I’m so glad there’s a parent forum here and sure enough my first post was helping a fellow dad with his son’s IB interview and that’s right up my alley.
How did you navigate the college admissions consulting talk with your kid(s)? My son wants to get into the best college possible and most of his friends have college admissions advisors and they seem a bit expensive for the marginal return on investment.
We made it clear that “the best college possible” was the one that fit them academically, was affordable for out family, and had a size & vibe that they liked. It wasn’t about ranking or prestige, which it sounds like is possibly a driver for your son… If we had chosen to use a counselor, it would have been to meet our goals. But essentially our kid’s search had nothing to do with their friends. I’d have told my kid that I didn’t give a darn what families were doing.
Now, you may see some benefits in hiring someone for some reason. By all means, do so if you think it is worthwhile and you can afford it. But we didn’t let peer pressure on our 17 year old drive our family financial and education spending decisions.
First, you and the other parent(s)* should talk as openly as possible about the amount you can set aside each month for college expenses. If you haven’t started a college fund yet (529, prepaid account,etc) start setting that amount aside now as a practice for the unavoidable belt tightening and to build a small financial cushion for your child.
Once you’ve agreed on an amount, see how it compares to your EFC (typically, it’ll be nowhere near); calculate how much the parentzl contribution adds up to per year and compare it to the costs of your state’s flagship (s) if you’re full pay. Does that suffice? If not, can you go higher?
Once you’re learning in your budget, talk with your child and make the financial parameters very clear. Run the NPC on his favorite schools together as examples"USC will only be possible for us if you earn a 1/2 tuition scholarship but we can afford UCSC outright with no debt for you and UCB if you take the federal loans".
*If you’re remarried, step parents ‘count’ for CSS profile.
A college consultant is not necessary if you and your son are willing to do the leg work yourselves. The critical thing is developing a solid list of reach, match, and safety schools that are affordable.
CC is a great resource and can also help craft the list.
" But we didn’t let peer pressure on our 17 year old drive our family financial and education spending decisions."
This. Don’t underestimate the peer pressure to get into a super expensive “dream” school rather than the just as good academic/social fit of a more affordable one. It’s easier to argue against drinking, drugs and jumping off bridges than a good college.
When it comes to affordability there’s always a good case for having enough money for grad school and travel abroad opportunities.
We happened to have a super HS guidance counselor who really put in the time for college counseling and searching schools but I think you still have to do the leg work (finances, trips, program research). I’m not sure what an admissions counselor would really do for you.
The single biggest trap most folks fall into: “we can’t afford our state flagship, but if little Tommy gets in to Stanford will find the money”.
Run a few net price calculators NOW- before your heads get stuffed with fantasy land. Then sit down with your tax returns, credit card bills, bank statements, 529 statements, etc. and come up with a realistic number of what you can afford to pay for ALL FOUR YEARS (don’t front-load- a very common mistake. )
Once you have a realistic idea of what you can pay (not what colleges tell you that you can pay- but what your own budget and savings and investments tell you) AND whether or not you are likely to be eligible for need-based aid, you can start looking at colleges and doing some research.
No counselor can tell you what you can afford. Does an outsider understand that speech therapy for a younger child is not an optional expense, or that the $200 a month you send to an indigent parent is what covers the co-pay for dialysis?
You need to figure out what is available for college before you do anything else!
Exactly. Get your head straight about the money first.
Good advice here. Another thought is it doesn’t have to be ‘all or nothing.’ We didn’t hire a full on college consultant, but we did use a college essay consultant who helped my D understand what they were supposed to be and helped her find her ‘story’ for her common app essay. Also helped her realize she needed to look at app as a whole and how to fill in gaps with supplemental essays.
She did some structure and editing suggestions at the end, but it was mostly helpful to my D at the outset to have an outsider to bounce ideas off of and help her identify something meaningful to write about. There’s something about the parental dynamic that can make that harder, I think.
We did all the college research and lists together, and she did everything on the app itself by herself. I just reviewed for typos before submission.
Good luck and try to enjoy the process. I can honestly say I really did like helping my D explore colleges. Made me want to attend all over again! (Minus the papers and exams, perhaps.)
Unless you don’t have the internet or truly the time to research schools don’t hire anyone. Save the money for college. Also… Know thy child. Everyone knew my son wanted to get into the best engineering school he could. My daughter it was for theater design. We and them did all the research and the main reason I am on CC. I just think I learned real world applications. We took my daughter through out the Midwest and east coast to visit small LAC schools… Like a mini vacation. My son (2 years later), mostly Midwest schools big ten University with a few small /medium ones. He spent summers at various university programs like Berkeley.
