I’m really curious what experiences the parents out there have had with college consultants. How did you get in contact with them? How do you feel they helped? Questions of that nature.
To give some background, I’m currently attending Princeton and working on a class project to figure out how college consultants interact and work with parents in order to find potential improvements to the process.
I’d love to hear your experiences and even better, private message me. Thanks!
I will post here for the benefit of other users. I hired a private consultant because I wanted to be sure that our D’s app was as good as it could possibly be. D is the “average” excellent kid (if you have seen that thread) and doesn’t have anything that makes her stand out. She has excellent test scores, grades, many APs, SAT2s, etc… Her ECs were not inspiring: musical instrument for many years, volunteer work, several clubs, a minor leadership position, a small and short internship, etc… (She is actually a good artist, but absolutely, positively, refused to submit any kind of work. I will always think that was a mistake, but it doesn’t matter anymore, she is going to college.)
My first action was to post on local parents forums and ask for word of mouth references. The person I ulitmately hired was one of them. I also contacted a few people I found online.
I already knew much much more than the average parent, because by the time we first saw the consultant, I had spent many hours on this site, and others, and had a very good idea of how the process worked. I contacted about ten people, spoke to five or six. I wanted someone who would charge by the hour, because I already knew a lot, plus we already had a fairly comprehensive college list. Many consultants charge thousands for a package, which is more a start to finish thing. They ran about 5k for full packages. My choices for consultants were quickly made smaller by not wanting someone for a whole package. I went with a very experienced woman who had been a counselor a top-ranked high school nearby.
So, what did she do for my D? She did tell us a lot of what I already knew. Not money well spent. She spent a lot of time helping my D with the essay, especially with just trying to help her find a topic to write about, which was in fact totally wasted money, because my kid scrapped the whole thing and never ended up using any input from the advisor. The advisor did try hard to keep my D to a schedule, which my D completely ignored, so wasted money there, but not the advisor’s fault. The advisor gave us very useful maps with colleges located on them, (and only colleges,) those are useful. Good money. She gave us copies from a book of recommendations for majors at all colleges, that usually only counselors buy. Good money, because we used those recommendations to help firm up the list. She also steered my D towards two particular colleges she thought were a good fit, and to her credit, my D is going to one of those colleges. So I guess that was good money for sure. By far, the most important thing the advisor did was sit down with D for a full two hours while my D filled out the Common App. She told us the best way to word things, what to prioritize, and how to make things sound impressive. She discussed all areas of the Common App, so that was the best money spent, for sure. She gave a lot of advice about interviewing and did mock interview sessions with D, which I think were useful. D is shy, and being forced to talk to strangers is something she did need help with. The advisor was also very good about answering questions as they arose, and she was very thorough in her responses. I emailed her many many questions, even months after she and my D had their last meeting. It was useful having someone to ask who would give a knowledgable answer.
The $64,000 question is, was it worth it, for our family? On whole, I don’t think so. I might have given a different answer if my D had stuck to the advisors timeline, and actually used her input for the essay. If a kid is receptive to that kind of thing, it would be more worth it, so it’s possible that my kid was part of the problem. Interestingly, now that I have read what I just wrote above, maybe she was a little more worth it than I thought, but not the nearly 2k I spent. I could have done the whole thing without the advisor, BUT, I only say this because I took it upon myself to obsessively learn everything I could about the process. I am fully aware that there are many parents out there who don’t have the time or inclination to do the amount of work that I did to guide my D through it all. Even after the advisor was no longer working with us, there was a lot more that had to be done. It seems crazy to think now about how time-consuming the process is. It is totally possible that hiring a private advisor will be worth every penny to a different family.
Finally, it is clearly beneficial to have someone who knows what they are doing, even if it’s someone not professional who has already been through it, to review the Common App before hitting submit. What you are paying the advisor for all leads to that moment. D was accepted to 8 of 12 colleges, and WLed at two, so that’s a pretty good outcome. I am not 100% sure she would have done so well if we hadn’t had good advice while filling out the app.
Thanks to @fallenchemist for editing the post to be more appropriate and @Lindagaf for the great answer.
@Lindagaf As always, great advice! I had not thought of using our pro to help with the Common App - we will definitely do it. If I may ask, most of the CA seems like black and white info - facts. Which sections did your pro help you with most? I am assuming the “activities” section based on your description. Is this correct? I also pay by the hour (mostly ACT help) so I want my son to walk in with specific instructions for her.
