to get your student into a higher level school that they would normally get into, will they do well there? They will be competing against other top kids.

65

^^^ Although I am not a big fan of expensive consultants - I’ll have to say:

Many many rejected students are 100% capable of doing the work at top colleges - they just did not gain admission because the colleges decided they did not meet their institutional needs that year. Help (in the form of a college counselor or consultant) can perhaps help frame the application to be more appealing to the school.

I can certainly see the appeal of a consultant to help paint the student’s story and give constructive criticize on the essays and provide reality to the parents. I feel like this forum does a great job of showing the reality of the process and compiling the list. If the school (or the family) cannot help with good feedback on essays and “the story” - a consultant to provide those services may be helpful.

66

Interesting comment in post 62. We had the same experience with the private consultant in regards to the essay. Her “help” in that respect was to tell my daughter to edit the soul out of her writing. I had to pay for that, too. I wish I had asked her not to get involved with the essay, but that is because I know my kid and she most likely would have objected to anyone’s opinion of how to improve it. I should have thought of that first. My son will probably beg everyone to write his essay for him!

As I said, the main help our consultant provided was in making sure her list was right, preparing her for interviews, and helping her fill out the Common App, particularly the actvities section. Doing a good job on the app is hard, I can see why people want help.

@quietdesperation , if you don’t mind sharing, what was so compelling about your son’s story?

67

Did not use a counselor. Did not find that those who did ended up any better than those who did not. If it gives peace of mind and one has the resources to do so, go for it.

FA sidenote: As a CA resident with more than one child in a super expensive private school and over the $150k mark, I can state for a fact that it does not matter to an Ivy if you live in Omaha or Los Angeles. You will be ponying up a boatload of money. A boatload.

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Wow, I’m sorry to hear about consultants editing students’ essays in ways that remove ideas central to who they are. Not my experience, for sure.

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@eiholi for us, it was the resources they were able to provide tailored specifically to my DS and our family. For instance, my DS’s HPME app was assessed by a former HPME admissions committee member before we submitted it on top of the rounds of editing my DS was required to make under his mentor’s guidance. His essays were polished but retained their elements of youth for his age and the interview prep for HPME was intense. There was a huge noticeable difference in my DS performance before, during and by the end of his interview preparation. Parents who have been through the process for HPME will vouch that it is really intense with TRIPLE interviews. We were also able to ask questions about his college apps and were not charged anything extra for this which was much appreciated.

Don’t get me wrong, CC is a great place with lots of helpful information, but it does not have individualized expertise and guidance that we needed. There is no way I would have been able to fill their shoes. Some families are lucky in that they have a great school GC to help out but ours was mediocre and not very helpful.

Now that we’ve been through the process with lots of success, I can surely say that getting into bs/md programs is tougher than getting into the ivies combined…lol

70

This is my first post, although I’ve read here quite a bit!

Anyway, we hired a consultant and it was worthwhile, even though it hasn’t resulted in what we initially hoped it would.

My daughter has always been bright and a conscientious student and I knew she’d be able to go to a good school. I was pretty relaxed about it all, because I didn’t want to pile on the pressure to try to get her in an elite school. I figured it would be better to enjoy high school as much as possible instead of focusing a lot on college. Then her test scores came back. She didn’t prepare for either the SAT (old) or the ACT, just walked in and took the tests, and still ended up with an 800 on the math part of the SAT and a 35 composite (36 math, 36 science, 35 reading). She was getting marketing materials from all of the elite schools, and suddenly really liked the idea of going to one of them, CalTech in particular. But she wasn’t sure what to write essays about or how to best present herself. So we hired a consultant.

The consultant exposed us to colleges we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. So my daughter applied to several UCs (we’re in California), CalTech, Harvey Mudd, and MIT, which we’d heard of and considered already, but also Willamette, Reed, Northeastern, Brown, and Bryn Mawr, which we hadn’t considered. The other benefit was the help with the essays and applications. The consultant spent a lot of time brain storming with my daughter about what to write about. The essays were 100% written by my daughter and are in her voice, but she never would have put nearly as much thought into what she was writing, or effort into the essays themselves, without the consultant’s advice.

I don’t completely know how it’s all turned out yet, since she won’t hear back from Cal or Brown until Thursday, but here are the results so far:

Denied: CalTech, MIT

Waitlisted: Harvey Mudd

Accepted: Willamette (w/merit scholarship)
Northeastern (honors college and scholarship)
UC Davis (Regents Scholar and honors college)
UC San Diego
UC Santa Cruz (merit scholarship)
Bryn Mawr (Presidential scholarship)
Reed
UCLA (Regents Scholar)

Her top two choices right now are Reed and UCLA. She’s going to visit both with overnight stays before deciding. (Their atmospheres and cultures seem complete opposites so I’ll be interested to see which she ends up preferring.)

