<p>I have gone to several college planning company appointments where they claim that they can help college bound students with SAT, financial aid and pretty much everything related to adimission that will help boost students in their acceptance to their ideal colleges. The price ranges from 500-1500 bucks</p>
<p>and here’s my question
Is it worth it?? does it really help? If so, whcih one do u guys recommend?</p>
<p>Why College Confidential, of course - check out their services at <a href=“http://collegeconfidential.com%5B/url%5D”>http://collegeconfidential.com</a>. I would trust these guys over other random planners and they have a variety of service and price levels.</p>
<p>Well it comes down to two choices… do the footwork yourself or pay someone else to. </p>
<p>You can do it yourself if you spend some time. OR you can use a service and pay a fee to get the same results. Which do you havemore of, time or money?</p>
<p>For SAT, use the Xiggi method from CC. It’s free. Read up on the threads about financial aid and merit aid. Read threads about recommendations, essays, and other components of the application. Then decide whether you want to shell out up to $1,500.</p>
<p>Frankly, I can’t imagine not just using the free services of the Parent Forum. It got us through D1’s application season and I’m definitely going to use them for D2 in 3 years.</p>
<p>Even though you use a college planning service, you really need to know the lay of the land to judge if the advice they are giving makes sense. That requires a little time on your part.</p>
<p>A college service would also be useful if you and your kid would end up at each other’s throat during the process. A lot of people hire tutors for their kids even though the parents could help their kids themselves.</p>
<p>SAT prep is the only thing I wish we had farmed out. Against our better judgement, we agreed to let our son self-tutor with a SAT prep book. Turned out to be SAT study during “breaks” of world of warcraft I think. A class would have been more time efficent and less stressful all around. College research and scholarships were my hobby, CC was a wonderful resource.</p>
<p>Agree with all of the above posters who say you can do better here in the Parent Forum than shelling out $$ for financial aid advice, other ways to boost chances of acceptance. I only know three families who used consultants in the price range you mentioned. Interestingly, all three were happy with the experience and all three got useless results (can you spell “cognitive dissonance”?): [ul][<em>]Case 1: helped their D craft a list of highly selective East Coast schools and top UC’s where advisor was sure she would receive a number of acceptances. Result: accepted to none of the above; went to 3rd choice UC. [</em>]Case 2: Same family, same counselor. Told their S not to even bother to list UCLA as one of his UC choices; said he had no chance. Kid just graduated from UCLA, his “dream school.” [<em>]Case 3: East Coast kid, B- student, 1200ish SATs. Accepted to NONE of the schools in reach/match/safe-match category. Almost an andison story, altho he was accepted to 2 safeties he didn’t want to attend (how did *they</em> get on the list with this outside expert on the job?) He is actually now happy at in-state flagship. From what I know, I think this paid advisor didn’t get the issue of SATs higher than GPA (“slacker” profile) and how harmful that would be; I also think she mis-advised on essay topic.[/ul] I, too, would endorse the college confidential crew based on the great job I have heard of in several cases.</p>
<p>Finally, as to SAT prep, I think it comes down totally to knowing your kid. Some will follow the xiggi method on their own, being self-motivated and organized, so you won’t need to pay for SAT prep. Some need that outside prod - so either a prep class or tutor is in order.</p>
<p>I think an outside consultant would be useful to the extent that he or she makes you think about what you really want in a school, disabuses you of the “prestige” factor, and suggests schools inside and outside the box that provide the “fit” for your kid. Kind of like the stories of the people in Loren Pope’s books…</p>
<p>Another reminder that it depends on your resources: time vs. money.
CC, and books probably have everything you need (and more). CC has been an invaluable resource.
BUT…I have spent FAR more time on CC (and book resources) than $1500 worth! ;-)</p>
<p>As others have commented elsewhere, the PR Counselor-o-matic is a good source for suggestions of colleges. I tried it out, and it provided schools that I had thought of, or was not aware of, to consider. And it’s free.</p>
<p>We found the Counselor-o-matic to be extremely useless for us. Yes, it did pop up some college names that gave us some other places to look, but it seemed diabolical in some aspects. For example, S marked the button that basically gave negative points to any schools associated with any church. Then after that, no matter how much he tried to change his “profile,” the list began consisting of mostly religious schools.</p>
<p>It also is not good if you have a specific type of program you’re looking for. It’s a very unsophisticated program, which compares your profile against what’s been stored for the college profiles. Sometime someone somewhere along the line is going to build some AI software (artificial intelligence) that will let your previous answers guide the next questions and drill into a more intellegent match. THEN you can do the stats comparison for R/M/S. But Counselor-o-matic ain’t it.</p>