Private consultants reality check

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A close friend who tends to be more savvy about these things told me over a holiday get-together she knows some families in our school who hire private consultants who plan the kids’ whole life since 7th grade: help them apply to or even write essays for summer programs, plan sports (plan competition schedule and travel if it’s an individual sport without team schedule, summer skill camps at Ivies), school club leadership (how to recruit members, plan highly visible activities, manage their Instagram to document large gatherings, accomplishments), all the way down to drafting weekly emails for the kid to send to coaches, professors and college tour guides, band leaders they met on tours or summer programs over 4 years to establish relationships in a strategic and unannoying way. These are all before helping them ace the SAT and write their application essays.

Another friend told me last year (she had older kids and know many parents who have been through the process in the past decade) private consultants are useless, that the ones she knew who use them are getting into T25-50 colleges after spending tens of thousands, but not the most selective ones, because the top ones see through the consultants’ finger prints all over an app.

So which is true? I know as with a lot of cases, the answer is “it depends”, perhaps a great consultant could do those things. We have zero plan to use one (we don’t even have a tutor!) but I’m so disheartened that DC who works so hard to get top grades, work so hard on weekends at his part time job is competing under these circumstances. If that’s true, I want to take my kids out of the game and just apply to Canada, which is where DH is from, where you shouldn’t have to play these games to get in.

Anyone BTDT has real insights?

Honey. The "Another friend" got a kid who is not a top contender to start with.

Think about it like product management. Of course a good product manager helps shaping the final product. But it's only one factor in a multiple factor system process.

To get a top notch final product, every one has to do their work. The consultant has to work well with the engineer, and they have to match with each other.

A top engineer working with a top product manager. Perfect scenario. HYPMS.
A top product manager working with a mediocre engineer, or vice versa. T20.
A mediocre manager working with a mediocre engineer? Looking at T50.
Yes, a top engineer sometimes can work on their own and get in T20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see any difference in outcome between the two groups in the end.

Savvy parents who understand "narrative" can help their kids. I did it in reverse. Let them live their lives, and organize it into a "story" summer before senior year. Two at T10 school

With this approach (and I applaud you), don’t you take the risk of having holes in your narrative that you can’t turn back time to fill if you’re missing some essential courses or activities?

Two things:

- Activities and courses dont matter as much as you think, IMO. You need to triangulate on a niche area that's, hopefully, of actual interest to the kid. So horses and medicine. This is not uncommon. The white girl who did horseback riding and is interested in pre-med. Hard. So you need to triangulate on something more niche. Non verbal communication? Interesting. I'm sure AI could tell you a lot about this, and you could find a place junior year summer to work, either with therapeutic riding (not uncommon) or with non verbal kids (interesting!). Then maybe you switch from pre-med to linguistics. And then talk about other animals? Write an essay for John Locke competition. Horseback riding plus work with non-verbal kids plus essay competition = this is a good story. Or horseback riding and physics! Start with movement. Super interesting too.

- I think it's harder for students and parents to leave things off the the activities section. You have to leave things off so the story works. So it's fine to do all the above and play soccer and be president of debate. But if you also add your premed summer program at Georgetown summer after 9th grade and then president of French club it just muddies the waters. Do it all during high school! But you don't have to disclose everything you did

[Anonymous]

^^ to add -- we did in fact add some activities/details summer before senior year to round out the story. But they can be done on your own. And 90% of it was done organically. pAckaging is maybe less organic. It's a game, for sure.

[Anonymous]

Two kids at Ivies. No private consultants. Small sample but parents of kids at Ivies - from privates in DC, DMV publics, top privates in NYC, etc.- also no private consultants. Used available resources online, podcasts, etc.

[Anonymous]

Just a reminder: while Ivy+ and WASP is a tougher admit than ever, some very, very good schools are easier admits than a generation or two ago. A top student with an ED application can walk into a Holy Cross or Macalester and avoid the rat race entirely. Forget college counselors or doing activities solely for the purpose of application resume-padding. Enjoy high school.

