I met a parent the other day who asked me why his daughter needs a guidance counselor to help with her college applications. He also told me that he was a high-tech executive working for a big company in Silicon Valley and he graduated from a prestigious university on the East coast. He said he could easily help his daughter in all aspects except maybe he didn’t have the time. This is a legitimate question for professional college counselors, and I didn’t think it was a provoking challenge.
After working in the education field for over 30 years and over 20 in college counseling, I can confidently say two things separate us from “amateurs”, experience and training. Many of our counselors have over ten years of experience, some more than twenty, working “exclusively” in college counseling and application, not in admissions, teaching, or other educational professions. These accumulated experiences will make a tremendous difference when making strategic decisions for the students. If you are a professional in your field with years of experience, you will understand what I’m saying. Just like a doctor who can pinpoint your sickness immediately after hearing your unique symptoms. Or, an expert tailor who can make the suit look good on you regardless of your body shape. This is what we do and we do nothing else, but get you into your dream schools.
Furthermore, we have many of these specialists. We have hundreds of years of cumulative experience which we utilize by sharing information and strategies during our regular meetings. It is often that we would discuss certain peculiar cases that we encounter during meetings to figure out the best strategies. Using this powerful collective knowledge, we developed our proprietary counseling system that has been proven effective in getting you in. Even though this counseling skill can be taught, the effectiveness and quality are determined by the source, which is our strong experience counseling team.
So back to the question, can this successful father help his sibling? Absolutely, but the result might not be the same. This father has only applied to college once in his life. His situation, profile, and the environment when he applied are different from what his daughter is facing now. Even if his daughter is a complete clone of him, he might not get the same result. An experienced counselor should have submitted hundreds if not thousands of applications which allows her/him an instinct when preparing for a student’s application. In addition to helping students every year as well as staying connected with admission officers from different universities allow them to see the trends and adjust the students’ profile accordingly to increase their advantage. Of course, the inherent quality of the counselors is also important such as excellent writing skills, passion for education, creativity, and so on. Even a former admission officer might not qualify to do an application. All those food judges on TV with excellent taste buds, can they prepare Michelin-quality dishes? One good piece of advice can make or break your application, so it’s prudent to choose wisely.
Let me give you a few cases where good advice or our experience shine. There was this one high-achieving student from one of the top magnet schools who got a perfect score on the SAT. He actually prepared himself by studying books bought from local bookstores. One prep company approached his family and offered monetary payment to use his name for promotion. His mother accepted it and his picture was published in a local newspaper as well as on that company's website. When we learned this, we begged them to return the money and asked for his profile to be taken off the website. The company refused and the damage was done. Unfortunately, he was rejected by all the top private universities he applied to, but we managed to get him into the top UC honors program with a full scholarship. If they had consulted us, our advice would have saved them the pain of not getting a single offer from top universities. When you publicize yourself, getting a top score by paying to get help from some institutions is a No-No to these schools. For the record, getting help in preparing college applications is accepted and not shunned by universities. This practice will not influence their decisions.
Another precautionary tale happened to one of our students. She was very active on Instagram and had a very large following. She was accepted to one of the top schools with strong religious affiliations. Two weeks before school started she received a letter revoking her admission. Its reason was that the school found out from her social media of raunchy pictures she posted. This was devastating since her other option was to go to a community college. Fortunately, we were able to advise her to take down all her social media accounts and help her present a convincing appeal letter. She was readmitted.
To lay people, the perception is that all we do is help with personal statements. Yes, we are very good at helping students craft “perfect” essays, but we also give them so much more such as strategies in selecting colleges, recommendation letters, interviews, presenting one’s extracurricular in a particular way, etc. Even filling out the mundane application has its tricks and nuances. I remember scolding a student for filling the column for activity with the sentence, “It’s fun”. How would that appear to a college admission reader? Most likely, this student is immature which could be off-putting to certain people.
Finally, there is always this nightmarish scenario. It’s two days before the deadline, and the applications are not finished. Every winter near the deadline we get countless parents walking into our offices and asking us to help. We can only speculate that some of these students don't know what they are doing, they like to procrastinate, or they couldn't find help. How many of the parents are kept in the dark about their children’s application progress? Sure, a solid experienced counselor can help put up strong applications at the last minute, but why wait until the last minute? A good counselor can save both the parent and the student some aggravation and stress from application pressure early on.
Ultimately, you and your child have to decide if getting help from professionals is worth it. But I can tell you from experience that it does make a big difference. Most of the time, you only have one shot to shoot for your dream school. You have to make it count. Not only that, it is imperative one goes to the best school possible, not second or third best. Your result truly matters. Now go listen to Eminem's “Lose yourself”.
