Has anyone used admissions counselors? Ivy Wise is quoting up to $100,000 for services and Ivy Dean seems good but many bad reviews pop up.
This forum an be really helpful, and you may not need a counselor. I would avoid any counselor with “Ivy” in its name! Stick around here and save on the fees 
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We’re very clueless parents tho (both parents athletes who went thru a different admissions process) and could use the specific help/advice from someone who has read a lot of applications. Has anyone worked with a consultant? Worth the price?
I’ll PM you
College confidential does not serve as a website to promote or review private business, unless those individuals or companies have express permission from CC to do so.
It’s one thing to ask if private consultants are worth it, but another to ask if a particular consultant is any good. Names of individuals will be deleted. Thanks for your cooperation.
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Like anything, there are competent, and less than competent, college counselors. Make sure they have some type of education/experience in college counseling, along with professional membership (NACAC, IECA, HECA, etc.). Best way to find someone is to network in your hometown area, I would still clear of the websites/offerings of Ivy Dean, Ivy wise, unless you have a good reference from someone you know and trust.
We used a college consultant for both kids, and for us, it was money well spent. One of the largest benefits for us was to have an unbiased 3rd party holding the kids accountable for getting good grades, taking ownership in the college admissions process, setting deadlines for essays, etc. YMMV.
College counseling services should not cost ANYTHING near $100K, run away from any counselor that tells you they can guarantee admittance to highly selective schools. $10K for a 4 year package is on the higher end in most areas, outside of NYC.
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Thank you that is helpful! New to this whole process and wondering if the services are actually helpful.
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Think about what type of services you feel would be helpful to you and your student. Many counselors offer less than 4 year packages, as well as hourly meetings on an as needed basis. There are directories of counselors on the sites of the professional organizations I listed in my previous post…you can search for counselors in your area, and interview some to find a good fit.
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I think the main reason to get a counselor is if the relationship between parent and child needs mediation during this process.
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As in so many things, Different strokes for different folks…no need to disrespect those who would make a choice that is not the one you would make.
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Not my intention. Edited to retain my main point without the misplaced humor. Thanks for the heads up and apologies to the OP.
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Like so many things, the clearer you are on what you are looking for, the better your decision process will be!
So, some questions (for you, not for us!)
= what is your primary goal for the college your student ultimately attends? be honest with yourself: how important is ‘name brand’ to you?
= what is your student’s primary goal for the college that s/he attends?
= what do you know about your student as a student? stats-wise? style(s) of learning? environments in which s/he does & does not thrive?
= in your opinion, what would be the worst possible college outcome? in your student’s opinion?
= what is the situation with your student’s school- do lots of kids go to the kinds of colleges that you envision for your kid? are the GC’s experienced and helpful?
= how far along is your student? If you have a rising senior, you are on the home stretch: once this year’s grades are in all that’s left are choosing the colleges and essays.
Those are the kinds of questions that will help you figure out how much, and what kind, of outside support makes sense for your family. @Mwfan1921’s post is a good example. For most of the collegekids the college counselor at school was great, and all of us (student, parent, GC) had the same general perspective on what a good outcome would look like. For our outlier kid, in an arena for which the GC had no experience, CC was a goldmine of info, which helped us figure out what kind of help we needed to hire. Because we had that info we were able to hire the consultants on an á la carte basis, just for the elements we needed.
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Having founded one of the larger private college counseling firms that I am no longer part of, I have a love/hate relationship with the concept. I truly think that it never hurts to solicit the opinions of knowledgable people, whether they are paid for or not. So clearly, for some people, private college counseling is more of a need than for others. On the other hand, there is no credential that has much meaning in the space, and even if there was one, the best would not bother with it - as they would see it as something that entry-level types need to get to have some credibility.
So my greatest issue is that there are no barriers-to-entry and that I have personally met some of the least qualified people one could imagine, over the years - bad advice and real damage. Of course, if you find someone good, you are one of the lucky ones and that person deserves the big $$ (but not $100k). The elitism of the service is another issue that many people do have. I guess, for those who can’t afford, feel good knowing that more people are below average than above average IMO (is that possible lol). As @compmom has implied, the top people here are at a similar level to the top people in the market. Of course, some may be the same people.
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I should note that we are at a large public school so the counselor spends maybe 30 minutes total with the kids over 2 years. Not much individual attention. And I’d like to have a knowledge person help us especially someone who has read applications and knows what admissions peep are looking for. My child wants to attend the most competitive schools with the tiniest admissions numbers of course. So I want to make sure we are giving her the best chance.
I am not against the concept at all and appreciate your situation. Feel free to reach out privately if you want my perspective on the subject. I asked my daughter if she wanted one, but she loved me too much to give me that insult. My son will likely take me up on the offer. Agree with @Mwfan1921 that the concept of “I worked at an ivy so we can get you into an ivy” is something I never appreciated. Admittedly, we were the first group to have former college admissions officers as the counselors, but we tried to be somewhat subtle about it.
There are solid reasons to seek professional guidance, and I’ve had friends who have used these services with success, but the $100k price tag raises a lot of flags. While a good college counselor can help with the search process and assist your child in putting their absolute best foot forward in terms of creating a really strong application package, it is not a guarantee of elite college admissions. I’m not even sure how much of a boost it would give a candidate (others may have insight). What my friends who have used college counselors have appreciated is help with identifying the best match schools (including some they had never heard of or considered) and optimizing their child’s chance of admission to those.
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I can share some information with you if you want to reach out to me directly.
I have just guided my 2 kids through the process without a counselor based on knowledge I picked up for free on this website and the publicly available knowledge on the websites of some of the professional counselors. We are in a big public school district so they got almost no counseling from their high school counselor. (D18 at Caltech and S21 accepted to Stanford) So it can be done without paying huge sums, but does require research and time and a good relationship with your teen.
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As the parent, make sure that your financial planning will put the desired colleges in to the affordable category. For most traditional college students (attending college immediately after high school), parent financial limitations are the main limitations they have on college choice; their own academic and other achievements and credentials matter only within the range allowed by parent finances.
Along those lines, for many parents, spending $100,000 on college admissions consulting can mean that much less to spend on actual college costs.
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We were in the same position as well, 2 high achieving kids in a large public school, with GC’s main focus on keeping kids in school. With our older child, we hired a recommended local private counselor to help us navigate through the process. She helped us timeline through the process and helped our D stay on track with various app components. She also generated an assessment of “good fit” programs based on D’s achievements and a pysch profile she had D take. When I read the assessment, it was pretty much what I saw as a parent. Her cost was less than $1,000.
For S who is 2 years younger, we did not hire a counselor. Having gone through the process with D, the mechanics and timelines were no longer an unknown.
D ended up at a top NE LAC. Son ended up at an HYP. If your kid has a good story to tell and achievements to back it up, imo, you don’t need someone to “package that for you”. I do think having someone to help you through the process and keep your kid(s) on track is not a bad idea. Also having a neutral third party eye the app for coherence and consistency may be helpful. We stumbled on this site right when S was submitting his apps and I had googled a question on SAT2’s. This is a good site but you need to navigate the responses. There is a lot of good advice, but there is also a lot of not so good advice.
If your kids are also athletes, there is a lot of good stuff here on the process for the academically inclined student. Both my kids played at high levels, but our HS and even our travel ball coaches were not very useful. The travel ball coaches were all about getting kids scholarships at D1’s or jucos. There are good general threads and sport specific threads if that is relevant to you.
Best of luck.
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