Sure, everyone applies to the same 20 unis and SLACs and this advice is ignored. But a lot of those curated kids end up at the same schools (or worse) anyhow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see any difference in outcome between the two groups in the end.

Savvy parents who understand "narrative" can help their kids. I did it in reverse. Let them live their lives, and organize it into a "story" summer before senior year. Two at T10 school

With this approach (and I applaud you), don’t you take the risk of having holes in your narrative that you can’t turn back time to fill if you’re missing some essential courses or activities?

Two things:

- Activities and courses dont matter as much as you think, IMO. You need to triangulate on a niche area that's, hopefully, of actual interest to the kid. So horses and medicine. This is not uncommon. The white girl who did horseback riding and is interested in pre-med. Hard. So you need to triangulate on something more niche. Non verbal communication? Interesting. I'm sure AI could tell you a lot about this, and you could find a place junior year summer to work, either with therapeutic riding (not uncommon) or with non verbal kids (interesting!). Then maybe you switch from pre-med to linguistics. And then talk about other animals? Write an essay for John Locke competition. Horseback riding plus work with non-verbal kids plus essay competition = this is a good story. Or horseback riding and physics! Start with movement. Super interesting too.

Like your approach but could you illustrate it using something less fancy? No everyone could afford expensive activities like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see any difference in outcome between the two groups in the end.

Savvy parents who understand "narrative" can help their kids. I did it in reverse. Let them live their lives, and organize it into a "story" summer before senior year. Two at T10 school

With this approach (and I applaud you), don’t you take the risk of having holes in your narrative that you can’t turn back time to fill if you’re missing some essential courses or activities?

Two things:

- Activities and courses dont matter as much as you think, IMO. You need to triangulate on a niche area that's, hopefully, of actual interest to the kid. So horses and medicine. This is not uncommon. The white girl who did horseback riding and is interested in pre-med. Hard. So you need to triangulate on something more niche. Non verbal communication? Interesting. I'm sure AI could tell you a lot about this, and you could find a place junior year summer to work, either with therapeutic riding (not uncommon) or with non verbal kids (interesting!). Then maybe you switch from pre-med to linguistics. And then talk about other animals? Write an essay for John Locke competition. Horseback riding plus work with non-verbal kids plus essay competition = this is a good story. Or horseback riding and physics! Start with movement. Super interesting too.

Like your approach but could you illustrate it using something less fancy? No everyone could afford expensive activities like this.

give me a major of interest and one or two things they did in high school.

[Anonymous]

A consultant can only work with what they’ve got.

Mediocre kids cannot get pushed into top schools even if you pay a quarter mil to the top NYC consultants, OP.

Just have reasonable expectations for your kids, that way, consultant or no consultant, you won’t be disappointed.

[Anonymous]

If you’re willing to bail for Canada, be aware that there are many similar large public American universities that admit high-stats kids based largely or entirely on stats. My high-stats child finds the whole game really off-putting and therefore only applied to big state schools. Although if your kid is a Canadian citizen the Canadian schools will likely be cheaper, unless they get a merit scholarship at an American school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have 2 college kids, one at a Top 100 (did not hire a consultant) one at an Ivy (hired consultant). Although it would seem I'm arguing to hire a consultant IF the goal is a Top 20 school, my answer is: it depends.

For the sake of argument, let's say the goal is a Top 20 school (which we all know is a crapshoot at a large level anyway):

The initial barrier to entry is grades (3.9+ GPA) and standardized test scores (generally 1500+ / 34+). Not sure a traditional counselor does much on the grades piece BUT a testing tutor can be a huge help - we hired one for both of our kids outside of the counselor and this is the #1 recommendation I would make if you want to spend $$ on any part of this process. Both of their SAT scores went way up working with a tutor.

As far as the counselor, IMO it depends on how hands on/hands off the parent wants to be/can be and more importantly how much the child is willing to allow their parent to be involved.

If the parent has the time/desire to be hands on and the child is OK with it, IMO the parent can learn a ton through podcasts, what's posted online/in social media and (yes... I'm about to say it) using AI as a research tool. That involves a really big time commitment, but it is doable. And obviously saves a boatload of $$.

