Senior Parents: if you hired a private college counselor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Melanie Drake at Summit Solutions
[e-mail]

She’s down-to-earth, practical, easy to work with. Did the college counseling at a fancy STL prep school, now works on her own. Clients on the coasts but lives in rural midwest so not as expensive as DMV-based advisors. Really nice mix of expertise and value.

Thx!

Where did your kid end up committing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All essays are written by DC only, and effectively written.

Have access to following:

College Counsellor: pretty useless

Ex AO form an Ivy (30K for their services):
- Overall narrative, common app story, language/flow for activities and the essay
- College essays (for top 10 filing) - review, catching red flags, additional eyes
- Completing and filing support for specific colleges
- Secret insights about respective process
- Guide / coach and provide motivation to DC during this stressful process

Partner with a Strategy/MBB firm:
- Research and analysis on all college / Univ - overall strategic approach
- Prioritization - which college to drop, file and keep as backup etc
- Structuring the narrative along with the ex AO
- Structure essays, ECs and story part
- Program manage the entire process
- Use his network to get internship and LOR
- Fund and bank roll the entire process

Can you share their info?

[Anonymous]

Bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Melanie Drake at Summit Solutions
[e-mail]

She’s down-to-earth, practical, easy to work with. Did the college counseling at a fancy STL prep school, now works on her own. Clients on the coasts but lives in rural midwest so not as expensive as DMV-based advisors. Really nice mix of expertise and value.

Thx!

Where did your kid end up committing?

PP - one of the more selective SLACs. (People here seem to like it if they like SLACs lol.) Had a bunch of good options. The process is always a little crazy-making, but a good counselor can be grounding. Just make sure personality is a fit, and that you and DC both like them. Otherwise it’s just introducing yet another variable into the fray. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Saw this linked by YouTube elsewhere.
Any recs?

https://collegemeister.com/

[Anonymous]

Are any of these just for essay editing/coaching?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did it work out for your kid so far, to date, in ED, or REA/EA? What schools/results?
If non-DMV, can you list state?

If rejected or deferred, has your counselors advice, been helpful, comprehensive and specific as your kid enters the RD process? What types of suggestions have they made and what types of schools did they add to your kid’s list?

If you have to do it all over again, would you hire that firm or company?

Not a college counselor but someone to help with reading essays and giving feedback. Tried 2-one very expensive one ($300 per hour) and another a Yale grad in English ($50 per hour). The Yale grad was so much better. The expensive one kept (suspiciously) nitpicking. Would pick on technical minutia. The Yale grad read holistically and for flow and emotion. Spent close to $1200 on expensive one and then let DC work only with the Yale grad. DC in at first choice ED>

Can you share grad student info? Wyzant link?

[Anonymous]

Not this year but previous years. 3 Kids 3 "lower tier" Ivies. We will take it.

[Anonymous]

OP- is it time issue, or is it you don't think you can do it yourself?

I just want to add that I felt like this was something I should do---FOMO... because everyone around me was doing it and talking about their private CC--even my boss and my best friend.

In the end, I decided against it. My husband and I and son--already had our own list. We also had the huge Princeton review guide of the 'best 388 colleges'. We did a lot of research.

He wrote his essay in English class May of Jr year. I did brainstorm topics with him. That essay he revised and re-drafted and got input from me and my husband --until around Sept/Oct . Supplemental essay/?s came easier. He just expanded on his hobbies and things from common app. I advised him to just 'be himself'. Don't think about 'crafting some phony narrative'.

He got into an Ivy, Hopkins, very selective SLAC, all in-state schools and 2 T20 privates. He did better than kids with similar stats/also no hooks who did hire the expensive counselors.

I throw that out there because I think there is the problem with stripping too much of a kid's own identity out of the applications when you use basically a stranger to help package your kid. I think then they all sound alike.

Just my 2 cents. But don't get caught up in the hype.