Hiring a college counselor for HS senior

Parents Forum
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<p>College counselors can also come in handy when students are off the charts busy and have little time to research the finer points of college admissions and financial aid. </p>

<p>Getting a reasonable college list can be worth the price - which apparently varies greatly by region. </p>

<p>Every kid is different. What might seem like a big expenditure might be small change if big scholarships come out of this guidance. Or different options that a student might not have considered. Or if the student wants to be an NCAA athlete and needs specific guidance on this process. </p>

<p>People don’t always cut their own lawns, do their own taxes or clean their own houses, either…</p>

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<p>Actually, for the California “I dunno” kid who is ELC – a preferred status for UC admissions – it’s probably best for the parent to assume that the kid will head off to a UC campus and stay out of it. It’s not the parents job to choose a college for the kid – that only leads to a lot of aggravation and anxiety. </p>

<p>Why bother when its smooth sailing into a state system that offers a range of different opportunities and learning environments?</p>

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<p>Yikes! No way! Not even a fraction of that pricetag.</p>

<p>Become a CC regular (or addict, like many of us).</p>

<p>Hit the library. Can’t think of the Dewey Decimal # off the top of my head, but you will find it easily. Some of the books are “Reference,” and can’t be checked out, but many (including duplicates of those) can be.</p>

<p>Get Princeton Review’s Top 374 (or whatever this year’s number is), Fisk, Barrons, Insider’s Guide to the Colleges and maybe Petersons.</p>

<p>Also grab a handful of the books that tell you how to g
o about this process. No college consultant knows more than is in the collected wisdom of these books, or has connections
you can’t easily make yourself by getting in touch with the colleges.</p>

<p>In the end, I don’t think you’ll spend much more time than you would with the consultant. They don’t actually do all the work for you…much of what they do is give you assignments that you can easily do on your own for free. If/when you’re stumped, post here. The collective wisdom and experience on CC trumps even the best college consultant out there, imho. Save the $$$!</p>

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<p>I would like to add that sometimes CC provides more confusion and less clarity to students and parents about the college process as in this thread:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/683918-college-board-corrects-college-confidential-faq-old-argument.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/683918-college-board-corrects-college-confidential-faq-old-argument.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I have seen downright wrong information posted as “fact”, interpretations of why one student gets selected for admission over another student as “proof”, time after time.</p>

<p>CC is a great place to get information. It also can confuse students, even more than they already are about the college admissions process. </p>

<p>There are experts at CC. There are also those that think they are experts. If a student can filter the good from the bad when it comes to advice, great. Too often, it’s hard to tell who you should listen to for college advice.</p>

<p>Too often, though, they read a few threads, get a sense that they know it all and then begin to give advice to others…and it’s all anonymous. How do you know what is right? Who has outdated information? Who is using an anecdote based on their friends or their own kids to prove their point?</p>

<p>Keeping on top of news stories about college admissions can become a full time job. Just yesterday, the Cal State system announced a 5% fees increase. Last week, it was reported that UC is likely changing the way they refer to their fees, and now calling it tuition. This last year, the federal government changed the entire way our students obtain student loans. It’s an ever-changing world, and you may not see that by simply reading books or getting information from the web. </p>

<p>There are some wonderful places to get information, including the internet and books. I highly recommend “Admissions Matters”, which is a book that is easy to read and filled with information that is helpful for students and parents.</p>

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<p>I agree that a private counselor is not much help for a well-rounded student with good stats. Read the popular college review books and plan visits to colleges. A couple of trips with your kid visiting colleges will give your child a lot of information not available otherwise, such as, can I imagine myself at this school for four years?</p>

<p>I’m not sure what you are hoping that ‘skills testing’ would accomplish regarding the college search.</p>

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<p>We spent $1,500 on an “educational consultant” who promised to create & modify a list for our son as he made decisions about location, size of school, etc. She refused to modify his list, however, & it was a total waste of money.</p>

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<p>“My main thought is to gauge aptitude in a particular field through testing and directing focus to a college which at this point is an unknown.”</p>

<p>If I remember correctly College Board, Naviance, Princeton Review (and I’m sure many other organizations as well) offer free online quizzes / questionnaires to help gauge attitude in particular fields and help students generate a list accordingly. </p>