Then we made an excel spreadsheet and put everything on there from applications dates to costs. It was interesting to see and compare the instate VS out of state costs. We have a 529 for each that doesn’t cover everything but will help. It was very easy for everyone to see the financial picture of each school, when things were due, what scholarships were available and due etc. This with naviance helped.
We have a good friend that does college admissions at a ritzy well know high school school in our city and gets paid outside as an advisor and essay proofreader. Nice to have this friend. On her suggestion over lunch each of our kids met with her. She is wonderful but honestly there wasn’t alot of new information that we didn’t already know. We went over all the what type of school? What type of kids and fit are you looking for? It was more critical for my son about reaches and safeties. Each discussed their essay with her. For my son we all knew what his essay should be on his 3 choices. It was nice hearing from a stranger that, that was the best choice since it was unique, personal and interesting. My daughter is a naturally great writer. So the advisor friend reviewed my son’s essay once, really liked it and offered some Grammer suggestions. My kids didn’t want to resubmit to her before sending as she suggested. Their college counselors basically gave the same suggestions on schools to apply to etc.
What was really worth it was her telling us to pick more safeties. She said her tip top kids were not getting into their top picks anymore and some not getting into their matches due to more people applying here and abroad. Also she said to take what’s said on CC with a grain of salt since there is a lot of bad information being had 
A English teacher can review the kids essays and many schools do this as part of their programs anyway. I wouldn’t reinvent the wheel if not needed. It would be curious to know how many of these kids paying someone actually got into their first choice.,
The most important thing IMO after figuring out your finances is identifying good safety colleges. While one safety may well be a state college that admits strictly on stats, making it very easy to know whether it is a sure thing or not, I think it is well worth while to have at least one other choice so that if the worst happens your kid has a choice in the spring. For my older son, who was planning to major in CS, we found smaller engineering schools that still had great academics, but had less favorable M/F ratios and higher acceptance rates. One of them had a priority application so he heard from them before Thanksgiving. My second son had two safeties, one was very strong in his proposed major (international relations) and an honors program even though it was less selective overall. His other safety was going to be private university that was larger than what he was looking for, but he didn’t end up applying to it, because he got into a very selective college EA. An EA school in the bag is the best safety of all. He hadn’t visited this particular school so he wasn’t sure yet were it fit on his list. Ultimately it was his second choice.
I highly, highly recommend applying somewhere EA or with rolling admissions. Senior year will be sooo much less stressful if you are accepted somewhere early.
I personally think there is plenty of advice on CC that hiring an advisor is unnecessary.
We also used spreadsheets and then sorted the various categories we had made to compare. (SAT scores, GPA, % accepted, quality of major (opinion there!), class size, college size, % of Greeks, location and whatever else mattered to kid.
I suspect that when @collegedad1965 said this:
that he was signaling that money is not an issue. He is an investment banker.
If I had ten bucks for every investment banker I know who cannot afford their EFC (i.e. full pay) I’d be pretty affluent by now. Someone can go broke on big bucks even quicker than small bucks (just ask the person who worked at Lehman, married to a person who worked at Bear Stearns, whose ENTIRE investment portfolio consisted of company stock, except for a 10K CD “for emergencies”.) This is not anectodal- there are entire towns in the NY metro region whose real estate markets have not recovered from the emergency selling in 2008/2009 of people who could not afford their mortgages, let alone $70K per year for college. (Their annual bonus was going to take care of that. Which is a great plan except when you lose your job before bonus season).
Lol I thought the “IB” was “international baccalaureate” and was wondering what “interview”? @brantly
@makemesmart #WhenYouLiveInBigBankingTown #Perspective #ImNotOneOfThem
I have an acquaintance whose huge trophy house looks like Tara after the Civil War in “Gone with the End”. They’ve pretty much sold everything except the kid’s beds (parents sleeping on an air mattress). They can’t afford to move until they get out from under the house, but even as they drop the price, the realtors complain that “it’s too depressing” for prospective buyers to see their reduced state and empty “great room”. And yes- both parents are now working. But not the big bucks they were earning before. Thank god they have health insurance and have kept their sense of humor.
@brantly Great catch! Would never say money is not an issue bc value:cost is always on my mind, but my son’s friends hire this seemingly ridiculous expensive college admissions consultants for seemingly very little return.
