Hiring a College Advisor?

I only know 2 people who hired an advisor - one was a lower income family, neither parent had attended college and their son was a relatively high stat kid looking for lots of merit. They had no idea where to start looking, so they hired someone. The other was a friend in the middle of an ugly divorce with little of her own income, a very uncooperative soon to be ex, again trying to find schools that would only count her income. If you have the time, I think you can get a ton of useful information on this and other sites and save the money.

As for the essay, my son’s high school spends the better part of the 1st marking period working on theirs. The English teacher reviewed it once (required), then offered to look at it as many more times as the student wanted (optional). I think you can find plenty of free help on the essay at school. Of course, my son was average and wanted to stay closer to home so it was a pretty easy search.

How is your school guidance counselor, OP?

I think the nice thing is an advisor sounds like a pal, experienced with the nuances. In fact, many just aren’t. They haven’t worked in admissions (or it was short, right after their own grad. And some things change routinely.) The very best advice is, imo, when they can point a kid at the right tier, get him interested. But you seem to already know?

Another thing you could get answered here is: if she knows her niche interest, does she know what the allied fields are? Or is she really knowledgeable that that major is the only way to meet her interests? She may not stick with that niche, then what?

I help kids with essays all the time on this forum, for free, via PM’s. I was trained in non-directive tutoring which means I let the kid write it :slight_smile: You might be able to find a college student who could do this for very little money, or have your kids PM me!!

FAFSA isn’t that hard or time-consuming. CS Profile is a little more work, especially if you have special circumstances. But regarding the latter, the admissions office is often helpful.

Young people do not have to know their intended major in most cases; They can enter as undecided and decide, usually after sophomore year. It’s fine.

The thing is, there is an art, for lack of a better word, to writing a good college essay. There are some good books and websites that provide helpful guidance. Often what makes for a good college essay differs from a school assigned essay. A friend, also a college consultant, said she finds that frequently a student’s English teacher edits seem to suck the life blood out of a fun college essay.

The problem can be that the teacher knows the kid, can read between the lines. Adcoms can’t assume.

@compmom agree, leading is the best way. Not presuming to rewrite.

We hired a college advisor because:

  1. It’s been 30+ years since either my wife or I applied to college. It is difficult not to fall back on the “this is the way I did it” thinking.

  2. We did some research and met with the college advisor and like her. She had a great background and I liked the way that she thinks.

  3. I know that I could do this on my own but worried that I would make some rookie mistakes and only really know how to do it right after all my kids had gone through the process.

My oldest is a sophomore and her college advisor has helped map a path through high school and start the thought process on what she wants in life / how college fits into that plan. It also provides my daughter a sounding board for ideas or corroboration for things that I tell her.

Her guidance counselor is OK but has about 500 kids so no real personal touch.

It has worked for us BUT YMMV.

Yes… overburdened high school counselors are an issue, I agree.

I have read that these national advisor companies are not very helpful. Often these companies just hire recent grads and give boilerplate advice.

I can say that hiring an individual professional advisor who really does sit down with the student and family can be very helpful and productive, particularly if the student is aiming for highly-selective schools, or there’s some special need to be considered.

Two of my kids got into their early ED choice so they were done. Third child did not get into his Early choices, and was aiming higher, so we did hire an independent college advisor for a couple hours to review essay, test strategy, etc. She was great, mostly to confirm our plan but also had some insightful comments on the essay. Money well spent IMO.

But truthfully most of our info came from searching this site.

I found College Confidential answered any questions I might have about the college process. The other thing I found very helpful was our high school had a college night every year. During the evening they had breakout panels with a small group of college admissions officers - they were subdivided into things like “The very selective school”, “NYS schools”, “Engineering Schools” and a few others I don’t remember. I started going to these things when my kids were freshmen, even though they didn’t go until they were juniors. I heard a lot of stuff about what the AO’s are looking for in college applications straight from the horse’s mouth.

@Lindagaf, that’s very interesting how your daughter’s experience is quite different from my own sons as well as most of my clients. Perhaps because my sons were homeschoolers, it was often really important to get correct information. Further, my students will have specific questions with answers not found on the websites, and I feel it’s important to get the answer from admissions offices. They are usually very pleasant when they or I reach out. There are exceptions. Schools like Stanford are overwhelmed with emails, and it can usually take a week or more to hear back from them (but in one case this year, it was really helpful when a student of mine got a response). I also don’t ever suggest my students reach out to UC admissions, particularly my homeschool students, because the admissions people are often students who really don’t know much, to be honest. I would rather my students come to me, and I dig up the answer. So I agree that in some situations, it’s better to find the answer for oneself, but by and large, as I was trained by my mentor that it can be good and necessary to reach out (demonstrated interest is a real thing at a lot of colleges), I typically stand by that advice to my students.

