“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.”
Substitute the phrase Professional Tutors for “consultants” in that section, and you can get a taste of what we experience over here. Straight-A students with absolutely no academic issues being tutored, “just in case,” and “to get an edge” or “keep an edge.” I’ve had one students for two years who not only needs no tutoring, she was ultra-advanced when she started with me, had an adult vocabulary by grade 3, and is also intellectually gifted.
If blossom thinks monydad’s friends are crazy, then blossom hasn’t seen irrationality to quite the degree I have. (Basically, within that community I describe, you are neglecting your already-high-achieving children if you don’t have them tutored, and I mean regularly. (Just in case someone might surpass them.)
Also, regarding the expensive overseas community service and how obvious that looks…
Yes, it does look artificial. Nevertheless, sad as it may sound, there are students from some backgrounds who have never lifted a finger for anyone but themselves. No regular (however minor) domestic volunteering at any age, not even anything irregular in that department. Their entire focus for 18 years has been themselves – promoting their own academics, improving their own test scores – already with the intent to get into a prestigious college. When it comes to application essays, including prompts that hint that colleges expect them to care about someone else, they have, in the past, had nothing to say. Seriously. That’s why some companies actually arrange for structured service-abroad opportunities. And for many (I have read these essays), these experiences were literally the first time they discovered concepts such as sacrifice, temporary material deprivation, or encountering anyone who was poor, period. Often their schools have not required any community service hours. (The mandate seems more prevalent at private schools.)
Naturally, these experiences provide the only material they can use to talk about anyone but themselves. It may be a poor substitute for a more genuine impulse, but that’s just to explain why it is sometimes viewed as essential. Also, in several cases I have seen, the projects actually did spark concrete interest in an applied academic direction without which experience the student would not have imagined it.
“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.”
I don’t understand what the GC has to do with test scheduling in the first place. We were the ones (ok, I was) who looked online for dates, registered with the College Board, selected test centers, etc. Why would the GC even be involved? It’s my credit card and my schedule,
I had two kids ED and never heard a peep from the GC about the “inviolability” of it. I assume she signed something. It was irrelevant since we were not going to back out of ED.
The GC had zero to do with college selection. That was me and all my BFFs on CC!!
The GC was like a bank teller. She got transcripts from here to there, and was pleasant and efficient, but she was no more involved in the process than the bank teller is when I decide how to spend the money I’ve withdrawn.
The GC at my kids’ public school did more than that, he gave college couseling advice, advice on what tests to take and when, etc. Most of it we did not need, having been trhough the process previously with D1, but the point is he did it.
@Pizzagirl, are you suggesting that the GC as" bank teller" is the desirable and intended role? After all the title is “Guidance Counselor” so presumably those two words “guidance” and “counselor” are supposed to mean something. Actually I will say that our public high school is slowly moving in the right direction. This year for the first time the district got a grant to pay for PSAT testing for all sophomores, plus the PSAT was given on a 3rd date this year which helps the kids in our district since the PSAT normally falls during Fall Break. Hopefully the GC’s will then take the next step of identifying the sophomores who are potential candidates to make NMSF cutoff in their junior year, and direct them toward some sort of prepping. The vast majority of parents are clueless about the potential for scholarship aid that comes from making NMSF. In fact, the people who need it most are least likely to know. The history in our district prior to this year was that the PSAT was downplayed as nothing more than an optional “practice” SAT that was inconveniently given during Fall Break.
[Side note for all the threads that discuss ED agreements: people always act like the GC will make sure you know what you’re doing with ED and won’t break the agreement, but note that Pizzagirl and I both had the same experience about the GC never saying a peep about the inviolability of it.]
My basic point in my earlier post was that for me, hiring the consultant was in part an effort to get the kind of individualized advice and guidance that I think kids in private schools all get automatically. Not the over the top Ivy Coach type of repackage-you-into-something-you’re-not consulting that some have described.
I can’t tell you how many times every year I get a call from a thrilled mom asking for my secret. “I’ve been nagging her for six months to fill out that form! One hour with you and she sat down and did it! What did you say to her?” I say, “I’d love to tell you I’m a genius, but she did that because I’m not her mother. She doesn’t have a developmental need to prove that I’m not in charge.”
