<p>I am looking to hire a counselor to help my son with his application process. Besides being able to help him with his supplements, common application, and edit his essays, what other services should i be wary of?</p>
<p>thank you for the replies and your time.</p>
<p>I personally would want a counselors to be able to</p>
<p>1) Edit essays
2) Answer questions about the supplements, common application essays
3) Advise me on FAFSA
4) Chance me
5) Keep me up to date about the colleges I am applying to</p>
<p>timing, deadlines. those are nightmares. asking for recs. it can be very strategic. choosing schools. </p>
<p>And be wary of them: their costs and whether you really need someone else to do this when your school already has counselors.</p>
<p>His school has a counselor but they only dedicate a few hours per applicant since my son attends a huge Public High School. I think if the private counselor changes 50-100 dollars per session, it will be worth the investment if my son receives 1 on 1 sessions for a few sessions. </p>
<p>Aside from that, any other recommendations besides making sure the counselor knows the deadlines and can advise my son accordingly?</p>
<p>If you’re going to spend that kind of money, you should definitely ask for interview prep, assuming your son will be going on interviews. Practice mock interviews, how to answer certain questions, and most importantly for teenagers, how to interview without using the words “like” and “yeah”.</p>
<p>We’ve worked with two and they have offered everything from helping a student choose ECs in 9th grade and following them through high school to selecting colleges to help with the actual application. Since you seem to need only the last part, in your shoes I’d hire one of the good ones that just does applications. In my experience you’ll spend much less and get what you’re looking for. We overpaid the first for things we didn’t need.</p>
<p>The question before the question is - how to find a great private counselor?</p>
<p>hmom, do you remember the rates you paid for your advisers? I’ve read some articles that for just the college application overview, it can range up to 200 dollars per session from an average adviser. Is this true?</p>
<p>PaperChaser, that would be one way of rephrasing the question.</p>
<p>Austin, the ones we used don’t do sessions, they do packages. The good ones are usually not the ones in your neighborhood, they work online and by phone. Choose one you get personal references on. We chose based on results friends got the years before. There are a lot of jokers out there.</p>
<p>I would not expect to get a good application done for a few hundred dollars unfortunately. You could get lucky, but most I know who’ve gone the local route were not dealing with people of the caliber to do much more than the edit. If that’s all you’re looking for why hire a counselor? A good tutor can do that.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on what you’re looking for. We wanted someone to give our kid, applying from a very competitive pool, some strategies. That entailed knowing the colleges he was applying to well and understanding what they wanted to see in an application. The counselors that do this tend to be ivy grads and former ivy adcom who don’t come cheap.</p>
<p>My sister just spent about $2000 for an application package for my niece that yielded a truly top notch, elite school application.</p>
<p>Several of our friends have used a college counselor that charged both hourly (around $150) essay planning and execution (depends on word total but around $200) and full range college planning for as many years as needed (prep school/9thgrade/grad school) for about $4000 max. This counselor got great results and helped out a lot with strategy and when necessary, funding (both scholarship and need based aid). </p>
<p>Find a counselor that has been in the business a long time and is recommended. The counselor our friends have used offered a money back guarantee if the child didn’t get into a top 100 school. Services seemed focused on admission to top schools.</p>
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<p>I’m sure that’s true but isn’t is also true that most kids who get accepted to the elite schools did not use a private college counselor? That’s certainly been the case with the students we’ve known (UVA, Columbia, etc.)</p>
<p>I’m sure the vast majority didn’t use a counselor. Yet we had two very high stats kids that we didn’t use a counselor for and I was looking for answers. I found them with a counselor and DS2, with the same stats, a few years later with lower admit rates, did get into his first choice. My niece is after big reaches and that’s a lot of money for my sister, but they really want a good aid school and thought it was worth the investment.</p>
<p>For me, it was about strategy. That’s what I paid for. What to say, what not to say, how to say it. We were missing some things in how to position a student in our pool. I can’t see using a counselor for editing or making the list personally.</p>
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<p>There are the well known ones like Ivy Wise and Hernandez where you’d have to add another zero to that $4000 price tag. I didn’t do one of these 4 year packages, but before the bust anyway they were charging over $40K. Time magazine reported that Hernandez mad over $1MM/yr. Now that’s crazy money!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I see how a lot of counselor offer yearly services but wouldn’t 5-6 sessions be enough? I mean if they are professionals in guiding you and fixing your essays, 5-6 hours should be more than enough to edit your essay, show you how to fill out your application, and explain how you can become a stronger candidate.</p>
