When we went through this process 2 years ago, we got a stats review from collegekarma.com. They used to have some kind of connection between with CC but I don’t think there is anymore. Anyway, my kid fell into the same category that it sounds like your kid does; great grades and scores, so now it’s all about the holistic aspects of the application. I thought the stats review was tremendously helpful, and I really appreciated their feedback on what schools would be safety, match and reaches for her. In categorizing the schools they also mentioned what it was about my D that they thought would be attractive to particular schools, and what they thought my D would like about those schools. Since I’m from a geographically under-represented area I think they were a little more negative than they should have been, but if we were from the suburbs of NY/SAN Fran/DC etc, I think they would have been spot on. The stats review is so inexpensive ($175) (it must be a loss leader to get you to buy their other services), that I think it’s highly worthwhile even if you decide to go ahead and hire the counselor you’re thinking about.
Let me tell you about my experience with an essay review person I’d hired because it didn’t go well and I think there can be something to learn from my mistakes. She came highly recommended to me; my friend loved her. For me, though, I thought she over-edited my D’s essay so it was no longer my D’s voice. I think its critical that your kid’s essays be in their authentic voice. For my friend, her D wasn’t a good writer, so she appreciated the extensive rewrites. So ask the recommender what exactly they liked and disliked about this person to get a better idea for fit. The other issue I had was that I thought I could just turn the whole process over to that person and I’d stay fully out of it. Well, shame on me for not realizing that this just isn’t who I am. I really wanted to just delegate the day to day but supervise the process. When I found out after the fact about their agreed upon time-line for writing the essays, and I didn’t like it because I thought the process started too late (resulting in a time crunch at the end), now I was coming in as the bad guy. So my advice, know who you are and who your kid is, and really assess what role you want to play and confirm this with the consultant.
3 other points.
(1) You are too late to “package” your kid. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing! Don’t beat yourself up about this. Presumably your kid did the activities that they wanted to do. So look at those activities and look at the class choices etc, and figure out WHY those were the choices and then look for schools that are interested in kids with those attributes/interests. And activities aren’t just school ECs. If they stay up at night writing music, that’s an activity. They need to think about why that speaks to them, and how that fits in with who they are now or want to be.
(2) some people mentioned looking at Naviance to see where the kids from your HS get into. This is a good resource for some folks, but wasn’t for us. At our HS the kids were all so different from another so you don’t know if the kids who got in had hooks -athletic recruit, URM, legacy, 1st gen- or not and whether they were in a comparable position. Also, a lot of kids applied only to the state school or where they’d get scholarships because of finances, so it’s really hard to tell where those kids would have gotten into if they’d have applied. Final comment about Naviance is you need to see how far tbavk the data goes. It seems like each year Admissions has gotten just that much harder, so that the kid admitted last year might not get admitted this year.
(3) before paying for a package, see if you can do something hourly for some general advice, and see if they’ll credit that to the package. I’m saying this because you want to make sure this person is really listening to your kid and seeing them for the individual that they are, rather than giving the same advice to every kid who likes science (as an example). IMO holistic Admissions is all about showing your individuality/personality, and you can’t do that if your counselor packages all the science kids the same and all the math kids the same etc.
Good luck!