If the parents don't have time, and more importantly it would benefit the relationship between parents/children for parents to be out of the picture, a consultant can be very helpful. We as parents did not want to compromise this piece, and based on what we know about our kids and heard from them, we chose a consultant for one child but not the other.

Not sure any of this is helpful, but like so much else in this process, do what you feel is in the best interests of your child recognizing, when it comes down to it, there is only so much anyone can control. Even when you put a lot of $$ into it.

GPA can be lower from connected private and public high schools that colleges know never grade inflate and only under a handful of kids get above 3.9. From our school (a private feeder), 3.6 can get you into Chicago, 3.8 you’re very comfortably in at Penn or Dartmouth and at 3.9 you have an above 50% chance at HYP if SCEA bc they each take 1-2 kids from the school and only 3-4 kids get above 3.9.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your first paragraph correctly describes what happens.

Now ask yourself if you truly want your children at college with those kids and those families.

I know the answer for us. We already have generational wealth. I’m sending my kids to state flagships or “normal” private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two kids at Ivies. No private consultants. Small sample but parents of kids at Ivies - from privates in DC, DMV publics, top privates in NYC, etc.- also no private consultants. Used available resources online, podcasts, etc.

My kid is in ar Ivy and we used a mid price consultant. Anecdotes get one no where.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A close friend who tends to be more savvy about these things told me over a holiday get-together she knows some families in our school who hire private consultants who plan the kids’ whole life since 7th grade: help them apply to or even write essays for summer programs, plan sports (plan competition schedule and travel if it’s an individual sport without team schedule, summer skill camps at Ivies), school club leadership (how to recruit members, plan highly visible activities, manage their Instagram to document large gatherings, accomplishments), all the way down to drafting weekly emails for the kid to send to coaches, professors and college tour guides, band leaders they met on tours or summer programs over 4 years to establish relationships in a strategic and unannoying way. These are all before helping them ace the SAT and write their application essays.

Another friend told me last year (she had older kids and know many parents who have been through the process in the past decade) private consultants are useless, that the ones she knew who use them are getting into T25-50 colleges after spending tens of thousands, but not the most selective ones, because the top ones see through the consultants’ finger prints all over an app.

So which is true? I know as with a lot of cases, the answer is “it depends”, perhaps a great consultant could do those things. We have zero plan to use one (we don’t even have a tutor!) but I’m so disheartened that DC who works so hard to get top grades, work so hard on weekends at his part time job is competing under these circumstances. If that’s true, I want to take my kids out of the game and just apply to Canada, which is where DH is from, where you shouldn’t have to play these games to get in.

Anyone BTDT has real insights?

BTDT on having no consultant and only found out about this my kids senior year. Bolded part is definitely true. These cultivated activities lists do not make for a level playing field. However you should know that lots of admissions is not fair nor fully merit based. Embellishing to the point of almost lying is also a thing.

Personally I don’t think these consultants help as much as people think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your first paragraph correctly describes what happens.

Now ask yourself if you truly want your children at college with those kids and those families.

I know the answer for us. We already have generational wealth. I’m sending my kids to state flagships or “normal” private schools.

Families with “average” kids also use consultants. Maybe community college for your kids then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't see any difference in outcome between the two groups in the end.

Savvy parents who understand "narrative" can help their kids. I did it in reverse. Let them live their lives, and organize it into a "story" summer before senior year. Two at T10 school

With this approach (and I applaud you), don’t you take the risk of having holes in your narrative that you can’t turn back time to fill if you’re missing some essential courses or activities?

NP. We also did this (looked backwards in 11) and it worked out (T10/Ivy for 2 kids).Helped them with a narrative. No essay coaches but did use Application Nation.

The key was intellectual depth in the essays in my opinion and showing a deep authentic academic interest in something niche. How? The essays....they mattered a LOT. Make sure your kid reads a LOT - just for fun - and has a wide base of knowledge. It will help with generating random ideas for the essays.