Why do I need a college counselor when I already have a high school counselor?

On average, there are 450 students for each high school counselor in the US. Unfortunately that level of workload means that the assistance that they can provide is limited to the bare minimum – letters of recommendation, high school course planning, and various highly templatized tasks. While they would love to help with building out a comprehensive college list, crafting a compelling personal statement, and preparing for interviews are often left to the families. Fortunately, College Smart Advising specializes in these tasks, working with students from all over the US to get them into the college of their dreams.

When should I hire a counselor?

In our experience, independent education consultants rarely take on new clients in the fall of their senior year because of their capacity limitations. Most sign sophomores and juniors and work with them throughout high school, with the bulk of the work coming from the summer before the clients’ senior year into the fall. To ensure that you have access to college counseling services, it’s highly recommended to reach out early. At College Smart we just ask for a retainer up front and then the bulk of the payments occur in that summer-fall timeframe.

Additionally, if you want to take advantage of early stages of rolling admissions, Early Action, or Early Decision, you will have to write heavily in the summer months to ensure that you’re ready to apply in September/October for the early deadlines. One great advantage of that is that there are numerous schools with higher acceptance rates (and potentially with higher financial aid packages) for early applicants.

Hiring a college counselor is expensive! Why is that?

What you don’t necessarily see is that there’s hours of work that go on behind the scenes for each hour with a client. Editing essays, visiting schools, building relationships with admissions officers, researching under utilized scholarships, and everything else takes a significant amount of time. Additionally, we have the inside information on which majors are impacted, how a low 4-year graduation rate might actually be hiding the costs of a seemingly cheaper school, and which colleges have the best need and merit based packages. That said, if finances are an issue, we’d still love to set up a call and see what options are available.

ChatGPT exists. Why don’t I use that for my essay help?

First off, the Common App affirmation statement requires that you certify that all work submitted is your own. While individual schools have largely avoided making a formal policy, the ones that do permit the usage in the brainstorming and editing process, but the ultimate submission must be your own work. At College Smart we preach that there are three things that Admissions Offices are trying to assess when looking at the essays that are submitted.

1. Can you write?
2. Can you tell a story?
3. Why should I care about you over the hundreds of others?

Generative AI does a good job at the first one but struggles at the other two. Unfortunately what admissions officers are really looking for is a compelling reason to care. That requires legitimate vulnerability, a compelling tie to your core values, and the craft to put if all together. That’s what we specialize in.

I haven’t cured cancer. I’ve lived a sheltered life with few hardships. I don’t know what I want to study or who I want to be after college. How can I possibly get into an elite university?

While it’s easier to write a compelling story about overcoming the odds. It’s great if you know that you’re going to be the first astronaut born to an undocumented immigrant family. The truth is that most teenagers have lived fairly mundane lives and attempting to claim not making the varsity team a devastating, traumatic event comes off as tone deaf. And it’s totally normal to not know what you want to do after college, most 17 year-olds don’t know what they want for dinner tomorrow night.

At College Smart, we have an Application Plan that is tailor-made to help you discover your core values. It also facilitates the early stages of brainstorming to see what stories might be particularly well suited for the various essays that you’ll be writing. Then, the Advisors at College Smart will guide you through translating the Application Plan into an outline, then a rough draft, and finally (after several rounds of edits) into something that you’ll be proud to submit.