Are Private Counselors a Bad Idea?

[Anonymous]

^ my kid did his best work cranking out essays the two weeks of winter break. He played a fall sport and had a rigorous course load.

He cleaned up RD and is at an Ivy. It was like Santa’s workshop. lol

[Anonymous]

Not sure where most people on this thread live or send their kids to school, but at our "W" school the college counselor does very little. They meet with kids and parents junior year if you schedule an appointment and throw a bunch of information at you without knowing your child. The college counselor made the most ridiculous recommendations for my child that had no basis in any knowledge of my child. Of course this person is tasked with working with about 500 students so that's an issue. They also don't review of provide guidance on college essays. If your child is in public school and want someone to help guide your child through the college application process you need to hire a private counselor. Lastly, I would not pay $10K or more for a counselor. There are many very good counselors who charge far less-$3-6K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I personally know 4 moms turned private college coach or college essay tutor. It is a joke. I know as much as they do from having a couple kids apply to college. People pay them $10,000 for their services. It is like the new interior decorator side gig for rich SAHMs. Sure, they get certified by an online class or something. Not one of them have ever worked in a college admissions office or even a high school college counseling office. They think because Larla got into Cornell they are experts.

+1000

This is the main problem. Many parents whose kid got admission to T10 think they are qualified to be college counselors. They know how much money can be made of this and many start doing this. Flexible schedules and hourly pay that match physicians' pay!

Physicians have to spend 10+ years training 60+ hours a week to get there. A parent who spends a few months browsing through websites can make the same pay.

[Anonymous]

I work in this industry and like with everything, you need to sort through who is good.

There are plenty of SAHM types who only counsel a couple kids a year and act like it is their big career.

Look for people who actually worked in admissions offices and have a track record. I did and I also worked at a large firm with backing from private equity and then started my own firm.

I have helped plenty of private school clients, they may go to a school where there are plenty of legacies and huge donors and don't get the same attention from their school's college counseling office. There will inevitably be tension between the school and an independent counselor since the school bristles at having any outside interference so it is better for the client to not tell the school.

Many of these clients have gone on to top programs, including Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure where most people on this thread live or send their kids to school, but at our "W" school the college counselor does very little. They meet with kids and parents junior year if you schedule an appointment and throw a bunch of information at you without knowing your child. The college counselor made the most ridiculous recommendations for my child that had no basis in any knowledge of my child. Of course this person is tasked with working with about 500 students so that's an issue. They also don't review of provide guidance on college essays. If your child is in public school and want someone to help guide your child through the college application process you need to hire a private counselor. Lastly, I would not pay $10K or more for a counselor. There are many very good counselors who charge far less-$3-6K.

100% if my kid was in public school I would be hiring a counselor. In our private school the college counselors have 15-20 kids each, they meet regularly with both kids and parents, and there’s a separate essay coach. I think private counselors are unnecessary and potentially get in the way if you’re in an independent private with a high quality college counseling team. But in public school where counselors have 500 kids, I would definitely be hiring one. It’s really just about whether the school’s counseling team is functionally providing the same services as a private counselor or not.

[Anonymous]

Our middle of the road private does not start anything college related until January of junior year. If you haven't had a kid go off to college yet and you aren't obsessed / DCUM level about this stuff - you may have missed the boat on a lot of things such as class selections etc...

Having a consultation or two with a private counselor before 9th grade to do a brain dump from 30,000 feet to discuss some of these big picture things you need to know sooner is a good idea in my opinion. If you have the luxury of money. If not, there is a lot of free online info. But, it's not even on the radar for most oldest and only kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ my kid did his best work cranking out essays the two weeks of winter break. He played a fall sport and had a rigorous course load.

He cleaned up RD and is at an Ivy. It was like Santa’s workshop. lol

It's great that worked for your kid but I know a lot of kids who had the opposite experience - got time crunched over winter break and turned in crap or in some cases, didn't apply to some schools because they ran out of time.

