"The Game" podcast

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Every podcast/ counselor type out there has their own angle to differentiate themselves from the masses of college counselors. They have to say something to instill fear in you to hire them. There is clearly no one way or they would all be saying the same thing, it's not like one has special knowledge that none of the others have. Their guess is good as mine. So, I listen and learn and then let my kid be themself and wherever that fits, it fits. No curating or pretending, just write down what you did. If it doesn't help, fine. But if a college turns you down because you played a sport yet didn't win a gold medal, then that's not the type of college worth going to. Our kids are not just productivity machine pawns in this economic system, to become another stat in the lonliness epidemic. They are humans who need to keep their bodies and minds healthy in addition to contributing to society.


Agree, but they definitely know more than the average parent from their volume. Assuming they have really elite candidates applying to the most selective schools, they know what works at certain schools and what doesn’t work at other schools. That’s really the only reason to pay for one of these counselors.

I hired a counselor for my eldest child who is subpar in some ways, but was helpful in framing what was valuable to each school and what to highlight for each school - based on recent experience.


They are not doing a deep dive analysis of what worked etc and correlating the results to past essays and the overall application.

The problem is that each counselor has 20-40 kids applying, and it is not like a parent who knows intimately about what that particular child wrote to a specific college. These CC know in a rough way Penn likes x, y, z, so they get their students to write about these. Out of 20, 1 or 2 gets admitted. To get an idea they need to look at both applications that were rejected and applications that were accepted. If 40 kids applied to 15 colleges, that is 600 applications to do analysis of what worked. They are not doing that.

They want you to believe that, though.

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Every podcast/ counselor type out there has their own angle to differentiate themselves from the masses of college counselors. They have to say something to instill fear in you to hire them. There is clearly no one way or they would all be saying the same thing, it's not like one has special knowledge that none of the others have. Their guess is good as mine. So, I listen and learn and then let my kid be themself and wherever that fits, it fits. No curating or pretending, just write down what you did. If it doesn't help, fine. But if a college turns you down because you played a sport yet didn't win a gold medal, then that's not the type of college worth going to. Our kids are not just productivity machine pawns in this economic system, to become another stat in the lonliness epidemic. They are humans who need to keep their bodies and minds healthy in addition to contributing to society.


Agree, but they definitely know more than the average parent from their volume. Assuming they have really elite candidates applying to the most selective schools, they know what works at certain schools and what doesn’t work at other schools. That’s really the only reason to pay for one of these counselors.

I hired a counselor for my eldest child who is subpar in some ways, but was helpful in framing what was valuable to each school and what to highlight for each school - based on recent experience.


They are not doing a deep dive analysis of what worked etc and correlating the results to past essays and the overall application.

The problem is that each counselor has 20-40 kids applying, and it is not like a parent who knows intimately about what that particular child wrote to a specific college. These CC know in a rough way Penn likes x, y, z, so they get their students to write about these. Out of 20, 1 or 2 gets admitted. To get an idea they need to look at both applications that were rejected and applications that were accepted. If 40 kids applied to 15 colleges, that is 600 applications to do analysis of what worked. They are not doing that.

They want you to believe that, though.



agree most don't do this (I would ask your ocunselor to do it though - now with AI, its pretty easy).

One of the things I found helpful was to sit with my kids and ask about kids in older grades from their private school that did get in (or didn't) to HYPSM/private T20. You can get valuable info that can help contextualize your Naviance or SCOIR.

Often the teens know who has the (1) national awards; (2) "Tier 1" ECs; (3) outside of school projects/respectable internships; (4) niche academic area as evidenced by an independ research project with an in school advisor (these research kids often conduct assembly presentations about their final project at this high school or if published in Adroit or some other publication, the school newspaper reports on that achievement). Anyway, my point is that the high school itself is a good source for this information—who gets in from your school (to certain T20/HYPSM) and why.

It ended up being true for my kid (who had national-level awards in a niche area; the kid was admitted to the exact same schools as a graduate the year above, who had very similar awards had been admitted - to the exclusion of certain other "higher stat" kids).
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