College Counseling

[Anonymous]

We are in a W. school district. Everyone I know has hired private college counselors! Do we really need to go that route?

[Anonymous]

No, you don't need to. Many parents do this because it is helpful if you can well afford it. On the other hand, if you read up and become educated on the college application process on your own it is quite doable without a private collete counselor. For example, College Confidential is a good website for getting ideas. Also, use Naviance to determine where your kid stands vis a vis peers with similar GPAs and SAT scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, you don't need to. Many parents do this because it is helpful if you can well afford it. On the other hand, if you read up and become educated on the college application process on your own it is quite doable without a private collete counselor. For example, College Confidential is a good website for getting ideas. Also, use Naviance to determine where your kid stands vis a vis peers with similar GPAs and SAT scores.

A good counselor is useful in many ways. Types of schools, this course or that, etc.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure there are threads in this, but maybe we could get an updated list of recommended counselors?

[Anonymous]

We are in a W too. If it's your first time going through the process I'd recommend a counselor. We didn't do it and there are times it would have been helpful.

[Anonymous]

Our kids are in a large MoCo school and we, too, considered hiring a private counselor for DC#1. In fact, my post asking this very same question is probably still somewhere in the DCUM archives.

Things really have changed since our day, wrt APs, SATIIs, essay-writing, and wrt the competitiveness of the colleges that we got into. So you're right to look for help. Don't just assume that you can do what you did, back in the day, and it will all work out. The question is, do you need to hire this help, or can you figure it out yourself?

I got some helpful answers here two years ago. After going through the process with DC#1, I agree with most of the advice I got. Since people were so helpful to me, I'll try to recapitulate (other PPs, feel free to add on).

Basically, your need for a private counselor boils down to how you answer/view the questions below.
(1) How much free time and interest do you have to do your own research? There are books to read (Crazy U, of course, but also Fiske, maybe Price of Admission, a book or two on what the process looks like these days). There are Naviance and College Confidential to spend hours navigating. And as a base, there will be unavoidable, normal school transcript and counseling office demands that you will have to do anyway, and as a minimum, at your W school.
(2) Do you get frustrated and/or overwhelmed by lots of information and choices? Or do you see this as a fun challenge and maybe a chance to bond with your kid?
(3) Your kid - can you rely on you kid to do a lot of the work? Or are you thinking, as you read this, that you are dreading the process and you will really need a neutral third party to push your kid to write the essays?
(4) How much of a financial stretch will hiring a counselor be for you? Is this money you could save for college, or is this money you can spare?
(5) How good are you at dealing with professionals? Can you fire them, and say "no" to the $3,000 package if you don't think you need it? There are better and worse professionals in every profession, and I'm sure this profession is no different.
(6) How good is your ability to avoid helicoptering the whole process? Urging your kid not to write his essay about the service trip to Honduras, because you read the books and you know that topic is a bad idea, is totally different from writing the essay for him.

There may be some more things I haven't remembered, but these are what stick in my mind.

When I asked on DCUM, lots of people said we could do this ourselves. And we did. As you might suspect, we have a decent amount of time in the evenings and DC#1 was really motivated. And if you want to know how it ended, DC got into one of the most selective colleges in the country.

[Anonymous]

What's a W?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's a W?

Some of the high schools in the western part of MoCo: Whitman, Wooton, Winston Churchill, Walter Johnson. I don't want to get into a fight about "which of these doesn't belong", I just want to offer up the general idea to PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our kids are in a large MoCo school and we, too, considered hiring a private counselor for DC#1. In fact, my post asking this very same question is probably still somewhere in the DCUM archives.

Things really have changed since our day, wrt APs, SATIIs, essay-writing, and wrt the competitiveness of the colleges that we got into. So you're right to look for help. Don't just assume that you can do what you did, back in the day, and it will all work out. The question is, do you need to hire this help, or can you figure it out yourself?

I got some helpful answers here two years ago. After going through the process with DC#1, I agree with most of the advice I got. Since people were so helpful to me, I'll try to recapitulate (other PPs, feel free to add on).