I'm not sure essays matter all that much, though. Your kid was likely headed to an Ivy regardless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure where most people on this thread live or send their kids to school, but at our "W" school the college counselor does very little. They meet with kids and parents junior year if you schedule an appointment and throw a bunch of information at you without knowing your child. The college counselor made the most ridiculous recommendations for my child that had no basis in any knowledge of my child. Of course this person is tasked with working with about 500 students so that's an issue. They also don't review of provide guidance on college essays. If your child is in public school and want someone to help guide your child through the college application process you need to hire a private counselor. Lastly, I would not pay $10K or more for a counselor. There are many very good counselors who charge far less-$3-6K.

100% if my kid was in public school I would be hiring a counselor. In our private school the college counselors have 15-20 kids each, they meet regularly with both kids and parents, and there’s a separate essay coach. I think private counselors are unnecessary and potentially get in the way if you’re in an independent private with a high quality college counseling team. But in public school where counselors have 500 kids, I would definitely be hiring one. It’s really just about whether the school’s counseling team is functionally providing the same services as a private counselor or not.

In most private schools, each counselor has ~30-40 kids. They still can't get to fine details.

15-20 kids must be an elite school. Only a few of this kind in the country. Rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure where most people on this thread live or send their kids to school, but at our "W" school the college counselor does very little. They meet with kids and parents junior year if you schedule an appointment and throw a bunch of information at you without knowing your child. The college counselor made the most ridiculous recommendations for my child that had no basis in any knowledge of my child. Of course this person is tasked with working with about 500 students so that's an issue. They also don't review of provide guidance on college essays. If your child is in public school and want someone to help guide your child through the college application process you need to hire a private counselor. Lastly, I would not pay $10K or more for a counselor. There are many very good counselors who charge far less-$3-6K.

100% if my kid was in public school I would be hiring a counselor. In our private school the college counselors have 15-20 kids each, they meet regularly with both kids and parents, and there’s a separate essay coach. I think private counselors are unnecessary and potentially get in the way if you’re in an independent private with a high quality college counseling team. But in public school where counselors have 500 kids, I would definitely be hiring one. It’s really just about whether the school’s counseling team is functionally providing the same services as a private counselor or not.

In most private schools, each counselor has ~30-40 kids. They still can't get to fine details.

15-20 kids must be an elite school. Only a few of this kind in the country. Rare.

Yeah, my kids public is 400 kids per counselor. Also the counselors come and go. You assume they are only there to file papers on time (and hope they even do that).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Speaking as a college admissions consultant, the reason why we get a bad rap is because in the 2010s, the only credentialing programs for independents were the same ones that credentialed high school college counselors. So the perception that we were redundant and only for families who needed extra help the high school counselor couldn't provide was largely true.

Since then, however, the field has matured and evolved a lot. In many ways that school counselors aren't aware of. In my practice, we use admissions rubrics from highly selective college admissions offices that we've combined with proprietary data we gathered from colleges, the CollegeBoard, our partnerships with local high school counselors, and our own clientele dating back 16 years. It allows us to run gap analyses on students so services are targeted and pragmatic, and additive rather than redundant, wasteful, or off-target.

The admissions rubrics we used were gathered from active involvement in NACAC over more than a decade—and won't be found by parents searching online. Furthermore, the most valuable insights we gained about below-average SAT/ACT patterns that can still win admission at various colleges were drawn from the period before test-optional policies became widespread. The pre-test optional score thresholds still hold true in today's test-optional environment and aid in the decision to report SAT/ACT scores or withhold them. But someone trying to draw the same conclusions today would have an extremely difficult time sorting through current data given the diversity of testing policies across colleges.

Beware the bigger firms that are driven by sales. If you look on Yelp and Google Business Reviews, you can find college consultants who consult to the size of the gap that's actually necessary and helpful. You may have to search for consultants in other cities, as everyone works virtually now. But we're out there.

The rubric analysis is what I’d pay for.

Did my own work on that - spending months on podcasts, websites, webinars and CDS along with old IEC reports to put together summaries for 6 super reach schools. My kid was admitted to 3 of the 6 and WL at 1.

How would we contact you? Need help again in 3 years!

Thank you and that’s a really great outcome of landing 50% of the reach schools! Respect. It’s no small feat!