“My basic point in my earlier post was that for me, hiring the consultant was in part an effort to get the kind of individualized advice and guidance that I think kids in private schools all get automatically. Not the over the top Ivy Coach type of repackage-you-into-something-you’re-not consulting that some have described.”
This is really helping a student with the ability improve their odds.
It is possible to repackage a student in some circumstances. This can happen when the student has multiple talents and and is getting pulled in multiple directions. Sometimes their most impressive talents are not their favorites. A consultant may point out that to improve their college applications, a student should consider how much time they are spending on sports, if their best talent is in academics, for example. They might be better off focussing on academic ECs. The student may or may not decide to change their priorities, but at least they are aware that there is a choice to be made, and decide what is important to them.
Corinthian - no, I didn’t say GC as bank teller was “desirable” - but that’s simply what the reality was.
Re ED - my guess is my kids shoved something at her she had to sign and she signed it. Really, she had no part in the decision-making -she was just the conduit. Just like the bank teller doesn’t tell me how much to withdraw or what to do with it. The idea that she would sit down and carefully explain to parents what the ED commitment meant - no way on the caseload she has. Anyway, better she focus on finding scholarships for the kids who needed it to attend any college. In the grander scheme of things, that was more important than the finer points of Wellesley vs Bryn Mawr - knowledge she’ll likely never use again.
I do think a good (and ethical) private counselor can be like a good coach. Encouraging and helping kids see the pieces and strategize, improve-- not running the ball for you. My first experience about them was one lower school dad telling another, “For 10k, he promises an essay that will get her into Yale.”
OK, I get it. The fact that many of these counselors use the word “ivy” in the name of their business is purely a coincidence- they are not implying in any way that they can take young Jack or Susie and wean them off Instagram and get them doing something Harvard-worthy in their spare time. Folks are paying thousands of dollars for secretarial help, not because using a counselor gives their kid an edge in any way, shape or form. People NEED these counselors- their own GC’s are overworked and terrible, and applying to college is really complicated. The counselors DO NOT edit or ghostwrite essays- they merely suggest tweaks to make sure the essay is written in the voice of a 17 year old. Hiring an outsider to nag your kid is a good use of funds, because otherwise, your kid would be living on your sofa for the next four years.
Gotcha. I will remember these points when I see the “Ivywise” and “Ivyedge” and “IvyBootcamp” and “ILuvIVY” and “IVYBound” advertisements. Just some regular folk outsourcing the secretarial aspects of applying to college.
Yes, blossom. Obviously you’re correct about the un-subtle company titles. Again, my objection is much more related to the predator behavior of these companies, who market (and make promises) to particular cultural niches that are vulnerable to such suggestive wording and not well-schooled in the realities of the process. They will pay almost any amount for “a dream.” And they don’t care if the money is “wasted,” because they consider the “effort” well-spent – or rather, the lack of effort to be a comment on their parenting.
@blossom, I for one never said I wasn’t paying to get an “edge.” Also my kid had no interest in applying to any Ivies. I think the original question that started this thread was: how good are college consultants? Like so much else in life the answer is “it depends.” The image that is often conjured up is of some 30+K consultant trying to get some undeserving Richie Rich Kid into Harvard by ghost writing his or her essays. But in reality there is a wide range of such such consultants, like mine who was a retired public school GC working out of her home. And if I choose to spend some of my money paying someone else to nag my kid, that’s my right. Just like it’s the right of someone else to spend much much more to send their kid to private school and reap the advantages of that.
I proofread my kid’s essays and suggested a few minor changes; his (private school) college counselor did likewise. NOTHING like some of the “services” I’ve seen offered by many of these consultants.
Several years ago I had a few friends and work colleagues ask me to edit their kids’ less-than-stellar admissions essays. These were kids who just weren’t great writers and their essays were pretty terrible. I never would have done that for my own kid, however. He was interested in much more selective schools than the kids I helped, and we both believed anybody applying to tippy-top schools should be able to write a competent essay on his own.My kid didn’t get into every school he applied to, but he knows for the schools he was admitted to, he got in on his own merit, not somebody else’s.
“NOTHING like some of the “services” I’ve seen offered by many of these consultants.”
I think you probably mean providing raw content, right? I do have some colleagues who will do that; I will not. They will fabricate content outside of the student’s experience and knowledge, which I find quite dishonest, as it is representing to the college something the student is not.
