Reply to Are Private Counselors a Bad Idea?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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