For the OP - we are using a college consultant for three main purposes…
First, to help narrow down my son’s college list find the best fit/matches based on her many years of experience and her relationships. She has already helped us cross off about a dozen schools based on her knowledge and advice. She also helped steer us towards out-of-state flagships (non-elites) where there may be generous merit-based aid. This is our first time through, so I really had no idea how amazing some of them could be for my son.
Second, we are using her for ACT prep. She has a great reputation and we’re hoping that she can help our son get his score to the “magical 32” level. If he can’t hit 32, that’s fine and we’ll adjust.
Third, to help best fill out the Common App (and any other App he will be filling out). Thanks again @Lindagaf
Our college consultant was worth every penny because what she did was kept us out of the process of actually applying. If you have a kid like mine who might scoff if their mother tells them to get all the essays done over the summer but who listens to and follows any rules from other adults the consultant is going to be a huge help. She told my kids essays must be done by September 1 and they were. She also helped come up with topics though I also helped with those.
We used a consultant and it was not a good experience. Our mistake was hiring a family friend who went into the business about 6 or so years ago after he’d found he enjoyed the process with his daughters. The friend is intelligent and personable, and we assumed that would be enough. Unfortunately, his approach seemed tailored to saving us college application fees by not encouraging any reach applications, and due to an odd mix of high SAT and lowish GPA, that left my son feeling pretty terrible as pretty much everywhere was “too good” for him. Also, the consultant basically just made a few spreadsheets consolidating information that was easily found on college websites, which didn’t really add any value. I’d pushed the idea of using this friend on my husband and son because we’d not been through the process before, and I was afraid that “we didn’t know what we didn’t know”. We ended up not using his services, although we paid out the contract so as not to cause any hard feelings. (We should have stopped and thought before we signed the contract, as the consultant told us a story about a father who stopped using him early in the process (explained as a controlling parent dynamic) and ended up paying him for nothing and wasn’t that funny? Turned out it wasn’t.)
OP - to answer your first question. We found our consultant through a word of mouth reference. It seems she’s completely booked, hard to get on her schedule, and does no soliciting or advertising. All word of mouth.
Something else worth mentioning is the “diplomacy” aspect of the consultant, and how this played out in shaping the list. It was far too easy to want to add reach schools to a list. We would read something in Fiske or on the Internet about another great college, and D would contemplate adding it. The advisor would usually say something along the lines of “that’s a reach for every body” or tell D how she knew kids with 3.99 GPAs and slightly higher test scores, who were denied. So feedback like that tempered the expectations. That kind of info was better coming from the consultant rather than me, even though I was aware. D knew she shouldn’t add any more mega-reach schools, and liked the two she did have on the list. No more mega-reaches were added. The consultant did encourage the addition of a couple of schools and the removal of others, so I guess she knew her colleges. To some people, that alone might be worth paying for.
@STEM2017 , yes, the main help was primarily focused on the activites section, but we had questions throughout the whole app. d also did a for-credit college course and we weren’t excatly sure how to list that. It’s hard to remember now! It wasn’t quite as black and white as we thought it would be.
I have posted before about our experience…I paid in the low 5 figures range for a consultant for D2 after a very frustrating DIY process for D1. It was an all inclusive package - from testing, essays, course selections, summer curriculum selections, ECs in school, college selections. Her advising started sophomore year. At that time I was already on CC for many years, but the counselor still opened my eyes to many things I was not aware of before. I think D2 could have probably ended up where she was, but the counselor(s) just made it very painless for us as a family. We had a whole team of counselor, not just one. Most of them were ex-adcoms at top schools. They reviewed D2 few times a year (whenever she received new grades and test scores) to give additional recommendations. The counselors kept D2 on schedule to get her applications in on time. I was very busy at the time, so it was good to have an objective person to work with D2.
My siblings used the same counselor (company) for their kids, and they were very pleased. My sibling felt their kids couldn’t have gotten into their schools without the counselor. The years we were working with them, I knew most of their students got into their ED/EA schools. Unlike what most people like to think, the counselors didn’t write my kid’s essays nor make my kid do any ECs she didn’t want to. She got the grades she got and studied for her standardized tests. They just made her look better.
With a great help of this forum, I was a college consultant for my D16. Since both my DH and I did not attend college in US I was afraid that we might miss something in the process. Especially since D16 is attending public magnet school with non existing college counseling. I only spent $250 for initial consultation with private counselor and not learning much new. But the bonus that came with this arrangement was that this counselor agreed to read and critic all of her essays for free. And this was priceless.