<p>sorry if that is not the case. Any thoughts would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Thanks for replying, hmom5. I find the whole process endlessly interesting.</p>
<p>Well, by the time a kid is applying to college, much of the work private counselors offer in their packages has already been done. They have advised them on class selection, sometimes since before their freshman year of high school, advised them on which EC’s and summer programs to participate in, and have gotten to know the student well enough to help select schools that are a great fit that the student might not have otherwise considered. When they get a student at the “last minute,” that kid may not have the same great package as the ones the counselor has mentored throughout high school. That may lead to rejections, which isn’t great for the counselor’s future business. Having said that, there are good counselors who will take on seniors. The best way to find a counselor is by referral, so ask everyone you know or meet if they can refer someone. 5-6 sessions may be enough for what you want: essays, applications, etc. “Becoming a stronger candidate” is what they help their clients with during the first three years," but someone should be able to help your kid present himself in the best light on applications. If you are really stuck without any referrals, try emailing the PTA Board Members that represent your school and ask them if they can recommend someone. When I was on the PTA Board, people emailed and called all of the time with random questions and I was happy to share any information I had. Another possible source for referrals is local private SAT tutors. They usually have relationships with all of the college counselors in their area. Good luck.</p>
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Austin111,</p>
<p>Spend a couple of hours here on parents’ forum, and you will get all the info you are looking for free of charge.
An English teacher can be asked to read the essays.</p>
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<p>Yes to the first 2 parts. If that’s what you want you should pay very little. </p>
<p>The stronger candidate part, at this point, can only be done through positioning what the student has already done. This is where you want a certain skill set that IMO is hard to find and unlikely to find in your neighborhood charging $100/hr. It’s subjective, and I probably have this outlook because we ended up working with 2 (the first very high priced one could only sell us a limited package, she was booked!). The less expensive by far of the two was much more talented at what we were looking for–positioning through essays. Not surprisingly, she had a strong marketing background before she decided to become a counselor.</p>
<p>I am just amazed at the self-marketing described here. I don’t know a single kid in our town who uses a counselor for applications or “positioning.” Teachers do not edit essays: the kids do their own. Students do pretty well with admissions decisions, too.</p>
<p>Doing the common application is not rocket science. Picking schools is not that difficult, and for maybe $45 you can buy books like “Colleges that Change Lives,” “Beyond the Ivies,” “Cool Colleges” etc. The choice of essay topic says a lot about an applicant, and the choice should be entirely their own, and an authentic choice, not one suggested for strategic purposes.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for students who have counselors guiding their way through all 4 years of high school. I have read that students who are focused on “getting in” throughout high school, are often depressed once they reach their dream school. They become accustomed to living in order to reach that goal, and once they reach it, life seems meaningless.</p>
<p>I think that parents should relax, and convey that calm to their children. Students can be happy at all kinds of places, and, in the long run, people from all kinds of colleges do well in life. Presenting an artificial, engineered self to admissions committees may mean the kid ends up in a school that does not fit. But even worse, the student may not feel it was really him or her that was accepted.</p>
<p>I think more than editing, strategies, and making sure you meet the deadlines, having a private counselor for a lot of these high school seniors is peace of mind. A lot of the students are top students, very bright and can easily do the entire application, essays by themselves but just want someone to reassure them that everything will be ok and completed on time. For a lot of them, they have not done something this important that will determine the course of their lives so having someone they can easily contact for questions is worth the money for some of these candidates.</p>
<p>Be wary of counselors who guide your students towards sure things, not challenging them with reach schools so as to make their “yields” look better. We have experienced that personally, and finally dismissed our counselor after my D’s essays were savagely critiqued by one of her English teachers. Many counselors have pre-selected lists that they hand to students and ask them to choose a few that they are interested in. Also, be sure to ask about training and education - some just hang out a shingle and say “I’m a college counselor” and that’s that. Obviously I am not a big fan :)</p>