What I’ll cover in this blog:
-Do we need a college counselor?
-Questions to ask the counselor in the first meeting
-How to evaluate the answers and make a decision
-Having realistic expectations
-How Goal Admit can help
Do we need a college counselor?
Choosing the counselor was the first early, stressful decision we had to make in the college admissions process for our two boys. We live in the Bay Area in CA and there are many many options, from large established companies to one-person boutique options. First we had a discussion about why we needed a counselor in the first place. The consensus between my husband and me was:
-we both have full time jobs, we cannot give the application process the full time attention it deserves
-our kids are not naturally organized, the older one tends to procrastinate
-our kids were not motivated enough about the process to give the writing their best effort
-our kids think parents don’t know anything and will not listen to our advice easily
-our kids are easily swayed by peer pressure
-we were not familiar with the process at all for our older son, and did not want to risk making a mistake that would lead to a rejection
-we knew we would have disagreements amongst our family and felt it would be easier to get our kid (and spouse:-)) to listen to a neutral third party
-we could afford the thousands of dollars needed
-when the final college admissions decisions were in, we did not want to feel regret that the outcome may have been better if we had used a college counselor
The most important point for us was the last one – we did not want to have regrets at the end of the process that would potentially haunt us for a long time.
Once we decided we needed a counselor, choosing a college counselor was the next big decision.
Questions to ask the counselor in the first meeting when choosing a college counselor
The questions we need to ask vary depending on the type of outfit, so I will list some common questions first and then differentiate.
Common Questions:
1. Where are you based? Will all sessions be in-person or on zoom?
2. What is your college counseling philosophy? What do you tell your students to strive for?
3. Do you guarantee admissions to any particular colleges or tier of colleges?
4. Based on the stats we presented today, what are the chances of my kid getting into the top college of his choice?
5. How many colleges will you help with? If your pricing package says 20 colleges – do all the University of California colleges count as one college?
6. Will you help with supplemental essays for each college?
7. Will you help review the entire college application for all the colleges agreed to? Help us clarify doubts we may have with individual questions and then review the entire application question-by-question before we submit it?
8. What is the essay review process? How many edits/reviews are included in the pricing?
9. What happens if we cannot agree on something – for example we want an essay to be written differently than what the counselor suggests?
10. Will you help us make the final decision once acceptances are in?
11. Will you help us write letters to waitlisted colleges if any?
12. Will you help us with recommendation letters? Whom to approach? What information to provide?
13. Will you help us with interview prep for colleges that conduct alumni interviews?
14. What kind of information do you provide on the college lists which will help us decide which colleges to apply to as Reach, Target and Safety?
15. Do you help with SAT/ACT prep?
16. How often will you meet with us?
17. Are parents allowed to join the counselor meetings?
18. Will we have a set schedule of meetings?
19. Is there any negotiation or discount on the price?
20. Can we choose a subset of only essay reviews or only application reviews? Or do we need to sign on for the full package?
21. Could you provide references? Anyone we can talk to whom you have worked with in the past?
22. Can we terminate the contract in the middle if we are not satisfied with the services provided? Will we get back a proportionate amount of the money in such a scenario?
Additional Questions for established companies:
1. Will the counselor be involved in essay reviews or is there a separate essay review team?
2. Will essay reviews happen 1:1 or in group sessions with other kids? If it’s a group session how can we ensure that no other kid is copying our ideas while they are being discussed?
3. Is there a separate schedule for the essay review sessions?
4. Will the essay reviewer be the same for all the sessions so we can get consistent feedback?
5. Do you provide committee review options? Where a committee of counselors review our application/essays?
Additional Questions for a small boutique outfit or an individual:
1. Do you have a team or do you handle all sessions and reviews yourself?
2. How many students will you be taking on in this cycle?
3. How can we be assured that you will give us the full attention we deserve?
4. Is there any offline hourly work that will be billed to us? How will that be calculated? How can we be assured that for that hour you worked only on our student?
5. Since you specify an hourly rate, could you tell us how many hours (online and offline) it takes on average to complete the application and essay review process? So that we get an idea of the final cost?
I’d be very wary of recent high school graduates offering counseling services saying “I got into the following top schools and can help you get in as well.” It’s almost cruel to promise unrealistic results to students who simply do not have the stats necessary to get into a top school.
How to evaluate the answers and make a decision
Some of the questions I listed are weed out questions.