Has anyone used these consultants? If so, would you do it again?
OP, for another answer to your question, using CC my second kid got in everyplace she applied, including one top 5 university. She was a bit soft on GPA and her school offers limited APs, so not a flawless candidate. We didn’t use an external counselor, but I did a lot of legwork with her and did use CC extensively. (And I listened to the advice from out here, too — I was not blinded by her “specialness” or too arrogant to listen carefully, which can happen). She put together what I believe were the strongest possible apps for her carefully selected schools. And in the end, picked a school that was perfect for her (not highest ranked school she got into). The only place I offered her outside help was for essays, but she decided she’d rather work with me. So you can certainly do it without an outside counselor.
In my neck of the woods, consultants are useful when:
1- kid has had disciplinary issues. There are ways to address it to mitigate the hit in admissions- and a savvy consultant can help here.
2- Family is in deep denial- i.e. they want little Timmy at Dartmouth (fourth generation legacy) but little Timmy’s grades and scores suggest Stonehill or Framingham State would be a solid match.
3- The HS does not get involved or addressed “bunching”- i.e. the top 20 kids all apply to the same 12 schools, everyone’s “safety” is Colgate and Franklin and Marshall which are no longer safety schools based on last year’s results.
4- parents educated abroad and don’t know that Rice is a world class institution or that U Chicago is not the flagship university of the state of Illinois, or that U Penn and Penn State are not the same college just in different locations.
If any of these apply to you, a consultant can help. Otherwise, save your dough.
Others here disagree with me, but I have yet to meet a family without one of the above issues who thinks they got value for money for the full on admissions package. And my neighbor- paid for the “gold plated” starting in 10th grade service- kid is at a state flagship and super happy, but since the college practices auto-admit based on stats, it’s not like the decision to join the fencing team vs. stay with tennis had much impact on admissions!
@intparent Great story and congrats to your daughter!
You can pay someone to help identify colleges and/or help with the application, or DIY. I wouldn’t have wanted to turn over the entire process to someone else, simply because they can be such a big influence and we preferred to be part of that discovery/journey with the kids. We have good writers and creative thinkers in our family but if we didn’t, I may have considered one to help stir the mind for essay ideas and to help structure those parts of the application. The “good writer sibling” proofed the other’s essays - we made college applications a family thing.
For some DIY, you could start with a couple books like Fiske Guide to Colleges and Princeton Review’s - The Best 384 Colleges, 2019 Edition. Those help you see colleges that might not be on your radar and give some interesting descriptions. I think we signed up for US News Rankings (although not a big fan of rankings, it was handy to see where school’s were on the list and it’s gave us ideas of ones we hadn’t thought of). We thought about things that mattered to each of ours - size, majors offered, private v. public, ability to change major, location/climate, diversity of student body. Frankly, some people eliminate schools by state - knowing they would never attend a school in a certain state - everyone has their own preferences. Before you know it, you have a long list of schools that you can narrow down by stats and whether they are safeties, reaches or extreme reach. And remember a lot of schools are holistic - they consider the entire application and whole person - which doesn’t mean a slouch can get in, but if they have an interesting story or passion, that may help push past a little grade ding here or there), while other schools are stat (grades and test score) driven.
One of the fun parts of the college process is taking some time to check out schools with your student. Frankly, the tours themselves can be pretty meh and redundant, but the special part is taking the time to make the trip itself. It is fun to see this part of them grow and develop. You can start by visiting different size schools around you (not that they want to attend necessarily) but just to get a feel for sizes and populations of a campus. Go to a public and private of different sizes. They will find a feel they prefer. All their opinions start shaping that list.
If you are in a world of college admissions advisors like we are, it can be intimidating and hard not to feel like you are at a disadvantage. But you don’t have to sign up for “the everything” package. The decision can depend on how much your student and you, as parents, have in terms of time to invest in the process, and how much you want to invest in both money and time. It is also influenced by how good your current GC’s are at the high school. Ours were amazing - reading draft after draft of essays, and giving great direction. So we really didn’t have a need and would have been throwing away money.
I loved being part of it, but had the time to do so.That worked for us, everyone us to figure out what works best for them. Some kids drive the process themselves and do a magnificent job, others can’t get started or put it all together, same with parents. Sometimes throwing money at something is the way to go. It’s a personal decision and choice to make, there isn’t one right answer, just the one that fits your family/student.