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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I know this question has probably been asked many times before, but I wanted to reach out specifically to parents whose kids were admitted to a top 25 schools, either in the most recent admissions cycle or in the past few years.

Which college consultant (if any) did you use, and how was your experience?

Please, no snark , just hoping for genuine, firsthand recommendations or feedback from those who have real information to share.

Thanks in advance!
[/quote]

Used an essay consultant to protect parent-child relationship. DC was rejected REA from HYPS. No contact with essay coach after Nov 15 (was in contract, but we did not realize that we could need someone to talk to if rejected REA) so I had to step in to provide my advice to DC who decided to follow most of my advice, but not all. Admitted to multiple HYPSM RD. As I looked over my notes from podcasts, etc. I found that the consultant had not known what each college looks for. E.g., Yale does not care about your career aspirations. Most importantly, DC did not understand that essays needed “reflection” and I blame the coach 100% for this. To add insult to injury, after RD decisions were released, coach asked to share DC essay that had been worked on separately for something else, but used for college apps. Ummm, no way — the essay help the coach had provided was not worth it and we did not want him to sell his services based on DC’s results after he just made sure DC stuck to a schedule. This was a reputed coach that we paid a ton of money for so be careful — really, really careful. Once you sign a contract, you might find that they have zero accountability.

If I had to do it again, and our family had just regular amount of stress, I’d listen to DC and myself — no consultant required.[/quote]

Great points.

This was our experience for our first child w/a private counselor/essay coach. After being deferred early decision from T10, we went at it alone and had much better T25 and Ivy results.

The problem is a lot of these consultants overpromise and underdeliver - probably because they take on too many clients in the fall and they really cannot service that many. I know a new consultant with 43 clients. It’s her second year. There is no way she can individually handle that flow in a high-quality way. There is a lack of customization and a lack of systemization of the application process. In some ways, doing a 1 week summer workshop with one of these bigger shops to give you an overview of how to research and frame your supp essays is all you need.

Then maybe someone to do final application review reviews before you submit.

The personal essay is its own beast and the best thing to do is to have your kid read narrative style essays in junior year. They need to become familiar with what these essays look like. It is not an English essay. It is not a resume essay. It is a story. It is your brand.

Second child had much better results than first child (though weaker academically) and was a TO applicant. We read everything here and elsewhere; listened to all the podcasts, created notes on what every school looked for and did formal application reviews after the top drafts were ready.

My top advice is to use this site for its Search function. No one is going to give you a shortcut. You have to do the research yourself.

There’s a great post from this winter called “lessons learned”. Search for it - a lot of great tips in there if this is your first rodeo.[/quote]

Agree, agree, agree. 
If aiming high (private T20), make detailed research notes on what each school looks for. Do the research yourself. Start early - it takes time (make a new Google doc for each school with hyperlinks). Help your kids with this research.

We found that private college counseling firms similarly didn't know how important certain essays were for which school: (e.g., never talk about Stanford /why Stanford in the Stanford roommate essay - only talk about yourself - its a why me essay not why me at Stanford)or that Brown is looking to see how you've ALREADY taken that intellectual initiative /love of learning and you have ample evidence sprinkled throughout with very wide (not narrow) academic interests). And how Kindness, joy, happiness and enthusiasm are particularly valued at certain T20.....[/quote]

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