Anonymous
Post 12/31/2022 10:02     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:Can anyone recommend their counselor?

OP here - I happened to attend a recent webinar on the admissions process basically encouraged you to start getting your act together around eighth or ninth grade. The webinar kind of scared me (obviously the goal, right?), But I also realistically know that the admissions landscape has changed SO much since i applied.

I was expecting it to be a situation where I pay something like $250 an hour for help and maybe I end up spending $10,000 over the next couple of years… which i could live with. I was picturing maybe some advice on extracurriculars and a testing schedule and some essay review and college selection and application timing help. Instead, i was sent info on a more all-encompassing program for 4 years worth of help with a price tag that was MANY multiples of my expectations.

I’m just not sure that i trust the school counselor who has so many students. When i applied (90’s), I had a cousin at a well know boarding school who didn’t get in anywhere, waitlisted only, and i had a GPA below a 3.5 and my CCO said I could apply to Johns Hopkins and Wellesley as safeties. I guess I am scared that even at private schools where they should know better, these things can still happen…


There is a range in pricing. You can do per hour (with maybe a minimal #), limited package, or full service. I also learned that there is typically a cap to how many students they take on so I was naively rolling in the at the end of my child’s junior year and finding out the slots for class of 20xx were almost full. You should have an interview (20 minutes ish) to get a feel of it’s the right fit for your family and child. For us there was someone that offered what you mentioned above for about $6000. I really liked that person but since we had the list, had to focus on merit, and at the end of junior year there was not much to change activities and grades, I couldn’t justify it.

We used Potomac Oak Tutoring’s College Counseling and they were very straightforward in process and pricing. Both the good and the bad for us is that there were deadlines that did not allow the child to wait until the last minute for essays because they needed time to review and have it revised. Because my child has challenges with executive functioning, part of why we felt we opted for outside help, we still had to follow-up with our child more than we had hoped and our child didn’t use the full benefit of the consultant. That said, it was 100% worth it to us. Our child was encouraged to write that interesting essay that gave some of their personality that I don’t know they would have gotten to on their own, the review of the Common Application for any typos or selecting majors that could impact acceptance caught a few things, generally organizing the essays and deadlines and finding essay overlap among schools in the list was helpful, and there were one or two schools not on out original list that were good additions.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 22:01     Subject: Re:College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I do not recommend College Bound in Potomac, unfortunately. WE received a list of colleges that I could have put together myself for $1500.00. It was ridiculous and a wasted of money IMO. The essay specialist was outrageously priced at $250.00 an hour. That did offer some hands on work but way overpriced.

I was lead to believe that this would be a way to relieve stress of college applications on me and my husband - it wasn't. Not much personal interaction. We have been pretty much on our own.

Do it yourself if you can. [/quote

We had the same experience with them.


Only $1,500? Maybe you get what you pay for. How many hours is that, 5?
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 21:10     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Thank you for starting this thread.

Could someone speak to the benefit (or not) of paying for a college consultant when the private high school has a good CCO office? I am still concerned that each counselor has 30 + students assigned to them.


The CCO office for private high schools is designed to always favor the school as a whole over individual students. You want someone who is solely an advocate for your own child. That is not the CCO.


This. Private high schools have longstanding relationships with top universities' admissions offices. To perpetuate this snug relationship, they aim to send the kids *they* think are strongest to each top university. Ignoring them can be risky, though: if they don't think Larlo is up to Yale's snuff, they won't support his application with the strongest recommendations.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 21:05     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:The main reason to do this is to have a buffer to keep your kid on track, rather than you being the nag.

If you don't need that buffer, then it is probably a waste of time and money.


Was going to post this. If your kid is motivated, you probably don't need outside help. If your kid is dragging his feet, hire somebody else to keep him/her on track.

If your kid is motivated, s/he and you can identify appropriate colleges better than any school counselor. You and your kid can figure out from the school's online database which colleges are going to be likely, reach, etc. You can even start to figure out what your kid's GPA and stats will get: oh, that relatively low GPA at Penn was probably Larlo who got recruited for athletics, and your kid has zero athletic chops so his similar GPA isn't going to get him into Penn. Read/watch some online sources about essays (don't write about Grandma because they're not admitting Grandma, or about your trip to Africa where you held a poor boy's hand because that essay will make you look like a douche). Then do a tour of the top schools, which can be fun, and make the final choices afterwards.

The one thing to be concerned about at private is ignoring the school counselor's recommendations. If you ignore them too blatantly, they may not support the application with strong recommendations. We've had kids in public and private. In public it was the opposite problem--the counselor thought every kid should apply to UMD and that private universities were a waste of money.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 20:33     Subject: Re:College admissions consultants
I guess if you have money to waste, then why not? Otherwise school college counselors are just fine.
You and your kid do need to put in some work yourselves but you should be doing that no matter who you decide to hire.
I certainly don’t understand hiring someone in 8th or 9th grade? What exactly will they tell you?
It is all common sense. Take challenging courses, get the best grades that you can and do a couple of interesting activities.
All the information is out there. You and your kid should do some online searching. Coming up with a list is not that hard
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 15:38     Subject: College admissions consultants
Bethesda

prep1on1.com for ACT/SAT prep (35s and 36s for my 3 kids on the ACT). Tutoring ranges from $180/hour (math/science) to $160/hour (english), varied from once/twice per week for 4-8 weeks depending on kid.

