Did Private College Counseling workout for your DC in the early rounds (2022-2023 applicants)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get that this post is probably geared towards families gunning for Ivies and with lots of cash to burn but I just wanted to tell everyone else that you really don’t need this. I did college research myself to understand what the best matches would be for my DC - there are so many resources out there for free that any educated person can help their kid assemble a list. We did pay DC’s regular tutor to help with test prep and to be the task master on essays. Worth every penny to have someone else help brainstorm, set deadlines for drafts, and then give a basic review before submitting. I think there were maybe 3 different essays. Probably spent less than 1k on all of this, and if we hadn’t done the test prep would’ve been even less, only $200-300 dollars for the essay sessions.

Absolutely agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private counselor helped my niece to Duke and nephew to UChicago (different sides of the family and on opposite coasts but used same counselor) this year in the early round. I'll be hiring the same person for my DC next year.

Do you mind sharing which counsellor ?

Do you have or can set up a throwaway email address you can post here? If so, I’ll send her contact info to you privately. Like the other PP’s counselor, this one only takes 10 students per year.

[e-mail]

Thank you very much!

[Anonymous]

For our first and second we hired the same college counselor. She was fantastic a gem for sure.

Pricing she was middle of the road. At the time I thought it was a huge waste and my kids could have easily done everything themselves. MIT & Yale acceptances.

By the third one I parcelled out this kid in particular was Mr who cares I will get in somewhere. I did not want to spend his senior year fighting. He did do some ACT prep for English-type work, no math because he excels at that. He went to CMU.

My last three no college prep. Similar school acceptances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private counselor helped my niece to Duke and nephew to UChicago (different sides of the family and on opposite coasts but used same counselor) this year in the early round. I'll be hiring the same person for my DC next year.

Do you mind sharing which counsellor ?

Do you have or can set up a throwaway email address you can post here? If so, I’ll send her contact info to you privately. Like the other PP’s counselor, this one only takes 10 students per year.

We would appreciate the contact info

[e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Two words:

Sybil Gohari

100% the best in the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:21:17 poster here. The way my family members put it, they'll never know for sure if their respective kids would have won the ED lottery without the private counselor's help, but she definitely supplied them with some extra tickets they wouldn't otherwise have had. $250/hour (niece went this route), $9000 unlimited (nephew went this route, and it's really good that he did because he completed 28 applications before hearing from his ED school and having to withdraw/not submit the other 27) for the 2022-23 school year.

If you are getting good, targeted guidance, you don't need to apply to 28 schools. That's nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Private counselor helped my niece to Duke and nephew to UChicago (different sides of the family and on opposite coasts but used same counselor) this year in the early round. I'll be hiring the same person for my DC next year.

Appreciate the help. Please if you could email to ‘[e-mail]’ I’d be really grateful.
Thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:such a waste of money...do your own research.....

signed
parent of '26 Ivy grad

So sad to see parents sign like this... talking about living your life thru your kids.

[Anonymous]

Who the hell needs a counselor to curate a list?

[Anonymous]

Nowadays kids mainly need to have a strong GPA. Besides advice, how would a College Counseling help with that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21:17 poster here. The way my family members put it, they'll never know for sure if their respective kids would have won the ED lottery without the private counselor's help, but she definitely supplied them with some extra tickets they wouldn't otherwise have had. $250/hour (niece went this route), $9000 unlimited (nephew went this route, and it's really good that he did because he completed 28 applications before hearing from his ED school and having to withdraw/not submit the other 27) for the 2022-23 school year.

If you are getting good, targeted guidance, you don't need to apply to 28 schools. That's nuts.

Agreed it wasn’t necessary, but that’s my nephew’s personality (super driven and wanted to go all out). According to my sis, it was his call - the counselor was just being accommodating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who the hell needs a counselor to curate a list?

You need one just to be on a level playing field because everyone else is.

[Anonymous]

Who the hell needs a counselor to curate a list? You need one just to be on a level playing field because everyone else is.

Ummm, no, "everyone" isn't spending thousands of dollars on a private counselor to draft a college list. And even in this slightly challenging climate to select reaches/targets/likelies, I don't know any kid doing 28 applications. Even submitting 20 apps, which is the Common App limit, is more work than most kids want to or need to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We hired one for DS. It cost about 2500. It did force him to be disciplined. I feel like the school choices were random but I think that was DS’s fault as he was not emotionally prepared to make decisions. He is in at 8 and deferred at 3. I think that was predictable based on stats.

Hired a different one for DD20. Hers was $500 an hour, spent close to $20k. They really clicked but not worth the $$. Private counselor and school counselor came up with basically the same list. Her essay was decent but spent a ton of time online with the counselor brainstorming. She was going for higher ranked schools than DS. Got into 7 of 9.

I think they can be good for helping with the list (neither of ours were great for that), getting the CA essay done early, helping with/encouraging time management, and keeping expectations real (like not applying to all reaches).

You could easily do this process without, but it does help.

Not trying to be snarky, but why do people need to hire a college counselor to come up with a list of colleges to apply to? College info is easily accessible, and kids obviously know what their preferences are as far as location/size/ greek life, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21:17 poster here. The way my family members put it, they'll never know for sure if their respective kids would have won the ED lottery without the private counselor's help, but she definitely supplied them with some extra tickets they wouldn't otherwise have had. $250/hour (niece went this route), $9000 unlimited (nephew went this route, and it's really good that he did because he completed 28 applications before hearing from his ED school and having to withdraw/not submit the other 27) for the 2022-23 school year.

If you are getting good, targeted guidance, you don't need to apply to 28 schools. That's nuts.

Agreed it wasn’t necessary, but that’s my nephew’s personality (super driven and wanted to go all out). According to my sis, it was his call - the counselor was just being accommodating.

Oh, and just to reiterate - he wrote the supplemental essays for that many schools, but of course did NOT submit the vast majority of the applications before he heard from UChicago. He simply wanted to be ultra-prepared in case he received negative news from them. My sis had no problem with this since she had paid an unlimited package fee anyway.