Post By: COYD Staff
With college admissions competition increasing every year, more and more high school students are hiring private college admissions counselors (aka admissions consultants) to help them with the college admissions process. One recent study estimated that 26% of “high achieving” students make use of admissions consultants. For the students who decide to hire an admissions consultant, be wary of the following types of consultants:
1. Those who suggest they have “pull” at certain universities
When you see this on their marketing or in their verbal pitch, ask them to explain this in detail. If you smell something fishy, trust your gut and run away. Though this claim seems extremely appealing to a hungry student who desperately wants to get into the college of their dreams, it could cause more harm than good.
First, those who usually suggest this kind of pull are the consultants who charge exorbitant prices for their services. Some charge tens of thousands of dollars for their services. Others charge much less and the only way the pricey consultants can justify this price differential is their “pull”.
Second, “pull” could mean that they actually do have contacts in the admissions offices. However, this is dangerous as well because you have to trust that your consultant will be able to navigate the admissions offices of the college of your dreams with tact, discretion and wisdom. If they don’t, they could rattle the cages, wake the dead, and cause unnecessary NEGATIVE attention to your application. There is more and more scrutiny with consultants and their connection with admissions offices these days. More and more press about the code ethics of private admission consultants. You don’t want your application or your admissions consultant to be the one they decide to make an example of. This could be detrimental to your chance of getting into that particular college. Admissions consultants are there to lend their expertise on college admissions which comes from their experience, not from their “connections”. That’ll be for the working world:).
2. Those who will write your application essay for you
Besides the outright moral issues, this action could also put you in a precarious situation. If you do not write your own essay and leave it to the hands of an admissions consultant, you have relinquished control of your application essay. Worst case scenario, the admissions consultant cut and pastes a portion of another essay into your essay which is plagiarism. If caught, it could obliterate any chance of getting into the college of your dreams. In a previous posting, I discussed a company called Turnitin which developed a technology to “detect plagiarism on applications. More and more universities are utilizing these types of technology to detect plagiarism.
3. Those who guarantee admission into specific colleges
There is no such thing as a guarantee and those who put that on their marketing or verbal pitch are falsely advertising.
