A good consultant can move the needle a bit, but they can’t work miracles. As an example, if a kid did not take the most rigorous curriculum, but has 3.8+ GPA, a consultant may be able to get an admit at a school like Cornell. The student may be helped with the right kind of ECs and great essays. On the other hand, if a kid is a solid B student, there isn’t enough packaging to get that kid into Cornell, except if it is a development case. We know a kid who is there now with lowish stats, and he is barely making it. You do then wonder if it’s the right school for the kid.
When I’m reading resumes for the working world, I don’t know if a kid who started at Cornell but ended getting a degree at Farleigh Dickinson is going to even register in my brain as having been to Cornell.
Lowish stats at some of the Cornell schools can probably happen… but I’d love to meet a counselor who could make that work at Cornell Engineering or Arts and Sciences…
Hear! Hear!
The above sums it up pretty neatly. This is especially true as most kids are following paths that have been paved from them through the “system” and their parents. They are usually great at following instructions without much thought about where the process leaves them and wonder what all those “expectations” of what they will do in college comes from. Starting to help them focus on the important elements will always pay dividends, and sometimes it is easier for an outsider to bring that focus as opposed to parents. Not to mention cut down on the tensions!
We have friends who live in the uppercrust community in their area. They paid consultants to help their kids. They say that in their area basically everybody does it. The competition is so severe from there that if you don’t do it your kid will actually be at a relative disadvantage. It is assumed that, from their community, from their high school,basically everyone is availing themselves of these services. They said that from their area, their kids’ applications have to be better to get into the same schools than kids in poorer communities do, because everyone involved in the process assumes their kids have had all the advantages hence shows them no mercy. They feel their kids are in effect penalized by the gatekeepers for going to their top-flight school system.
That’s what they told us.
Everyone knows that elite college campuses are being overrun by kids from housing projects in LA and Chicago-- hence, the gatekeepers are penalizing the kids who grew up in top flight school systems. Not to mention the kids from rural Wyoming who have a virtual lock on the Ivy League.
Mony- your friends sound crazy.
They’re not just ending up at Lehigh, Smith and Wake-- they’re now convinced those schools are a major win. Some of the “transformation” is in the kid’s eyes.
I have no problem with a kid getting writing advice. It’s a good skill to seek help, when needed, in general. But I am as against a consultant writing an app or an essay (or obviously telling them what changes to make) as I am against kids buying term papers. If they give some advice about ECs, you know what I say: if they went out and actually did it, good for them, they did it.
But also, it;'s not just kids in projects in LA- it’s not that flat. Many of those are getting their own top flight advice and mentoring from various programs- and flourishing. It shows in activities and topics.
The only families I know who admitted to using college counselors were sorely disappointed with the results. Both were ultra-affluent Manhattan families (but not “development” affluent – just very successful professionals). One’s kid was top quartile (but not top decile) at a large boarding school universally respected for its academics, and a legacy at Harvard (two generations) and Stanford. That kid legitimately had an unusual background for a garden-variety rich white kid: born and raised in France and schooled in French to age 11, a couple of years in British boarding school, a couple in Manhattan, then boarding school in New England. The other kid was a middle-of-the-class lifer at one of the best brand-name NYC day schools, also a legacy at Harvard (three generations) and Yale. Very intellectual and artsy.
Kid #1 really did the over-the-top package, including building houses for the poor in a former French colony – but unfortunately that was the year adcoms decided not to be impressed by stuff like that. Accepted only at an absolute safety, and later taken off the waitlist at a southern university with slightly more prestigiosity. Nowhere near enough to assuage the livid grandfather who could have gotten his grandchild accepted at the more famous university where the grandfather was emeritus by making a phone call (but no one imagined it might come to that, what with the counselor and all).
Kid #2 was accepted only at what the parents considered a low match, a fine if unfashionable research university that the kid proceeded to hate. Some modest string-pulling procured a transfer to a more acceptable college the following year.
I know both kids, and they are perfectly great kids. They could have been accepted anywhere. I suspect the one thing the counselors couldn’t do, and that made a great deal of difference, was to get their high-prestige prep school GC’s solidly behind their applications. (Kid #1’s school told the parents explicitly that Kid #1’s application to Harvard would not receive strong support from the school, which has no shortage of multi-generation Harvard legacies.) The counselors did not do a great job of managing expectations, either.
JHS, how long ago was this?
I am asking because that is the “stuff” that was already openly derided when I was working on my applications. A decade ago, people were making fun about little Suzie trip to Haiti to build houses and volunteer at a local place in need. Making fun because observers knew WHY they were doing and HOW it will probably backfire. Very much along the lines of the essays about how that safari in Kenya transformed one’s life of privilege and how meeting “really” poor people was eye-opening.
I guess that the high priced consultant did not get the memo, or thought it might work at some places. Perhaps, the consultant should have looked closer to home and push for a longer term activity that did not reek of big bucks paid foreign adventure – perceived or real.
