Anonymous
Post 04/03/2026 09:15     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anonymous wrote:Anyone who is interested in T20 should avoid her. It is positively going to hurt your chances for all the reasons I and others and said several times in this and other threads.

There is one more aspect that is harmful that I would repeat here. If you are interested in T20, you are giving away your child's key points to the entire group. You can figure out the HS the kid is attending with a 30 seconds of research. So now you have info on the major, the essay topic they are going to write, their activities, awards, which colleges they are applying, what they might be EDing to, etc. These are pretty helpful things to know of your child's competitors from your specific HS. So you can better position yourself.

If you want help you need to share these details. So this group is mostly helpful to stalker parents. This is pretty much what one parent admitted last year when she was raving about AN.



Mine got into 4 T20s (including Ivy/T10).

I did do the add-ons and posted essay topic then deleted within the week….
Essay morphed anyway through editing and was very different from what was posted. I never posted anything else about my kid except acceptances….

Only kid from our HS listed there (I checked)….so maybe if there were others I wouldn’t?

I found it helpful and will do for my other kids. Also, there’s now a “private question” where you can give all this intel privately….assume that applies to essays? But yes there’s a fee.

Anonymous
Post 04/03/2026 08:51     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anonymous wrote:Anyone who is interested in T20 should avoid her. It is positively going to hurt your chances for all the reasons I and others and said several times in this and other threads.

There is one more aspect that is harmful that I would repeat here. If you are interested in T20, you are giving away your child's key points to the entire group. You can figure out the HS the kid is attending with a 30 seconds of research. So now you have info on the major, the essay topic they are going to write, their activities, awards, which colleges they are applying, what they might be EDing to, etc. These are pretty helpful things to know of your child's competitors from your specific HS. So you can better position yourself.

If you want help you need to share these details. So this group is mostly helpful to stalker parents. This is pretty much what one parent admitted last year when she was raving about AN.



Wow. This is pretty insane. Def not the norm from my experience.
Anonymous
Post 04/03/2026 08:19     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anonymous wrote:Anyone who is interested in T20 should avoid her. It is positively going to hurt your chances for all the reasons I and others and said several times in this and other threads.

There is one more aspect that is harmful that I would repeat here. If you are interested in T20, you are giving away your child's key points to the entire group. You can figure out the HS the kid is attending with a 30 seconds of research. So now you have info on the major, the essay topic they are going to write, their activities, awards, which colleges they are applying, what they might be EDing to, etc. These are pretty helpful things to know of your child's competitors from your specific HS. So you can better position yourself.

If you want help you need to share these details. So this group is mostly helpful to stalker parents. This is pretty much what one parent admitted last year when she was raving about AN.



And if you find even the tiniest bit of information that is borderline an unethical parent could then complain to the college AO about it. Now you just have a red flag on your competitor.
Anonymous
Post 04/03/2026 08:13     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anyone who is interested in T20 should avoid her. It is positively going to hurt your chances for all the reasons I and others and said several times in this and other threads.

There is one more aspect that is harmful that I would repeat here. If you are interested in T20, you are giving away your child's key points to the entire group. You can figure out the HS the kid is attending with a 30 seconds of research. So now you have info on the major, the essay topic they are going to write, their activities, awards, which colleges they are applying, what they might be EDing to, etc. These are pretty helpful things to know of your child's competitors from your specific HS. So you can better position yourself.

If you want help you need to share these details. So this group is mostly helpful to stalker parents. This is pretty much what one parent admitted last year when she was raving about AN.

Anonymous
Post 04/02/2026 18:23     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
I do find it helpful. This is our first kid going through the process and it gives me a great overview. Then I go and dig in more on my own. I wouldn’t depend on just AN but I like it a lot.
Anonymous
Post 04/02/2026 14:39     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:AN is not helpful for T20 and is actually detrimental in many many cases. Her Penn knowledge is outdated and most of the team's thinking is influenced by SLAC admissions/processes which is quite different from T20.

For my own child, we ignored her advice, because it pretty much violated the vast majority of what makes my child stand out. That is from personal essay (she suggested a complete rewrite), supplemental essays (she did not like), activities (she did not like).

Kid ended up at a HYPSM and acceptances to three other T20 schools. I do not think my kid would have gotten in if we followed her recommendations, which is mostly because she has no clue about some of these things.

It is good that is not focusing on T20, after all she promotes herself as "America's college counselor" and her target market is outside of T40. For T20 I would not follow her advice.



Isn’t it oxymoron for anyone targeting outside of T40 to need a private consultant? Actually, things get much easier outside of the T30.

Hence the huge "success" of her crowd. They're applying to solid schools and that's a great thing, but I don't think people should be taking money from those families when the guidance isn't really necessary.

The previously mentioned facebook groups that are free would serve the same purpose, but I guess people want to feel like they are part of the crowd that pays for private consulting. Maybe they see it as a status symbol.
Anonymous
Post 04/02/2026 14:12     Subject: Sara Harberson Application Nation
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We did not follow all the advice but I would say 90% - you need to form your own opinions and trust your judgement. There is so much conflicting advice out there but I found the vast majority very helpful. I do think that submitting AP scores has gotten more important especially if test optional. Essay had some elements that they would have said to take out because of privilege. Activity list included one paid summer program (but omitted two others). Used a lot of advice for how to do some activities that are different from the sports/drama/music that everyone else spends the vast majority of their time on, how to provide brag sheets to recommenders, how to craft interesting activity lists, and how to approach essays. I do believe these things mattered a lot to my DC success which exceeded our expectations including with top 20.


does she say to omit paid summer programs?


yes.


unless arts, music, theater types....