Anonymous wrote:The $200k comes after the $250K for Sidwell

My question is will they accept the $200K from anyone (and would anyone pay the money that it already have the stats or hooks to get in) or are they just filtering for students have a high chance of admission already.

They take everyone, no filtering needed. $200k is base without utilizing any of their extras. You should plan for $300k.

The $200k comes after the $250K for Sidwell

My question is will they accept the $200K from anyone (and would anyone pay the money that it already have the stats or hooks to get in) or are they just filtering for students have a high chance of admission already.

https://imgur.com/a/JKjAcFd

I suck at this

Not sure if my image posting will work, but basically, Crimson is running ads on FB using Sidwell's name to attract clients.
"How Sidwell Friends Students get into Yale" is the headline....

Found a former AO who works for a big "company" mentioned often on this site (not Crimson).

Contact directly through LinkedIn. Working with them /paying them directly hourly. Amazing advice. Paying directly.

Anonymous wrote:Having used Crimson two cycles ago, we had a horrible experience with them. It's really hit or miss. They are too big and there are so many pricing tiers that I think it's very dependent on the pricing tier you pick for the service. Unless you're close to the $100K mark, the actual service you receive is subpar. If f I had to redo it, I would have chosen a smaller firm where you know you'll be prioritized because they're not trying to help 500 other students.

+1

You really need to utilize their max tier, which would entail $350k to get their benefit. Anything else you are just wasting money.

Anonymous wrote:We compared several national firms for our rising 9th grader. We are in a highly competitive NoVA public district and knew that we wouldn't be able to handle the college app process. Of all the firms we are looking at, we like Crimson the best. Pricing definitely varies and it can be twice as much as some other national firms, but overall we are getting a better vibe about the Crimson program than the others.

Come back after admissions and you will understand exactly the issue.

Having used Crimson two cycles ago, we had a horrible experience with them. It's really hit or miss. They are too big and there are so many pricing tiers that I think it's very dependent on the pricing tier you pick for the service. Unless you're close to the $100K mark, the actual service you receive is subpar. If f I had to redo it, I would have chosen a smaller firm where you know you'll be prioritized because they're not trying to help 500 other students.

We compared several national firms for our rising 9th grader. We are in a highly competitive NoVA public district and knew that we wouldn't be able to handle the college app process. Of all the firms we are looking at, we like Crimson the best. Pricing definitely varies and it can be twice as much as some other national firms, but overall we are getting a better vibe about the Crimson program than the others.

Anonymous wrote:Who needs all these services? Either your kid can hack it or can't and if they can't, then why would you want the in Ivy or Ivy+? These guys are all a scam, you can't figure out an angle for your own kid??

If a 1300 SAT athlete can succeed at these schools, then so can a standard strong 1500 SAT student.

Anonymous wrote:Who needs all these services? Either your kid can hack it or can't and if they can't, then why would you want the in Ivy or Ivy+? These guys are all a scam, you can't figure out an angle for your own kid??

Yeah, often times, parents don't want to sit there and surf through thousands of websites and listen to hundreds of podcasts read tens of books or follow every college counselor influencer on social media to figure out the plan ... and then have the plan fail because you forgot a teeny-tiny bit of the plan or executed it imperfectly. Tons of parents want to outsource it altogether. And, I suppose this question (about the quality and service of a particular firm over another) is really for those parents who want to outsource it to a third party.

And, then, there are those parents who are willing to put in all that work, but the kid wants nothing to do with what Mom/Dad is saying, and they'd rather receive the information from a third party.

For situations like this, parents want to know, "how did you like Crimson"?

Who needs all these services? Either your kid can hack it or can't and if they can't, then why would you want the in Ivy or Ivy+? These guys are all a scam, you can't figure out an angle for your own kid??

I haven't used their counseling services, but my dc has had tutoring through them and we were happy with the quality of the tutoring.

I'm not really sure that app reviews do anything for your kid. It is at the end and maybe you'll get a juicy crumb or two but that isn't actually the service that tries to get their clients into top schools. It ends up being a waste of money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Signing with this firm for my kid. Steep price but after interviewing various firms, we felt they provided the best in terms of the services included for the price. Anyone use them in this last cycle?

We used Crimson’s application review by former AO service. It was okay. We received a 6-page report, of which I thought 80 percent was written by AI. There were a couple of useful comments about the supplemental essays. I do not think we will use them for DC2.

A friend of mine said she also used them for app review. Kid is at state school — did not get into Ivy+.

Ingenius is a much better company - for counseling and app review.