<p>I agree with what others have said. We didn’t use a counselor for S last year so I can’t speak from the perspective of having had one, but we never felt there was some secret info / perspective a counselor could give us that we couldn’t gain from books and/ or websites on our own. $5k seems much better spent on actual college costs, esp since, as you note, you’re a good researcher and your child is a good writer.</p>

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<p>I am very much a DIY person, so I cannot imagine writing that $5k check, particularly with all of the web-based resources that are available.</p>

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<p>5K? Absolutely not. It was one thing in the days before the answer to nearly any question could be found on-line. If your daugther has questions, she can email the college she is interested in. It’s a win-win as now that college knows she is interested, some colleges do not care about that but some do.</p>

<p>We spent $75 to have Stats Check done at College Karma. It’s probably the best $75 we’ve ever spent. Look up what they offer and see if that could be a far cheaper middle ground.</p>

<p>And don’t forget this website! My son will begin this fall at a college we’d never heard of until I started reading this board. He’s going on a full tuition scholarship to boot. People here are very generous with their time and expertise. Of course, it’s still buyer beware but that’s just as true if you spend 5K.</p>

<p>Best of luck.</p>

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<p>Very true, PMK…the internet has changed a lot of things.</p>

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<p>Give me a holler. I’ll do it for $4,950. ;)</p>

<p>If you’re gathering opinions, I’d never hire a college counselor. I’ve had too much fun doing my own research and no paid consultant could ever know my kids like I do.</p>

<p>It sounds a little like you’re looking for what your child might have an aptitude for/want to major in? Very very few kids know at 17 or 18 what they’ll end up studying, and most of those who think they do end up changing their minds. I’d be hesitant to base much of a college decision on any particular field of study. Big schools have many options. Little schools give you a good, broad base. I’d focus more on fit.</p>

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<p>We could do a reverse auction.</p>

<p>I will craft a college list for $500. (and the next move should be for someone to undercut my price.)</p>

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<p>A good counselor doesn’t just craft a college list, I could do that for free. It makes more sense to work with a counselor before senior year.</p>

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<p>I didn’t even know such a job existed, it sounds like a major rip. Has your kid done any research of their own to determine a list of schools they are interested in? I agree with ingerp that researching schools is a really fun process, I reccomend doing all the online research you can (cc, college data 411, *****, numerous others) and once you get a rough idea of what they’re interested, take the 5,000 you would have blown on a gc and put it towards travel expenses to go visit campuses so your kid can get a feel of where they might be going.</p>

<p>Choosing where to go to college is a tremendous decision, one that should be made by the student (with perhaps some realistic advice from parents about what is affordable/reasonable), but certainly not by a stranger who is trying to make a profit off of you.</p>

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<p>Both daughters have worked with a local counselor who now charges $60 an hour with no minimum or maximum number of visits. With first daughter, I wasn’t aware of CC. Maybe with second daughter, we could have done it on our own, but the counselor has helped other students interested in similar schools that we’ve never experienced. D2 has seen her four times so far during high school; today was her fourth visit. The counselor read her essays. Complimented her on her writing and for working on the essays before school starts. Offered a few suggestions for edits. Listened to her talk about the list of schools she’s applying to among other things. I could have done that, but it was nice to have another perspective. We never have to visit her again if we don’t think we need to. To me, it was $240 well spent over three years of high school. I see people in my neighborhood paying people to clean their houses. They could do that for free if they wanted to. Girls in her class spent far more on formal dresses than I would let my kid spend. I could make all kinds of judgments about how people spend their money. For us, it has been a good choice.</p>

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<p>College counselling is a thriving business. We will be spending close to 300k on college eduction. Before I buy a 50k car or a house, I would consult professionals or I could spend a lot of my personal time to do the research. This is no different. I find a stranger is also a lot more objective than us. It is a good way to get a reality check.</p>

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<p>There are clear advantages to using a college counselor - first, they help eliminate (or at least lessen) the family arguments Senior year and that is invaluable! They push your child to research, fill out apps, write essays, etc. instead of you nagging. They also have a better, less biased view of what the essay should be like. As oldfort said, a stranger is a lot more objective and may calm much of the process for the whole family.</p>