Anyway, she wouldn’t have thought to apply to Reed without the consultant, and I don’t think she would have been awarded Regents Scholar at UCLA without the consultant, either. Her stats would have been the same, but her application was much stronger than it would have been otherwise. Also, I’ve seen the UC threads about all the kids with great stats who were denied and waitlisted this year, and the fact that she wasn’t (we’ll see about Cal of course), also makes me grateful that she had the consultant’s help!

71

We also hired someone to help my DS with BS/MD applications and have been very happy with his results. The process seemed very daunting for avg parents like us, so the help we received was worth every penny.

The dilemma was not whether to hire someone but in choosing the right person as there are just so many choices out there. We started with a list based on suggestions from CC and reviews. After speaking with all of them, all but 1 company were willing to take our money ASAP. This one company required my DS to apply to be considered for the program we were interested in. They then interviewed him so the process was pretty thorough. We appreciated that they didn’t just tell us to sign up and take our money like the others.

Things have worked out better than we had imagined. Right now we are in the wonderful dilemma of narrowing down acceptances! We are so glad because as @WindyChimes said, we were definitely scared, because so manykids with stronger stats than my DS who were rejected.

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@jessapen and @WindyChimes - I am happy to see your experiences with a consultant has been positive. Do you mind sharing the ballpark amount you spent on these services? That is, did you spend three, four, or 5 digits?

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The question is, can anyone really know what the results would have been without the consultant?

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@3puppies It was high 4 figures for us. And it’s a retainer for the year so the consultant has been available whenever my daughter has needed guidance. She spent many hours in the consultant’s office working on essays, and also has worked with her via Skype. Quick questions have been answered promptly with texts and emails. Days, nights, weekends–the consultant was available pretty much constantly.

We went with someone local, and not one of the big national consulting firms because I wanted someone who could get to know my daughter in person since her personality doesn’t fit with the typical high-achiever (she’s very sweet and unassuming). I’d heard this consultant speak at a workshop for parents on applying to colleges and was impressed with what she had to say and also her attitude about it all.

75

You dont know what the results would be without the consultant but I know for 100 perecent sure that the consultant reduced both my stress level and that of my kids. She set up a long frame application process and deadlines for essay and applications. She proofread so we knew there were no silly errors. Her schedule had my kids finishing all their essays by the first day of Senior year, thus eliminating last minute panic.

She was also good at teasing out great topics for kids. She worked with my cousins son a 3 sport varsity athlete. He’s a captain of two teams. He wanted to write about sports. His parents wanted him to write about sports. She prodded " what do you like to watch on tv" " sports" " “besides sports” “Master chef” " do you like to cook" “not really, but I can make homemade pizza dough. I actually make it for our team dinners. My first doughs were terrible but I’ve perfected em now”

He wrote about learning how to make a perfect pizza dough. I’m not saying that’s what got him into Penn, lol, but I bet the admin like it more than another sports essay

76

We hired a consultant. It cost around 4,000 and it was absolutely great. We spent around another 1,000 or so on SAT prep. The good ones can provide invaluable advice.

One of the posters said if you need to hire a consultant to game the system then you shouldn’t. I am an attorney and that is why people hire attorneys—to in essence game the system. It may not be fair but it is the way it is.

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@3puppies we paid approximately $8K.

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@planner03 We will never know FOR SURE what the results would have been like if we had just done things on our own, but we’ve been blessed and are very thankful for his numerous acceptances. To me, my DS stats are just avg for BS/MD and even a tad below avg for some of the programs he’s been accepted so it’s hard to pass that off to chance when you’re talking about BS/MD programs. I believe he was successful because of the help we received and my DS efforts to correct the issues he needed to BEFORE his interviews. He was basically told to put EVERYTHING aside for many weeks to work on his interview because he sucked and was not going to get in. I think he needed to hear that from someone other than his parents because many of our children do not realize when it comes to BS/MD, they are up against the best of the best!

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Thanks @WindyChimes and @jessapen for sharing. While I don’t think I could personally ever bear to part with that kind of money for something they could do themselves, I don’t begrudge those who have that kind of financial resources, and are willing to use it to reduce the stress in their lives.

I liken this to maid service - it would be nice to have someone come in a few hours a week to clean my house, do laundry, etc., but fortunately I can still do this myself. I don’t hold it against someone who can afford to have that luxury.

80

@3puppies I don’t see it the same way as the maid service analogy, because surely I can clean my own home if I chose not to be lazy. I have the skills to do so.

However, as I mentioned, we would not have been able to do help him by ourselves. We just do not have the experience or answers and the paid advice we were given contradicted advice we had read on CC on many occasions. Why? because we were paying for an individualized opinion for my DS and not one size fits all general advice. There are numerous BS/MD applicants that do things on their own who are successful (… and I’m so happy for them) but there are EVEN more applicants who fail, likely because they did things on their own.

Best wishes to you and your family!