@sbjdorlo , my daughter applied mostly to very selective and selective LACs: Bates, Kenyon, Oberlin, Carleton, Dickinson, etc… She did have specific questions not easily found on the website. William and Mary (she didn’t actually apply there) was the only one who responded. Maybe it was timing, who knows. When she did have a specific issue, colleges did respond, after she had submitted apps. As with so many things, YMMV.

I’d just add that there are no mandatory standards that have to be met to become a college advisor – no specific required education or state licensing requirements. (At least not in any state that I am aware of). There are two private associations that have specific training requirements for their professional members – the Independent Educational Consultants Association - https://www.iecaonline.com/ – and the Higher Education Consultants Association - https://www.hecaonline.org/Becoming-an-IEC – and there are various universities that offer certificate programs. But all of these things are optional, not required as a prerequisite to doing business.

So if you are hiring a consultant, it makes sense to ask about background, qualifications and professional membership affiliations – as there is no guarantee that a given private advisor has any of these. Otherwise you really don’t know.

I’d add that years ago I got terrible, very wrong advice from someone who was very well known and ran a business geared to elite admissions. This was not in a paid setting – but rather a private, friendly email correspondence that started because the consultant had written several books and I had posted positive reviews. So perhaps if this person had been engaged to work directly with my daughter it would have been different --but bottom line, the off-the-cuff answer to my question in an email was dead wrong. Basically my daughter had some unique academic qualifications that I thought would be a a good fit at some elite schools, but her test scores were weak. The advisor told me that my daughter would not have a chance at admission at the school that is now her alma mater – she said the school would not even look at my daughter unless SAT’s were at least 1400. (Daughter’s SAT was much lower). That particular advice wasn’t even consistent with the school’s common data set information - and I know now that the school values GPA, class rank & other factors above test scores. But that experience left me with the feeling that the advisor had a bias, probably as a result of her own experience with elite admissions and the population she worked with. (Probably mostly the offspring of wealthy parents who attended elite prep schools).

That’s why it is so important to figure out what one’s goals are and ask questions - finding an advisor to help a full-pay kid get into an Ivy or Ivy-equivalent is an entirely different process than finding an advisor to help a kid with a quirky profile and some dings on their academic record get into a directional state U, or steering a strong student in a hunt for merit aid.

I feel that packaging a kid throughout high school years is quite harmful to the student in the long run. Encouraging genuine interests is the way to go. Also, it is fine at the majority of schools to have no idea of major or career, and many kids change their minds anyway.

I truly believe essays should be barely touched by an adult. Because so many are coached, I think colleges count them less and less. A truly awful essay can hurt, a truly stellar one can help, but most are kind of neutral. I have no idea why there is so much angst about essays.

Good, calmom, for saying it.

Sorry I fell down the rabbit hole this past week!

@calmom
Yes, I am hoping for that “other angle” that I haven’t considered.

There is certainly financial limitations and complications, but it would seem that the advisors by me also handle financial aid and help you to complete the FAFSA and other school’s Profile. It would be easy for me to say “Go to the cheapest state college” and make due with the small amount of state/federal grants.

Unfortunately the only advisor I found that specializes in learning disabilities and her pricing is so out of the ballpark, I can’t consider it. But yes! that’s definitely got to be listed on my Q&A list, experience with learning disabilities.

@sbjdorlo
Her usual guidance counselor seems very good, but my experience with her has been limited. This sophomore yr she’s on a medical leave. So the jury is out…

As always JMHO.

For parents who have the money I can see why hiring a professional counselor would take a lot of the work off their shoulders and probably reduce a few arguments and stressful moments between parent and child. If a student is trying to get into top tier schools it may also be worth it but if that is the goal, I would say the parent should have that first counselor meeting in the 8th grade because much of what needs to be done, must be done by the student in the years preceding applications.

But for the rest of us, the information is all out there, you just have to put in the time to read, research, go to college information nights etc. There are samples of essays online and great articles giving details on what type of writing they are looking for.

We did pay to go to a professional college financial planner because I had hoped he would be able to tell us something we didn’t know, but really there was nothing provided we couldn’t have done on our own. It probably did lend my dh some support in that area (he is handling the FASFA while I’m handling more the research and visits). This financial professional fills out the FASFA for us and sends it off. Nice dh can pass that on to someone else.

Heck, I know people who do not itemize deductions, have a simple w2 situation with a couple of very simple assets, and STILL pay someone to do their tax returns. Different strokes for different folks.

But make sure you aren’t paying for BAD advice (it’s ok when you get free bad advice from the guy at the bagel store who doesn’t know the difference between U Penn and Penn State). Some of the stories I hear about the private counselors make my head spin.

We have several local advisors in our area who have excellent reputations with large list of successful clients, who have given outstanding recommendations. I hired one for my D18 and most families do in our area. We’ll see if it pays off in the end, but I’m happy so far we hired one. I hired our advisor via word of mouth from our neighbor across the street.