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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m quite overwhelmed by this process, but feel that $5-10k might be better spent in my kids college fund than for a consultant. On the other hand, we need some advice…

Thoughts?[/quote]

I think if you easily have the $10-15K to spare and want someone outside you/your partner to guide your kid through the process (including doing all the essay editing/proofing and nagging to get stuff done on time), it's fine. It's like flying business instead of economy. But from friends who've gone through the process and done it, they do tend to end up where you'd expect in terms of results. So it won't get you into a top 20 if you weren't competitive to begin with. But it can be a much more pleasant process!

My sister has high anxiety so it functioned more as a family therapist and reminder-in-chief than changing the end result. She also had a lot of $$ to spare![/quote]

The flying analogy is apt. Whether that extra $ is worth it depends entirely on your budget and your perspective. Do you "need" it? No. You'll get to the destination either way.[/quote]

Agreed!  But it definately takes the stress off the parent---it provides an outside source to help set reasonable deadlines and stick to them.  The best part of our CC was them helping generate the list of possible colleges.  My kid ultimately ended up deciding between 2 targets and the top safety.  I likely never would have found the Safety and perhaps not the target that my kid is now attending.  SO a good CC will send you out to tour local schools, but to do a variety of sizes, private vs public, urban vs rural vs suburban, etc.   Once you begin to decide what matters then they help pull together a list with your criteria.

For example: I ran the entire college process for first kid (1220/3.5UW/noAP--ended up choosing between 2 schools ranked in the 80s both with 35% of tuition as a merit award), so I know how to run the process. 
With 2nd kid, they were aiming higher.  But all for schools 2-3K miles from us.  kid wanted 5-8K undergrad, top academics important (doesn't care about sports at all), engineering, wanted schools where you can easily change majors/add minors and are not direct Admit for everything.  So the CC was great at finding those schools for us.  We learned there are a lot of great STEM schools in the 30-70 range that are not "direct admit"---you can select any major you want except Nursing (that is typically direct admit and not what my kid wanted).  Sure, I could have done the research and found most of them, but the hidden gem of a Safety (ranked in the 60s) was a great fit for my kid.  So much that they considered it with the top 2 targets as well in to April.  
After that, the CC was there to manage my procrastinator kid's time.  Final drafts of all essays and applications were done by mid October so they could review them and hit submit (together with the counselor on Zoom) at least 7 days before the Nov 1 deadlines (or Nov 15 for a few).  That way, by Nov 1, all that was left was a few supplemtnatls for 2 RD applications that they'd pull the trigger on (no EA) if the ED was not Accepted.  Nov and Dec were so much more enjoyable than many of our friends households.  That alone makes it worth the $4k IMO
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