Basically, your need for a private counselor boils down to how you answer/view the questions below.
(1) How much free time and interest do you have to do your own research? There are books to read (Crazy U, of course, but also Fiske, maybe Price of Admission, a book or two on what the process looks like these days). There are Naviance and College Confidential to spend hours navigating. And as a base, there will be unavoidable, normal school transcript and counseling office demands that you will have to do anyway, and as a minimum, at your W school.
(2) Do you get frustrated and/or overwhelmed by lots of information and choices? Or do you see this as a fun challenge and maybe a chance to bond with your kid?
(3) Your kid - can you rely on you kid to do a lot of the work? Or are you thinking, as you read this, that you are dreading the process and you will really need a neutral third party to push your kid to write the essays?
(4) How much of a financial stretch will hiring a counselor be for you? Is this money you could save for college, or is this money you can spare?
(5) How good are you at dealing with professionals? Can you fire them, and say "no" to the $3,000 package if you don't think you need it? There are better and worse professionals in every profession, and I'm sure this profession is no different.
(6) How good is your ability to avoid helicoptering the whole process? Urging your kid not to write his essay about the service trip to Honduras, because you read the books and you know that topic is a bad idea, is totally different from writing the essay for him.

There may be some more things I haven't remembered, but these are what stick in my mind.

When I asked on DCUM, lots of people said we could do this ourselves. And we did. As you might suspect, we have a decent amount of time in the evenings and DC#1 was really motivated. And if you want to know how it ended, DC got into one of the most selective colleges in the country.

This is one of the best/practical posts I've seen on DCUM in a long time.

[Anonymous]

Parents like someone to be a buffer.

[Anonymous]

We would have benefited from a counselor to help with a couple of things:

1. Developing a realistic, well rounded list. I think DC's list is okay but when applying to the selective schools it's harder to get it right. Did we waste time and money on some apps?
2. Developing the EA/ED/RD strategy. I think we did it right but again not sure.
3. Figuring out if DC needs to explain a slight drop in first semester grades this year.

Figuring out testing, the essays, visits, interviews, and most of the identification of schools was pretty easy using naviance and college confidential, the sessions conducted by the school, and one meeting with the counselor. It's more the strategy and nuances of the process that I'm not 100% sure about. DCs counselor seems good, but just too busy for frequent questions (plus she was out on maternity leave all fall at the peak of the process).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our kids are in a large MoCo school and we, too, considered hiring a private counselor for DC#1. In fact, my post asking this very same question is probably still somewhere in the DCUM archives.

Things really have changed since our day, wrt APs, SATIIs, essay-writing, and wrt the competitiveness of the colleges that we got into. So you're right to look for help. Don't just assume that you can do what you did, back in the day, and it will all work out. The question is, do you need to hire this help, or can you figure it out yourself?

I got some helpful answers here two years ago. After going through the process with DC#1, I agree with most of the advice I got. Since people were so helpful to me, I'll try to recapitulate (other PPs, feel free to add on).

Basically, your need for a private counselor boils down to how you answer/view the questions below.
(1) How much free time and interest do you have to do your own research? There are books to read (Crazy U, of course, but also Fiske, maybe Price of Admission, a book or two on what the process looks like these days). There are Naviance and College Confidential to spend hours navigating. And as a base, there will be unavoidable, normal school transcript and counseling office demands that you will have to do anyway, and as a minimum, at your W school.
(2) Do you get frustrated and/or overwhelmed by lots of information and choices? Or do you see this as a fun challenge and maybe a chance to bond with your kid?
(3) Your kid - can you rely on you kid to do a lot of the work? Or are you thinking, as you read this, that you are dreading the process and you will really need a neutral third party to push your kid to write the essays?
(4) How much of a financial stretch will hiring a counselor be for you? Is this money you could save for college, or is this money you can spare?
(5) How good are you at dealing with professionals? Can you fire them, and say "no" to the $3,000 package if you don't think you need it? There are better and worse professionals in every profession, and I'm sure this profession is no different.
(6) How good is your ability to avoid helicoptering the whole process? Urging your kid not to write his essay about the service trip to Honduras, because you read the books and you know that topic is a bad idea, is totally different from writing the essay for him.

There may be some more things I haven't remembered, but these are what stick in my mind.

When I asked on DCUM, lots of people said we could do this ourselves. And we did. As you might suspect, we have a decent amount of time in the evenings and DC#1 was really motivated. And if you want to know how it ended, DC got into one of the most selective colleges in the country.

This is one of the best/practical posts I've seen on DCUM in a long time.

+1 -- hats off to the PP