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[quote=Anonymous]We hired on that was recommended by my spouse's colleague.  We didn't find it all that helpful.  The child we hired it for is pretty self-directed, but gets really irritated when we try to give suggestions or manage their time, so we hoped a college counselor could be intermediary.  Kid didn't really use the counselor very much.  Counselor gave a bunch of suggestions for "target" or safety schools that we didn't think we very specific for our kid, and didn't really have a lot of knowledge that we lacked or couldn't easily get on the internet (e.g., we had a specific question about which schools have good CS programs that are not direct admit, and they really didn't know).  Counselor seemed to think a big part of the job was managing our anxiety and kid's anxiety, but we really didn't need a counselor for that -- they spent a lot of time saying that everyone finds a good fit, lots of good schools out there, etc., etc., which just made me think "then why are we paying you?"

Counselor did review the essays before they went out, but I don't know how much guidance they gave -- my kid declined to let me see their essays and I don't even know what they were about.  Highly doubt my kid took much direction from the counselor.  My spouse writes/edits for a living and probably could have done a much better job editing, but no way my child would have let them do that.
  
Anyway, my kid got in ED at their first choice.

We had also hired a by-the-hour SAT tutor to spend a few hours with my kid after their first SAT test to focus just on the questions they missed -- it turned out they were all math questions from the topics that were skipped during the pandemic, and neither my kid nor we had realized that the teacher had skipped so much material.  So that was money well spent, if only because the kid learned the actual math they should have learned.  The score went up about 50 points the second time around, so not a huge jump but maybe made a difference at that level.

My next kid is very NOT self directed, so we may want to find someone that is not me to put them on a strict schedule  -- it would be worth paying someone just to avoid those fights.  [/quote]

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