Senior Parents: if you hired a private college counselor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Melanie Drake at Summit Solutions
[e-mail]

She’s down-to-earth, practical, easy to work with. Did the college counseling at a fancy STL prep school, now works on her own. Clients on the coasts but lives in rural midwest so not as expensive as DMV-based advisors. Really nice mix of expertise and value.

Thx!

Where did your kid end up committing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All essays are written by DC only, and effectively written.

Have access to following:

College Counsellor: pretty useless

Ex AO form an Ivy (30K for their services):
- Overall narrative, common app story, language/flow for activities and the essay
- College essays (for top 10 filing) - review, catching red flags, additional eyes
- Completing and filing support for specific colleges
- Secret insights about respective process
- Guide / coach and provide motivation to DC during this stressful process

Partner with a Strategy/MBB firm:
- Research and analysis on all college / Univ - overall strategic approach
- Prioritization - which college to drop, file and keep as backup etc
- Structuring the narrative along with the ex AO
- Structure essays, ECs and story part
- Program manage the entire process
- Use his network to get internship and LOR
- Fund and bank roll the entire process

Can you share their info?

[Anonymous]

Bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Melanie Drake at Summit Solutions
[e-mail]

She’s down-to-earth, practical, easy to work with. Did the college counseling at a fancy STL prep school, now works on her own. Clients on the coasts but lives in rural midwest so not as expensive as DMV-based advisors. Really nice mix of expertise and value.

Thx!

Where did your kid end up committing?

PP - one of the more selective SLACs. (People here seem to like it if they like SLACs lol.) Had a bunch of good options. The process is always a little crazy-making, but a good counselor can be grounding. Just make sure personality is a fit, and that you and DC both like them. Otherwise it’s just introducing yet another variable into the fray. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Saw this linked by YouTube elsewhere.
Any recs?

https://collegemeister.com/

[Anonymous]

Are any of these just for essay editing/coaching?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did it work out for your kid so far, to date, in ED, or REA/EA? What schools/results?
If non-DMV, can you list state?

If rejected or deferred, has your counselors advice, been helpful, comprehensive and specific as your kid enters the RD process? What types of suggestions have they made and what types of schools did they add to your kid’s list?

If you have to do it all over again, would you hire that firm or company?

Not a college counselor but someone to help with reading essays and giving feedback. Tried 2-one very expensive one ($300 per hour) and another a Yale grad in English ($50 per hour). The Yale grad was so much better. The expensive one kept (suspiciously) nitpicking. Would pick on technical minutia. The Yale grad read holistically and for flow and emotion. Spent close to $1200 on expensive one and then let DC work only with the Yale grad. DC in at first choice ED>

Can you share grad student info? Wyzant link?

[Anonymous]

Not this year but previous years. 3 Kids 3 "lower tier" Ivies. We will take it.

[Anonymous]

OP- is it time issue, or is it you don't think you can do it yourself?

I just want to add that I felt like this was something I should do---FOMO... because everyone around me was doing it and talking about their private CC--even my boss and my best friend.

In the end, I decided against it. My husband and I and son--already had our own list. We also had the huge Princeton review guide of the 'best 388 colleges'. We did a lot of research.

He wrote his essay in English class May of Jr year. I did brainstorm topics with him. That essay he revised and re-drafted and got input from me and my husband --until around Sept/Oct . Supplemental essay/?s came easier. He just expanded on his hobbies and things from common app. I advised him to just 'be himself'. Don't think about 'crafting some phony narrative'.

He got into an Ivy, Hopkins, very selective SLAC, all in-state schools and 2 T20 privates. He did better than kids with similar stats/also no hooks who did hire the expensive counselors.

I throw that out there because I think there is the problem with stripping too much of a kid's own identity out of the applications when you use basically a stranger to help package your kid. I think then they all sound alike.

Just my 2 cents. But don't get caught up in the hype.

[Anonymous]

Bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one else??

My friend hired someone for her 11th grader because both parents work long hours and prefer to outsource this to reduce conflict in the home.
My other friend hired someone just to help with essays for her 12th grader. Student in question has received top tier early action college acceptances so far.
Neither myself nor any of my other friends hired college counselors, but we all hired tutors.

This question is often asked on DCUM, but in general people will steer you away, explaining it's not worth the money. I think if you really want to maximize a college counselor, you need to hire one to plot high school trajectory, starting in 9th grade (so hire in 8th grade when it's time to choose courses). I considered this for my younger kid, but ultimately I think we'll go without, just like for the first kid.

If we were to do over again, then I might've hired someone simply to explain trajectory to our kids. In some ways, the arc of classes was set. One was in higher level STEM, the other wasn't. That wasn't going to change. But simply explaining the importance of grades over time might have been helpful to the one that wasn't. While they ended up fine, they were just out of reach of their preferred school and that wasn't going to change as the GPA was slightly too low for it (even if the test score was stupendous).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How did it work out for your kid so far, to date, in ED, or REA/EA? What schools/results?
If non-DMV, can you list state?

If rejected or deferred, has your counselors advice, been helpful, comprehensive and specific as your kid enters the RD process? What types of suggestions have they made and what types of schools did they add to your kid’s list?

If you have to do it all over again, would you hire that firm or company?

Yes, would do it again because they worked w/ my kids on deadlines and saved our relationship because I didn't need to nag them.

One got in ED was happy as a clam (this round).

The other was applying during covid, first round of test optional and got screwed. 36 ACT (because they took it summer between 10th/11th) and because so many got in TO they got into targets (UMD for example) that they didn't really want to go to but we made them apply. Reaches ended up WL and then rejected. They ended up at a safety with lots of merit, graduated in 3 years (lots of APs) and is now using all the money we had saved in their 529 for grad school.

It all worked out, but for that year or so I was beyond furious

[Anonymous]

To be honest, in hindsight I wish we would have saved the cost we paid and put it towards college's many costs. We aren't sure how to quantify the ROI of the support, it gave her some confidence during but some advice was counter to our own which ended up prevailing. Our DD got into a college that was mid-way down her list on RD, but I think will be a good fit ultimately. But it's likely nothing I think she could have gotten anyway without the additional (costly) support!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did it work out for your kid so far, to date, in ED, or REA/EA? What schools/results?
If non-DMV, can you list state?

If rejected or deferred, has your counselors advice, been helpful, comprehensive and specific as your kid enters the RD process? What types of suggestions have they made and what types of schools did they add to your kid’s list?

If you have to do it all over again, would you hire that firm or company?

Yes, would do it again because they worked w/ my kids on deadlines and saved our relationship because I didn't need to nag them.

One got in ED was happy as a clam (this round).

The other was applying during covid, first round of test optional and got screwed. 36 ACT (because they took it summer between 10th/11th) and because so many got in TO they got into targets (UMD for example) that they didn't really want to go to but we made them apply. Reaches ended up WL and then rejected. They ended up at a safety with lots of merit, graduated in 3 years (lots of APs) and is now using all the money we had saved in their 529 for grad school.

It all worked out, but for that year or so I was beyond furious

Your kid should have transferred!!
Sounds like the bitterness is still there….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Me again. Searching.

Anyone hear of Sierra?
https://sierraadmissions.com/


Any feedback???

I read about this company. Anyone have personal experience?
It’s about $20k.