College counselor, $150 an hour to help curate the lists and keep them on task for deadlines, review essays, etc. Worked with them starting toward the end of junior year through Aug for my type A kid (all applications in), November for the other 2. And, all of my kids kind of knew where they were headed for their applications, she really helped them narrow it down in some cases, and expand a little bit for some realistic targets and safeties in another situation.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 15:37     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:$150 an hour, our kids were good at coming up with lists (each had a few schools added by consultant), and she kept them on track with deadlines and reviewing essays (which they have all proudly shared with us).

Met for an hour once a week until all applications in. I don't think it was more than $2,000, probably more like $1500


Our private Independent Catholic HS does all that and more so we are t using one.

We do have our own test prep tutor and paid for that. They write their essay in English class and get reviews and help.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 15:14     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:Thank you for starting this thread.

Could someone speak to the benefit (or not) of paying for a college consultant when the private high school has a good CCO office? I am still concerned that each counselor has 30 + students assigned to them.


The CCO office for private high schools is designed to always favor the school as a whole over individual students. You want someone who is solely an advocate for your own child. That is not the CCO.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2022 15:10     Subject: College admissions consultants
Can anyone recommend a good SAT tutor?
Anonymous
Post 12/29/2022 14:58     Subject: Re:College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:I do not recommend College Bound in Potomac, unfortunately. WE received a list of colleges that I could have put together myself for $1500.00. It was ridiculous and a wasted of money IMO. The essay specialist was outrageously priced at $250.00 an hour. That did offer some hands on work but way overpriced.

I was lead to believe that this would be a way to relieve stress of college applications on me and my husband - it wasn't. Not much personal interaction. We have been pretty much on our own.

Do it yourself if you can. [/quote

We had the same experience with them.
Anonymous
Post 12/29/2022 14:41     Subject: Re:College admissions consultants
I do not recommend College Bound in Potomac, unfortunately. WE received a list of colleges that I could have put together myself for $1500.00. It was ridiculous and a wasted of money IMO. The essay specialist was outrageously priced at $250.00 an hour. That did offer some hands on work but way overpriced.

I was lead to believe that this would be a way to relieve stress of college applications on me and my husband - it wasn't. Not much personal interaction. We have been pretty much on our own.

Do it yourself if you can.
Anonymous
Post 10/16/2022 15:34     Subject: College admissions consultants
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We are in the soup now. big 3.
School counselor seems overwhelmed with 30+ students and appointments for kids out 2-3 weeks in advance.

We have an outside - who has been great at keeping kid on schedule and ahead of the game for last 10 months.

Ask me in 5 mos how it all goes.

We also have an outside essay person we recently found on Wyzant (not cheap at all - hundreds per hour) and they have been FAR better than either school or outside counselor at essay help

Also used outside 1:1 SAT tutor.

We have the means to do all of this. At the end of the day, if I had more constraints, I would just use SAT 1:1 and essay reader.


This sounds so intense to me. I get test prep, but an essay writer/reader? This just feels like overkill to me if your kid is at a Big 3. Did your child write the essay or did you pay someone to write it for them?


Yeah i posted that/ The essay reader (a reader - def not a writer) has been actually the most invaluable of all of the pieces for my kid. The Top 3 school college office is overwhelmed - 35 kids per counselor and seem to me like they want to just check off other to do list when it came to essay. The outside person really pushed my kid to express thoughts much more clearly, forcefully, and frankly spent the time that college office at school would not - at school kid is getting 20 min here and there and the counselor is scheduled out 2 weeks at a time.

The outside counselor is good at pushing deadlines but not (in our case) someone who has an eye towards what a GREAT and compelling essay would be

Like I said though, that's what has worked for us. Might not work for everyone. My kid says several others at his school have the same (outside counselor, outside SAT private, and outside essay reader)


What is the benefit to the outside counselor if you are also using an outside essay reader?

My DD is a junior now and we are debating whether to get a counselor or not. Their comprehensive packages - I feel like we could do a lot of that on our own (course selection, might be nice to have help coming up with a college list to get that outside opinion but I can direct my DD to colleges, transcript analysis, standardized testing strategy, activities). I debate whether one should use the college counselor for essays or just get an outside essay reader to help with that. I can see the benefit of having someone keeping the kid on track regarding submitting essays/applications. Let someone else be the nag instead of parents. But is that worth 4k? Or the high, hourly rates?

I could see if the college counselors are able to work magic and get kid into highly selective colleges. But if the kid only gets into normal colleges...is it worth it?