I also wonder how the consultant might have missed the “asset” of a willing grandfather. Seems like that person was not a great fit for that particular family.
Please note that I know my share of very well-off parents with lengthy connections to HYPS who were massively disappointed, and this despite having some of the very best GC at their school, and complementing it with expensive local consultants. Blood and turnips come to mind.
I think there must be a difference between a college consultant who helps a clueless family figure out where, and how, a kid should apply, and a “packager,” who undertakes to transform a kid from tier 3 to Harvard in a year. My relatives have hired someone who, I hope, has the track record and the experience to help them navigate the college process, so that a (yes, privileged, but not obscenely so) talented and intelligent kid of two working parents who have no experience of college applications other than their own, outdated, experience can find and apply to a college that will fit him. That consultant, luckily for him or her, is not required to make over this kid; he or she needs to focus him, assess him, help him find his way. For their part, the parents are enabled to step back from their only child, not overwhelm him with their expectations and outmoded experiences, and merely encourage him to do his best.
I find nothing wrong with such a consultant, helping parents who don’t have the time and the knowledge to do their best by their kid. I’m a little worried about how qualified such a consultant might be, but I don’t feel that she would be giving a kid a huge push out of his normal range, just, ideally, helping to establish that range and craft an approach.
In fact, my relative’s hiring of an outsider is a very healthy thing: both mother and father attended an ivy, and there could be an overwhelming pressure for their kid to go to their school. By bringing in a consultant, the parents are putting some distance between themselves and their kid, so he can imagine a different school for himself. In that situation, hiring a consultant enables a kid to find choices that might not be popular with his parents; both parties need to find peace with the end result.
Was the grandfather already donating tens of millions? If so, his development rep would have possibly acted.
And those super duper boarding schools have a tendency to write lovely LoRs for all (or most) kids, in theory, satisfying parents. But they have subtle ways to let adcoms know which are their most strongly endorsed candidates.
You can also just benefit from being on a team that happens to be strong while you are participating. My son’s freshman cohort had a group of very strong science kids. They were the B team in Science Olympiad, but it was their success at the regional level that took the team to states. Anyone who was on the team during the years that team was strong got to go to States and have the opportunity to win medals there. If you are a strong student on a weak team you are out of luck.
FWIW, I used to a consultant to help my kid with her college applications. She was applying to the state flagship school and other regional schools. Why the consultant? Because my daughter was not going to listen to me, but she would listen to the counselor when asked to do something. This is a very stubborn, self-directed kid, though she’s usually polite to adults who aren’t me. My daughter and I also have weak organizational skills, so it was worth the money to us to outsource it and preserve our relationship and sanity. 
We weren’t expecting miracles–we were expecting help to make the process less miserable, and we got it.
“Despite the spin that the college consultants give themselves, I am skeptical of what they can actually accomplish. Turn a solid B student in Princeton material? Nope.”
Is anybody claiming this kind of transformation? No question there are unscrupulous people out there selling every kind of product, but at a minimum, this kind of thing violates the ethical standards of our professional organizations. Last year, a member was advertising him/herself as “America’s leading authority” on college admissions. The leadership put the kibosh on that right quick.
Agree with Hanna. And anyone who makes incredible claims is living up to the adjective. I have met unscrupulous people in the business, but two things about that: (1) most of the people who sign up with such claimants are in denial in the first place, and they want someone to confirm them in their denial. (2) people who make unsupportable claims make themselves extinct in short order, because those claims do not materialize.
I find that there’s a direct proportion between (a) inexperience or incompetence on one side and false claims on the other;
also
(b) parental denial or desperation on one side and a willingness to separate themselves from their money (if they have it), on the other.
I don’t have any respect for false claims, but again, they uncover their own hot air pretty quickly.
I am most disturbed by those in the business who prey upon cultural vulnerabilities because there are people from certain cultures who will pay gobs of money to be fooled into “just trying anyway.” And again, the more desperate such people are, the more money they are willing to pay, so that they can rationalize to themselves that they have done “all they can” to make their objectively unqualified student artificially qualified for the Ivy League. Generally such sellers are commercial companies and not affiliated with NACAC, so there really are no controls or downsides except reputations like Yelp, community reputations, etc.
I also completely agree with the practical wisdom in Reply #91, which is very often why consultants are used. There’s nothing alarming or untoward about that, and my experience is that incidentally it can do wonders to reduce tension in such cases. Consultant is uninvolved neutral party with, like the parents, the best interests of the student in mind, and can communicate to parents what’s going on even if the student withholds. Parents can be as direct, behind the scenes, as they wish, and anyone competent should be skilled and ethical enough to communicate openly to the parents what’s going on, and obviously to receive input from them. It greatly depends on the personality and style of the student whether this would be the indicated way to proceed, but it has happened to me four times – that parents have approached me because the student had “a very strong personality,” in their words and was “likely to resist” anything parents said.
re #84:
Yes they are overrepresented, but their view is, by their merits they should be MORE overrepresented.
