Private college counselors

Has anyone had personal experience with Solomon Admissions, Ivy Wise, Command Education or any of the other big name private counselors? Will you be willing to DM the details if you do not want to post on the forum? I know they are super pricey, but if anyone can share their personal experiences (either positive or negative)., it will help us decide whether we should even look at these options. Thanks so much!

Do a quick search here - I recall a recent thread about Solomon Admissions - you should find some helpful information.

Thanks so much! I did a search and got some good information. But still hoping someone will be able to talk about their personal experiences…

Here’s the thing - there is absolutely no way to estimate how effective any college counseling services are. If they demonstrate a substantially above average acceptance rate for kids to colleges for which these kids are in the mid 50% or lower 25%, that would be one thing.

However, the most common success story is “my kids has a 4.0 GPA, a 1570 SAT, and a long list of awards, but we weren’t sure that they would get into an Ivy. We paid $8,000 IvyAcceptanceOrBust.com and our kids was accepted at Upenn and Brown”.

Would that kid have been accepted without the help of the consulting company? Who knows? I haven’t seen much evidence that they actually help. Kids who use their services are accepted by the colleges to which they would be expected to be accepted, based on their stats. They haven’t provided any evidence that these kids are being accepted at a higher rate than other kids with similar profiles.

What they do sometimes, is provide parents with a realistic list of colleges. In fact, it’s actually in their interest to undersell your kid’s chances to you.

However, I don’t see the point of paying thousands of dollars for somebody to be pessimistic about a kid’s chances. Most people can do that without help…

PS. the story about this particular company in which the parent described the representative telling them that they have 24 hours to decide whether to spend $10,000 on the company’s services, is classic predatory tactics, which do not indicate a company with honest business practices.

Just because of that story I would recommend not using their services.

I recommend Collegewise. My daughter is working with one of their counselors and she has been great. No results yet, but regardless, it will have been worth it for us.

I would go with word-of-mouth referrals before I would use a large company such as any of the ones you mentioned.

Depending on how much time you have to spend doing research and what the dynamic is between you and your kiddo in terms of how involved he/she wants to you be (and how involved you want to be), there is much that you can learn from the collective wisdom here on CC and through a variety of helpful websites.

I learned a tremendous amount in going through the process with my daughter and, as a result, have used what I learned in being about to help other students and families as they navigate the process.

Thank you all for your responses! We have decided to hold off for a couple of months and look at all resources available (for free) before taking a decision. Its a huge financial commitment and I am not sure how effective the services will be…