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/