Our kid’s current school goes through 12th, and it is extremely unusual for anyone to go to BS for high school. They’re just not equipped to guide students looking to move on, so we had absolutely no help from our current school. Nor do we know anyone at BS right now who has gone through this recently.
The consultant came as a recommendation from a friend. And the full package wasn’t even half the price of the above mentioned international student consultant but our eyes still bulged out of our head at the cost.
I get the feeling that if your kid has some unique circumstances (disciplinary issues, missing grades/years, learning differences) then the consultant might offer some useful insights, if you can afford it. These consultants market themselves as having long term relationships with the schools and it is in everyone’s interest to have students apply/attend schools where they can thrive and be successful.
In hindsight, we probably didn’t need a consultant but I’ll never know since we cannot go back and do it all again without one (thank goodness, I don’t want to go through that again). I do know that on A10, when we called her to discuss our kiddos results, she said that it was a challenging year for her clients.