I have read the same sentiments expressed on CC by parents whose kids go to leading boarding schools.
I’ve also read similar opinions expressed here by Asian kids and their parents
Maybe they are indeed crazy, and their little Janes or Johnnys are really not “all that”.
Then again,. maybe they are right. I really can’t say. I am not an admissions officer reading all these applications.
I am willing to believe it is possible some universities may have soft quotas on numbers they will accept from a single area or high school, based on something that happened between Yale and my HS valedictorian when I was in school. But maybe that’s wrong.
The point is, whether these people are actually correct, or rather indeed delusional, either way their perception drives a high use of consultants in their community.
Count me as another parent who hired a consultant at least in part as a sort of “broker” between me and my strong willed, self directed kid. D attends a medium-large public high school with overworked GC’s. The consultant was a retired GC from our high school, and her fee was under 2K. We first consulted her in spring of sophomore year. Probably her biggest contribution was helping D keep on a timetable for all of her testing, vists, essays, etc. At our first visit, we told the consultant that D had gotten a 218 on sophomore year PSAT. She recommended prepping for both the junior year PSAT and SAT simultaneously. For the actual test prep, I scoured the SAT Prep forums for advice and D prepped using books and techniques found on those forums. The upshot was that by December of junior year, D was done with the SAT and also had a PSAT score we knew would qualify for NMSF. That freed her up to focus on subject tests and AP exams in the Spring of junior year. (Again, the info on CC was invaluable in helping D prep for the subject tests and AP exams.) And she was in a strong position to submit an ED application because her testing was completely done.
The consultant was very helpful in finalizing a list of schools and in advising us when and how to demonstrate interest. In terms of activities (EC’s), D knew her own mind and basically refused to do anything she didn’t really enjoy and want to do, even when the consultant thought it would be helpful. Having a regular schedule of visits with the consultant in the Fall of senior year kept D on track in terms of getting things done. By mid-October of senior year, D had submitted her ED1 application to her top choice and by December 1, all of her other applications were ready to go (and some with early merit deadlines were filed). She got into her top choice ED1, so we’ll never know what would’ve happened with the other applications. But I definitely felt the consultant was helpful. The way I looked at it, it was a luxury but I felt like I was paying to get the level of attention from a GC that we would’ve gotten had she been in private school, but at a fraction of the cost of private school tuition. And I think it goes to show that consultants come in a wide range in terms of what they do and how much they cost.
@Corinthian “At our first visit, we told the consultant that D had gotten a 218 on sophomore year PSAT. She recommended prepping for both the junior year PSAT and SAT simultaneously. For the actual test prep, I scoured the SAT Prep forums for advice and D prepped using books and techniques found on those forums. The upshot was that by December of junior year, D was done with the SAT and also had a PSAT score we knew would qualify for NMSF.”
Our consultant recommended this too, and DD1 prepared over the Summer and took both the PSAT and the SAT in October and only 10 days apart. Our high school GC recommended against it because the think they will score better after another semester of education, but it works well for very high scorers who can’t really improve their score anyway.
@much2learn, I feel that overworked GC’s in public schools are often not in a good position to tailor their advice to the kid who is not “average.” Our high school’s guidance department seemed very “lock step” when it came to timing of tests. They also underplayed the importance of the PSAT and generally advised that you could not improve your score by doing any test prep. On the positive side, they did a good job of getting everything submitted on time such as transcripts, school reports, etc. Never once though did the GC ask us if we understood the implications of applying ED. We did, but I was surprised that it didn’t seem to trigger any kind of call or email from the GC to make sure we knew what we were getting into.
^^
That is just the way it is! However, the “not really good” advice about the timing of the SAT Prep does not stop at the door at the GC as the myth about waiting to see the PSAT (which should be taken cold) scores is hard to kill forever! Take a look at the first pages of this thread!
The above is mostly due to an inability to understand that the demands placed on successful college applications has changed in the past decade. It is no longer enough to earn good grades, score above average, and have a sprinkling of reasonable EC to “make it.” If in the past years, some played their cards better by adding the Suzuki and SAT academies to the “curriculum” of their kids, the dynamics of today have even made such “extreme” practices common. More than ever, the last two years of high school are subject to ever growing demands on the time of students. Grades and test scores have become the real minimum, and differences have to be made through ECs and advanced testing. All of this is well above the pay grade of your usual GC who has plenty of other responsibilities than micromanaging the students that are well above the average of their school. Can’t really blame them, but it helps to understand their limitations.
Hence, they should be applauded when the GCs fulfill their primary obligations, namely get the transcripts and other documentation out on time – and perhaps resist to add “stuff” that should NOT be on the transcripts such as test scores.