3. Do you guarantee admissions to any particular colleges or tier of colleges?
No counselor should provide guarantees. The college admissions decisions are unpredictable and holistic and there is no way to guarantee admissions. All a counselor can do is talk about their track record.
4. Based on the stats we presented today what are the chances of my kid getting into the top college of their choice?
If the counselor again guarantees admission in response to this question, I’d be suspicious. Stats are not the only factor. Counselors should get to this later in the process, when they help us decide what is a Reach, Target, or Safety school based on our entire application including our essays.
16. Are parents allowed to join the counselor meetings?
If a counselor says no to this I would automatically reject them. I think 16/17/18 year olds are not mature enough or disciplined enough to know what’s right for them. And parents know their children the best and can provide unique insights and valuable input. In my case my husband and I are both post-graduates, we’re good at English, and I’d even taken a Stanford writing course and written a fiction book. We definitely felt we could add a lot of value to the essays. It’s important for parents to be aware of what information and questions the counselor is sharing – parents need to evaluate if they’re getting their money’s worth. Most importantly, nobody would care as much about our child’s application as we would. My husband and I went through each application with our child multiple times after the counselor review, and found multiple errors.
I should add that the degree of involvement of parents may vary and that’s okay as long as parents are not totally barred from attending the sessions. My two boys went to the same college counselor company – an established big name. The older one’s counselor encouraged us to actively participate in our son’s counselor sessions and even ended up acting as a couples counselor, mediating between my husband and me when we had strong disagreements:-) My younger one’s counselor disapproved of active parent participation in the sessions and I had to write out notes to my son on what to ask or what to respond while sitting silently next to him.
For the other questions, it’s a personal decision on whether you are happy with the answers about philosophy, cost, frequency of meetings, in-person or zoom, etc. At the end of the session I’d suggest having a discussion as a family on your impressions about the counselor. Did they seem easy to work with? Were they likely to consider all your inputs and align with them? Did you all LIKE them? It’s a long, exhausting, stressful process and you have to feel like you are in sync with the counselor. This has to be the most important factor in choosing a college counselor – feeling like you’re in sync with them.
Having realistic expectations
Ivy League and top 20 schools are the dream of many students and parents. Why not? We always want the best for our kids and we feel they deserve it. Especially the ones who’ve worked hard to collect an impressive set of stats academically and with extracurriculars and other awards/achievements.
But college admission decisions are a roulette wheel. Some decisions can seem mystifying “How could X not get into any Ivy League, he had such superior stats?” “What a surprise that Y got into Harvard”.
“Holistic” evaluations by admission officers, diversity and race factors, geographical factors, even the mood of a reader when they reviewed your application – there are so many intangibles that go into an acceptance or a rejection decision.
To reduce the stress of the entire process, I’d suggest that kids and parents have realistic expectations. This includes their expectations from their college counselors. College counselors are not God, they are not the decision makers for admission. They are, for the most part, experienced, well-researched, and helpful. But they are not infallible. We did it ourselves, asking the counselor why our older son didn’t do better with the UC admissions and did not get into some of the colleges that the counselor had said were Target or Safety schools. I remember the counselor replying that he was surprised by the results himself, that the year had been non-typical in the results, and that there were a lot of other kids who were disappointed with the results that year. We went back to the same company for our second son because we understood and accepted that results are not the “fault” of any one person when so many variables are at play. We have to trust that in the end all colleges are great and our kids will succeed in life no matter where they end up.
How Goal Admit can help
I have lived the experience you are going through – the stress, the questions, the difficult decisions. I believe that affords me a unique perspective to understand and empathize with students and parents and be a true partner in this process.
I am extremely efficient and well-organized and have done extensive research on the college admissions process and requirements.
I have a website where you can learn a lot about me and my counseling philosophy through my “About”, “Testimonials”, and “Blog” pages.
I do not promise or guarantee Ivy League and top-20 acceptances. I think it’s disingenuous to do so. I do promise to give you my very best effort, attention, and help.
I’m not in this for the money. I quit corporate America with a comfortable nest egg and am starting on this journey to help students and parents. I offer very reasonable rates. I am offer flexible a-la-carte options. I am aiming to help the scores of students who cannot afford the big name companies.
I believe deeply in honesty and genuineness – I think fabricating details or stories or answers will ring false in the end and hurt instead of helping. The entire application and the essays should be a true, natural reflection of the student and their actual accomplishments. True voice shines through and impresses.
In the end, my goal is to help you get admitted to the college of your choice.