I know one family who spent a boatload on a consultant beginning in 7th grade. Cost was well into 6 figures when it was all said and done, but they swear by their approach. The child, white and upper middle class with no hooks, attended a large, competitive public high school in Westchester County, NY. She was accepted pretty much everywhere and just last year graduated from HYP (she was accepted at all three). I definitely don’t attribute her success solely - or even mostly - to the consultant, but our family friend insists… (I guess I would too if I had spent upwards of 100 large.) Interestingly, the consultant was adamant that the girl should not attend a private high school.
@blossom - I know exactly what you are talking about with regard to some towns in NYC metro. Check out North Salem. Hard to know what people were thinking back in 2005/06 up there.
@CADREAMIN Essentially, that’s how we feel, that our son is @ a “disadvantage” and ultimately that is bad. Just trying to wrap my mind around the whole college admissions consultant market. There’s such a huge disparity between offerings in the market and it seems like such a crapshoot. You got uber expensive shops that have former admissions officers and then you got this new thing my son mentioned that has current admissions and seems relatively inexpensive.
Also, there is probably a group of students who would find consultants useful, but largely cannot afford them (and may not know that they exist): first-generation-to-college students who do well academically but attend high schools where few graduates go to any non-open-admission college. Unlike most students on these forums, these students are not surrounded by parents, counselors, peers, and “institutional knowledge” around them who could help them with college, financial aid, and scholarship applications.
@collegedad1965 College admissions is not investment banking or a company acquisition. You are asking the wrong questions.
If you do hire a counselor, the value is NOT in “getting” your kid into a certain desired college. You are paying for 1) the knowledge of the current-day admissions process, 2) outsourcing sitting with your kid to complete applications correctly, stay on track with the task, and meet deadlines, 3) essay brainstorming and review, and 4) consultation on admissions strategy to make sure your kid gets in SOMEWHERE. If you are laughing at this last one, go back and read the multiple threads on ultra-high-stat kids who were arrogant and got in nowhere because they had a poor application strategy.
In my experience, hiring a college consultant can be very helpful for some families. We have just started using one on an hourly basis, as needed.
Below are some of the pros:
Knowledge: She lives and breathes college admissions on daily a basis, has been doing it for years, and the fact that she was a former admissions officer at an Ivy, gives her additional insight, knowledge and expertise, unlike 99% of the people on the internet who give second hand advice;
Individual Attention: She reviewed D20's entire HS transcript and EC's for the last couple of years, understood what type of college D is looking for and how best to create a schedule for successful admission to these type of colleges.
Authority Figure: D didn't fully understand the importance of taking a few additional classes not recommended by her HS counselor. For example, the private counselor highly recommended a 4th year of Spanish even though the targeted colleges didn't require or even recommend 3 years. Without my D hearing it from someone else other than her parents, she would not be taking that 4th year. She is a straight talker.
ACT/SAT Test Schedule: The private counselor administered a mock exam that showed D her strengths and weaknesses and showed us which exam was the one that D should study and take (i.e. ACT). She also set-up a study schedule for her, a timeline for test dates, and recommended back to back exams (1st one in Oct and 2nd in early Dec.) to be most effective for D.
Packaging: I know some here hate the word, but I have seen it used successfully if done correctly and genuinely. D's "body of work" will be tailored and specific to her field of study (business/marketing).
Essay Review: when the time comes, it will be helpful to have the counselor review D's essays and give critical feedback. To have an "insider" as part of the process is helpful.
Sounding Board: Since she knows D personally, we can text/call her with specific questions anytime.
Cons:
The only downside I see is the cost (she’s $250/hr) so we use her sparingly. With that said, with college costs ranging from 100-150K for public and 200-300K for private colleges, spending a few thousand dollars on private college admission advice and test prep seems very reasonable to me. Like it or not, we live in a world of specialization and a private consultant can be very helpful for college admissions. Just one dad’s experience…
@collegedad1965
I would suggest networking with people you know that have older kids that went through the process and used a counselor to get their take on it. A personal recommendation is key here - if you do use one, get a referral from an experienced parent/student. There are new counselors out there that don’t know much either and could take you down the wrong path. The friends of yours doing it for the first time likely don’t know any more than you do in terms of value it will add. They may just be doing it to keep up with the Joneses.
While not absolutely necessary, there are some things of value a (good) counselor can certainly add. Going through the process over and over makes some things a no-brainer that are unknown until ya go through it. As a parent that went through the process with four kids in the last eight years, I know sooo much compared to the day it all started at our house, and I learned more tricks (for lack of better term) with each student and from friend’s students. Find the parents at work, in the neighborhood or wherever that went through this already, they are less “competitive” and more willing to share.
The four things @brantly mentioned above are solid, I would just add 5) reviewing college options and coming up with a sound list to target. 6) motivator that keeps some of the angst of the college process out of the parent/child relationship. A counselor can do one, some or all of those for you, or of course, none at all.
If you hire someone it’s really important to make sure you’re on the same page. I hired someone to review my D’s essays and this ended up being more problematic for my relationship with my D than if I didn’t hire anyone. The counselor had a much later deadline for final essays than I wanted, and I strongly felt that the counselor edited out my D’s voice on her essays so I ended up firing her and working with my D directly. That didn’t go over well at all with my D at the time, but a couple of months down the road she acknowledged that her essays were far better and much more true to herself after I got involved. Really, all I did was look at her essays and tell her where she went into too much detail and where she needed more. While you can avoid my first problem by agreeing on timelines with the counselor in advance, for me I would have never thought the second issue would arise because she came so highly recommended and I thought it was a basic tenet that the kid has to write the essays themselves. With too much editing the essay is no longer the kid’s words and work.
Here is an excellent short essay on the gaming of college essay writing by someone who should know:
People who are concerned about equity in college admissions as regards lower SES have not really thought through the implications of increasingly relying on “holistic” measures in my opinion. Smarts are distributed more democratically than income or assets, and so a more objectively based admissions system would in fact reduce some of the advantage of the lucky egg club.
Any measure of “smarts” or anything else desirable in college admissions can and will be prepped or gamed for by higher SES parents and their kids. This includes the academic stats (course selection is affected by parent and school advising, grades are affected by after-school tutoring, standardized test scores is affected by test preparation and course selection), extracurriculars (often depends on what parents will support and what is available), and subjectively graded aspects like essays (which are affected by essay consulting).
I would say generally if you can afford it absolutely. I have used consultants and I would do it again in a heartbeat. There are lots of reasonably priced and decent consultants out there
Yes, to both questions, @ucbalumnus. I promise you there is really no way to prep a reaction time or inspection task. Ditto for reverse digit tests. And, to the extent that there is, direct fMRI measures of processing speed will be able to round out the battery quite nicely (these are not wholly ready for prime time yet, but it will take time anyway for more sensible admissions criteria to be adopted so we can wait a bit).
Remember, intelligence is not going to be the only criterion for college admission - nor should it be. But it is the one thing that cannot be purchased. No system is ever going to be perfect, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Lots of researchers do think that by practice and coaching you can learn to do better on intelligence tests. So yes intelligence can be purchased if you are in the market.