I mentor a young lady whose father hired a college consultant. A complete waste of money in this case. When I took her to look at schools, she had no clue to the extent her grades and ACT scores were too low for the flagship U, one of the schools the consultant wanted her to apply to. The family had financial constraints, yet one of the schools the consultant recommended was University of Hawaii! The consultant did little in the way of following the application process; I was the one who recommended the young lady keep an excel spreadsheet with applications, scores, etc. In the end, the girl didn’t end up applying anywhere. She’s taking a “gap year” without any solid plans or ideas for it. I kept pushing the dad to make her at least apply to her safety and defer, so she’d have a school ready to admit her once the “gap year” was over. And to at least get SOMETHING out of that $1500 he spent on the college consultant. I do not believe she ever did apply anywhere.
@oldfort You say that you learned some new things from the advisor that you didn’t know before. Does anything come to mind in particular?
I have shared some over the years on CC, but not all were received well. 
Very coy @oldfort . If you are inclined,you can share any nuggets of wisdom via pm. I have a son in 9th grade, so will be getting started again in a year or so:-)
@oldfort, um, I am … finding that my heartrate has gone up at seeing “low five figures” in your accounting of what you paid for a college consultant.
Wow.
We paid for a consultant for our older son. He got us started, at least - we were feeling paralyzed. He was the person who told us about Susquehanna, which ended up being the college our youngest picked.
I’ve been working with a college consultant. Everything I say seems to go past him. I told him I didn’t want a school with two thousand students in the middle of nowhere. He gave me twelve schools that were small LACs with less than two thousand kids in very rural areas. If I didn’t have a contract I would back out. He’s used to working with kids with tippy top stats so often I feel like he looks down on me. He never responds to my emails, even when I have an urgent school thing that would affect my application. So far not happy with the experience.
So, @MaineLonghorn, as it sounds like you did not revisit the consultant for your youngest child, would you say the benefit of having hired the consultant was two-fold, on the whole? Did you take what you learned the first time and implement the same strategies with your youngest?
I used CC as my only consultant for my first 2 kids. They were high stat , good applicants, but being new to the process I obsessively read forums here for two years. I felt their application experience was as good as anything I could have paid for but I was able to spend the time here to get my questions answered and benefit from the wealth of information other parents share.
For third child, also a good applicant, I paid for an initial consult with with one of the big companies. Ironically, meeting was in Princeton. Just wanted to see if I was missing anything as the CA had evolved and there were a few years I didn’t read CC daily !
Didn’t learn anything new from the high-priced consultant. In fact, she was incredulous at the outcomes of my two older children after asking about our family history. She all but said that there was no way older child could have been accepted to school X with his background - glad I hadn’t met her earlier.
In summary, if you have the time and interest - there is no need to pay a consultant. All the information is here.
If you don’t have the time, and/or have the resources - a high- priced consultant can provide a necessary service.
At the beginning of my D’s 8th grade year a friend gave me a book called “The College Hook” by Pam Proctor. Mrs. Proctor is a well published college consultant and IB consultant.
The book provides indepth information regarding how to assist your child in building a resume based on their respective “hooks”.
http://www.pamproctor.net/collegeconsulting.html
I read this book from cover to cover. My daughter read this book from cover to cover. We learned how to “market” her. I know that may sound crazy but it’s exactly what students do when they apply to college. This was the first time we’d learned of “test optional” school. The book gave suggestions on everything including summer programs that clearly allowed a child to address their interest, build a resume all they while actually enjoying themselves.
The book informed us about the IB program which really peeked her interest. We ultimately enrolled our D into a private full IB program.
While my D did very very well in the IB program and had excellent EC’s and LOR’s, she had taken the SAT/ACT twice and did not do very well so we were concerned.
But here’s what happened when we received a call from a Princeton Review representative. This person called to speak with me about pairing us with a college consultant to assist with the college process. For 30 minutes I explained to him what we had done to prepare for this from reading the book to actually implementing many of the suggestions. He asked me for the name of the book and said he was going to recommend the book to other parents. He said “well, it sounds like your daughter isn’t going to have any issues”.
I’ve given the book to our college counselor who has passed the information on to other parents. I will be giving a presentation on how the book helped our D get to her #1 choice (George Washington University, Elliott School- University Honors Program with a Presidential Academic Scholarship) TEST OPTIONAL!
All I’m saying is 1) start early, 2) read and actually do it.