<p>Prices vary widely, if $5000 is more than you’d like to spend, see if you can find one who charges by the hour or just costs less for the package.</p>

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<p>There is definitely a huge amount of variability. The one girl I know who used one found it to be fairly useless, which seems to echo what other people are saying here.</p>

<p>Check out this article: [I&lt;/a&gt; Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?). This “Michele Hernandez” ends up netting $40,000 by the time the kids are in college from some parents at rates of several hundred dollars an hour for what is essentially unskilled labor. </p>

<p>Honestly it is the kids decision, have him talk to his friends, or in the worst case scenario, if he is interested in some particular school ask on here to find someone from that school that he could talk to. </p>

<p>The counselor is not going to provide any magical answers. It is all really a matter of answering the question of what the kid wants out of the college. Have him take a look at this tool: [College</a> Search - College Confidential](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/]College”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/) to start thinking about these questions.</p>

<p>If you are set on spending money towards ensuring your kid makes it into the right college, it is probably better applied to things like test prep or application consulting (if the kid has motivation, just buy him this book: [Amazon.com:</a> 10 Real SATs, Third Edition (9780874477054): The College Board: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Real-SATs-Third-College-Board/dp/0874477050]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Real-SATs-Third-College-Board/dp/0874477050)) and have him work through it. If he doesn’t pay for a class that will essentially set up a structured time that will force him to work through that book. </p>

<p>If you know a lot of people that have gotten into your college of interest, your kid should just ask them to help look over his application. If you don’t have a network at home, and he doesn’t trust any teachers, you can find application help online. The essay forum here is a great resource, but you have to get a little lucky to get a quality editor. If you are looking for place to find a more professional solution online, you might want to look at sites like GuruFi to find one. </p>

<p>Basically, the only service a college counselor can provide is to ask the kid questions and have them work through them to help select a school. This is something that does not really require any particular expertise, and there is no reason to pay someone $5000 for a service you could probably perform yourself pretty easily and which provides a great opportunity for you to help you kid understand where they want to go with their life.</p>

<p>On the other hand it might make sense for you to pay someone to help your kid with the details of their application, because this does require specialized knowledge that is pretty annoying to acquire and will probably never be relevant again.</p>

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<p>Well I’ll read a college essay for the low low price of $250.</p>

<p>And hiring someone to avoid fights at home sounds ridiculous. I never understood why anyone was fighting with their high school seniors over the college application process. What a sad way to spend their final year at home.</p>

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<p>I think that’s an easier way to explain why some people hire private counselor because it is something most people could relate to. If that’s the only reason then family counselor would do better.</p>

<p>Some high schools do not have good college counseling (1 per 500 students), and some parents do not have time to spend hours to help their kids. D1’s private school counselor was great, but she was only working with 30 kids. The school had 4 college counselors for 120 kids, and on top of that they had separate advisors through out 4 years of high school. It never crossed our mind to hire a private counselor.</p>

<p>When we decided to move to a new country/school with D2 this year (entering 11th grade), we decided to hire a counselor from the States because we weren’t sure of quality of counseling in a foreign country. The school D2 is at is a top international school, but it only has 1 (maybe 2) counselor for 150 kids. The curriculum and ECs are different than what we were accustom to. The initial thought was to have someone to advise her on what courses to take and what ECs to focus on, what experience from a foreign country she could get out of that maybe could help her with the application later. D2 will be at a disadvantage relative to her friends from back home because her teachers and counselor wouldn’t know her as well. </p>

<p>We’ve had few meetings with her counselor already. He doesn’t push D2 to do ECs that D2 has no interest in, instead he gets her to think about what’s important to her, and how she could broaden each EC to make it more meaningful. He tells her what it would take to get into schools she is interested in, he tells her to stay focus and not let small things bother her (she is having a hard time adjusting to her new classes and friends). Sometimes I think he is more of a cheerleader to her.</p>

<p>Some people could exercise by themselves, and some people do better with a personal trainer. A personal trainer couldn’t make you into an Olympic athlete if you didn’t have talent or willingness to work hard, but having one may just help you reach your personal best.</p>