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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DC may have gotten into his dream school without the consultant, but I do believe some of the advice we got from her was valuable and helped us tip the scale in his favor.

Some of the advice she gave us:

Each year we looked at course selections and advised on best course load to demonstrate rigor.  Coming from her vs. us (his parents) made an impact and he was much more open to listening to her advice vs. having us try to guide him.

She helped us navigate getting accommodations for the ACT (we already had them for college board).  With ACT, you have to actually register for the test before you request accommodations.  We registered even though we knew he wouldn't take the test on that day (he wouldn't be ready) and requested accommodations.  Then we rescheduled the date once we got the accommodations.  This way, he knew how he should prep for the test based on the accommodations he was given.  It was a one and done and he scored quite high.

She got us hooked up with an excellent tutor for test prep that was in our price range (only $150 per hour) and came to the house.

She provided him with checklists and deadlines of things to complete, i.e. send ACT scores to schools, have draft of supplemental essay done by this date, complete this section of common app by this date, etc.  It provided structure to the process and we were able to be more hands off.

She helped him brainstorm ideas for essays and guided him toward the best approach, subjects to pursue.  She proofread essays for punctuation/typos.  She did not adjust content, other than to suggest taking out or adding concepts...but no actually editing.

She helped narrow down a list of colleges.

He made out quite well...got into a top 20 which was his first choice.  He didn't want any ivies.
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Except for the last two items (narrowing down essay topics and selecting a list of colleges), everything else you describe sounds like a disservice to your kid's development in the long run. Applying to colleges is one of the more complicated things a 17 year old does in their life, but tracking deadlines etc is a healthy way to build responsibility and an important part of preparing for the degree of independence one needs to be a college student. Same with choosing courses and studying for tests (though test prep has been around forever, so I guess that's just the way things are these days).[/quote]

Tracking deadlines is something he does on a regular basis in school where he has a pretty heavy load of homework in all 7 of his courses.  I don't want the exercise of applying to colleges (a one time exercise which you don't want to screw up) to be an experiment as to whether he can handle it on his own.  Besides, one of his disabilities is executive functioning, so he really benefitted from the handholding.  Actually it was for our benefit as well so that we would know all the boxes were checked.  I have a friend whose kid was extremely talented, smart as a whip, national merit scholar, etc. etc.  He did not let his parents be involved with the application process...did it all himself and he really got screwed.  He did not even get into his target schools, let alone his reaches.  We don't really know what happened, but we suspect his essays were really off, because his stats were excellent.  He also may have messed something up on his application...which nobody ever laid eyes on.  Having this consultant just gave us another set of eyes and ensured we didn't miss anything crucial.
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