I’m glad you found the rubric approach valuable. If you’d like to connect in a few years, I'm happy to help: https://www.collegezoom.com

-David

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am of 2 minds here. We hired a former Ivy AO summer before senior year. It was very expensive (10k). She did push DC to ED at a target and I think that is par for the course with these counselors - they want to claim success. If you go that route, be prepared to stand your ground. I thought she was great with selecting activities and descriptions for the Common App and the endless "Why Us" essays - she seemed to have a very good handle on the various institutional prios and really pushed DC to get very specific (important IMO). I did not love her advice on the Common essay and thought the end result was borderline cheesy. The best part for sure was having that third party intermediary with a kid who has a tendency towards procrastination. DH and I did zero nagging and there was no negative impact on family dynamics - we got to be the cheerleaders while she was the "bad guy" who nagged about deadlines. DC said he didn't think he would have done as well in the process if it wasn't for her, because he likely would have wound up cranking out dozens of essays over Xmas break and not giving enough thought to them. That said, I think the end result would have been the same. Probably wasn't worth $10k but it was worth something. It really comes down to your expectations for the counselor and how much that $10k means to you.

My kid is younger (rising 11th) but this is where I am with DC's private counselor. DC is at a private school but from everything we have seen and heard, the college counseling there is lackluster and it starts very late IMO, so we decided to hire our own. Things I like so far:

Counselor (experience in college admissions, not a former SAHM) connects well with DC and DC is much more apt to listen to him than to us. I think they have given good advice on courses, recognizing where DC sits academically and nudging a bit without pressing for DC to be overloaded.
They are working on essay writing and resume writing, in addition to discussing the kinds of colleges DC might be interested in. I like the way DC is being eased into the process and I think there is value to the assignments they're doing now.
I anticipate that they will do a good job of keeping DC organized and on track as the process intensifies.
I appreciate having someone who acts as an intermediary. I have a tendency to nag and I could see the process being unpleasant for all of us. I'm hoping this will reduce everyone's stress even if the outcome is the same. It's like the cost of a year of therapy, and to me that is worth something.
DC has been surprisingly enthusiastic about the counselor and their meetings, despite not wanting to talk about college much with us (parents).

I haven't loved some of the suggestions, but we have pushed back on what we don't think makes sense for our kid or what kid is simply not interested in. We have also been clear from the beginning with the counselor about why we hired them--it is not to get DC into college, it's to help DC and the rest of us with this process, potentially find schools to consider that might not have been on our radar, and to make the process easier on DC especially.

DC's school hasn't started its own college counseling yet and won't for awhile but I am not sure if we will tell the counselor there we've hired someone privately. I do worry a bit about how they would take that and whether it would be offensive to them.

[Anonymous]

It was helpful for us.
My son was not organized, despite being a very bright young man. 1580 SAT one seating and 3.9/4 UW.

The essay reviewer alone was worth the cost. It helped that the counselor was previously at two different Ivy admissions office.

He got in 3 Ivy’s + Stanford.

[Anonymous]

The rubric analysis is what I’d pay for.

Did my own work on that - spending months on podcasts, websites, webinars and CDS along with old IEC reports to put together summaries for 6 super reach schools. My kid was admitted to 3 of the 6 and WL at 1.

How would we contact you? Need help again in 3 years!

Thank you and that’s a really great outcome of landing 50% of the reach schools! Respect. It’s no small feat!

I’m glad you found the rubric approach valuable. If you’d like to connect in a few years, I'm happy to help: https://www.collegezoom.com

-David

Where did you find old IEC reports?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was helpful for us.
My son was not organized, despite being a very bright young man. 1580 SAT one seating and 3.9/4 UW.

The essay reviewer alone was worth the cost. It helped that the counselor was previously at two different Ivy admissions office.

He got in 3 Ivy’s + Stanford.

Similar situation here. My son had a private counselor for 3 years. He aced the SAT and ACT in one seating, but GPA was just 3.7/4 UW. Counselor helped with EC ideas and organizing. DS is lazy. Typical smart kid but lazy. The structured program helped him focus.

He is now at Yale.

[Anonymous]

Listened to the podcast OP referenced and sounds like elitism. I don’t understand DCUM’s affinity for that particular podcast. If my kids at a public I’m hiring a private counselor.