Are you a current Junior or a rising Junior? Did you take the SAT or a ACT yet, and what are your scores like? What kinds of schools are you targeting? How good is your school’s guidance counselor, and will he/she spend much time with you? Have you figured out how much money your family can afford to pay, and have you gone on some college websites and run their NPC (Net Price Calculator) to find out your EFC (Expected Family Contribution)?
I’m asking these questions because: (1) different counselors have different strengths, and you might need someone who focuses more on one issue (such as finances) than another issue (such as essays); and (2) there are a lot of people on CC who will give you great advice for free, but they need more information to help you.
For my family, we decided we only needed help with the essays, and ultimately we did this on our own too. I think there are several components a good counselor will help you with.
One is the financial component, and we understood that. For some people, though, a counselor can provide very valuable advice about scholarships and other opportunities.
Another is making a list of schools to apply to. For us, we didn’t need help with that because we had the opportunity to attend a lot of local college fairs and hear various schools make presentations, and we did a lot of visits, and we had access to Naviance so we had an idea of what the admissions chances were.
Another component is the essays. At first the person we hired was really good because the discussions helped my D decide on what she wanted to write her common app essay on. But it ended up really bad because the consultant over-edited the essay and totally removed my D’s voice so it sounded like it could have been written by just about any kid. So I ended up taking over the editing process and making my D start over from her first draft. All I did was talk with my D about what points I as the reader needed more clarification on or found interesting or helpful, or what I found redundant, and then my D edited it herself with that knowledge in mind. I think it’s really important that someone review your essay, but you need to be very careful not to over-edit or let someone else take over your essay. So be careful who you get to help you with this. And, if at all possible, write the common app essay during the summer before Senior year begins. You’ll be so happy you did because the Fall will be busy.
Some people here have mentioned another component that a private counselor is helpful for, which is making sure you keep up with deadlines. That wasn’t an issue for us because my D’s HS used a system where she put in which colleges she wanted to apply to, and then the system generated dates to show when things were due and when things were submitted. You should ask some of the Seniors at your HS whether your school has a good tracking system or if they needed help. I can also tell you that a lot of parents make spreadsheets of this information themselves, and I bet if you post on the Parents of the HS class of 2018 thread someone will share with you what information you will need in order to make your own.