Sara Harberson Application Nation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree her marketing is slick and almost makes one skeptical to her service. I suggest forking over the $12 to read her book and see if it resonates with you.

One of the better things about her service is that she sees in fairly strong detail what happens to a large number of competitive kids each year and can adjust her advice accordingly. Years ago when CC was flourishing I was able to get really good data just from reading the results threads. Unfortunately the kids moved onto Reddit, and the datapoints there aren't nearly as plentiful. I still vaguely know the bar for some schools, but not nearly as well as I did back then.

What I suspect she knows from her volume of students is the minimums (scores, grades, rigor) needed for recruited athletes - which would give an idea even for non-athletes of whether they’d likely be competitive or not as a threshold matter at a school. I’d love to collect that data somewhere. New thread to see what we can assemble?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone think her stuff is helpful for private school kids? No APs, no rank etc…

Curious if any private school parents have used her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone think her stuff is helpful for private school kids? No APs, no rank etc…

Curious if any private school parents have used her.

I think she understands the nuances of being a public school/specialized public school/private school applicants pretty well. I think her advice is very good at a broad level. But you cannot accept it as the bible. You have to process it and apply what fits your child the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone a member of her Application Nation 202x private Facebook groups? Is it worth it to join? How is the advice she provides in the private Facebook groups?

Have you used any of her exclusive offers? How much were her exclusive offers?

She is excellent. You would benefit by her book, or her FB group - even just those two things. Extras are great too, I purchased some. But even the book and the basic FB group are so beneficial.

[Anonymous]

Sara Harberson is the Kim Kardashian of college counsellors.

We tried in past years but decided she is not for us

1. To get any useful information, you need to put your entire child's information out on Facebook. Yes it is private group, but you have a thousand people in that group. You are literally putting your common app on Facebook. Courses, extracurriculars, test scores, colleges lists, interests and other personal info on Facebook.

2. She is very much focused on SLAC's. Found she is more for art/literature/music inclined students. She is shockingly misinformed about some STEM programs.

3. You are going to waste a huge amount of time just trying to get a tiny bit of info due to the nature of how AN was structured. What took us a 15 minute or 30 minute call with a consultant to get personalized feedback would involve posting all the info and wait for very general advice as they do not have the full context in a single Facebook post. Just a time suck that we do not need during a busy time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sara Harberson is the Kim Kardashian of college counsellors.

We tried in past years but decided she is not for us

1. To get any useful information, you need to put your entire child's information out on Facebook. Yes it is private group, but you have a thousand people in that group. You are literally putting your common app on Facebook. Courses, extracurriculars, test scores, colleges lists, interests and other personal info on Facebook.

2. She is very much focused on SLAC's. Found she is more for art/literature/music inclined students. She is shockingly misinformed about some STEM programs.

3. You are going to waste a huge amount of time just trying to get a tiny bit of info due to the nature of how AN was structured. What took us a 15 minute or 30 minute call with a consultant to get personalized feedback would involve posting all the info and wait for very general advice as they do not have the full context in a single Facebook post. Just a time suck that we do not need during a busy time.

This is bit of a drawback. Found out there were parents from DC's school [no one acknowledged the other] but I was immediately wary of putting out any personal information on the page.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
We tried in past years but decided she is n
3. You are going to waste a huge amount of time just trying to get a tiny bit of info due to the nature of how AN was structured. What took us a 15 minute or 30 minute call with a consultant to get personalized feedback would involve posting all the info and wait for very general advice as they do not have the full context in a single Facebook post. Just a time suck that we do not need during a busy time.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is bit of a drawback. Found out there were parents from DC's school [no one acknowledged the other] but I was immediately wary of putting out any personal information on the page.

This "drawback" should hardly be surprising, given how much less her services are compared to a purely private service.

Obviously you have to decide whether it's worth the cost/benefit trade-off.

[Anonymous]

Question for those using the service.. We have a situation where DC failed a subject in the first semester and has since moved down to a lower-level course. We didn't have a choice in the matter and the school has reported that to all schools. We need to write a letter to to the schools informing them about it. Will SH help with questions like this or is it specific to admissions and college selection only?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for those using the service.. We have a situation where DC failed a subject in the first semester and has since moved down to a lower-level course. We didn't have a choice in the matter and the school has reported that to all schools. We need to write a letter to to the schools informing them about it. Will SH help with questions like this or is it specific to admissions and college selection only?

What other choice would you have had with the f?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question for those using the service.. We have a situation where DC failed a subject in the first semester and has since moved down to a lower-level course. We didn't have a choice in the matter and the school has reported that to all schools. We need to write a letter to to the schools informing them about it. Will SH help with questions like this or is it specific to admissions and college selection only?

What other choice would you have had with the f?

None really, but mentioned that because apparently colleges expect you to let them know of your intent to change and some of them won't 'approve' the change or something along those lines.. before someone else brings it up..Too late for that discussion RN for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for those using the service.. We have a situation where DC failed a subject in the first semester and has since moved down to a lower-level course. We didn't have a choice in the matter and the school has reported that to all schools. We need to write a letter to to the schools informing them about it. Will SH help with questions like this or is it specific to admissions and college selection only?

Yes, she would give advice to guide you but as been said before, you'd have to share that info with the 1,000 people in the the group. And you can't post anonymously.

[Anonymous]

If someone has a specific essay question (topic, etc), they have to post that for everyone to see?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for those using the service.. We have a situation where DC failed a subject in the first semester and has since moved down to a lower-level course. We didn't have a choice in the matter and the school has reported that to all schools. We need to write a letter to to the schools informing them about it. Will SH help with questions like this or is it specific to admissions and college selection only?

As I wrote earlier, these kinds of questions highlight the problem with SH FB group.

To answer your question, they need to know the full context to respond appropriately. So you have to post all your course work, grades because need to see if there is a pattern, find level of rigor at your HS, what extracurriculars were there that might mitigate/help, major -because if course is tied to major that is even bigger problem, etc. You need to provide all this every time you have a question. The response even then would be fairly generic.

Or you could take any reasonable admissions consultant, ask for half hour or one hour consultation and by the end they would have come up with a plan and drafted the letter for you.

SH Facebook group is just a huge privacy risk. I can think of half a dozen ways to collect and misuse that kind of data. You are posting your kids real last name, first name, courses, extracurriculars, awards, any issues, everything is out there for anyone to collect that data.

At that time we knew two families from our school were on SH facebook site. We knew everything about those kids, schools they have shortlisted, what their top preference is, major, what kind of essays they are going to write, etc. It seemed unreal that parents would share that kind of info there.

[Anonymous]

Much better off hiring a private college counselor, even if on an hourly basis.