Are you looking for help with college admissions but have no idea where to start?  The difficulty in looking for an independent college counselor lies primarily in the diverse range of services offered. Here is a list of the different types of admissions services available, and what to expect from each, ranging from limited to comprehensive service providers:

Institutional Counselors. Counselors employed by your high school or university usually help with the required recommendation forms and administrative procedures. They cannot help you with essays or applications simply because those duties are not in their job scope or commitment capabilities. You are looking for an independent college counselor in the first place because the help that you need exceed what is provided by your institutional counselor.

Essay Editors. Although at the lower end of the cost spectrum, essay editors can only help you with structure and grammar for personal statements. They are usually not expected to, or experienced with, helping you craft personal statement topics with college admissions in mind. They also are not expected to help or have experience with the other aspects of admissions that you may need in order to find an edge in admissions, such as applications, supplements, and financial aid.

Tutoring Centers. Some test-prep centers have now begun to lump into their services what they call "college consulting" services. However, most of the time, you will receive help from a tutor in an hourly format. The tutors will help you with applications and personal statements. Most of the time, however, the quality of service you receive depends completely on how lucky you get with the tutor that you have been assigned to. Some tutors may be experienced with the aspects of college admissions, but you will rarely find a systematic process or a clear strategy in helping a student increase the chances of admissions.

Independent College Counselors. An independent college counselor is a working professional, certified to have knowledge, experience, and the holistic approach necessary for the complete university admissions process. The two core services that you will receive from an independent college counselor involve college applications and personal statements. An independent college counselor will help you choose the right topics to make your personal statements a reflection of you and help you stand out in admissions. A college counselor will also usually help to present you, through your application, in the most distinctive way that highlights your best traits.

Application services and personal statement revisions are a given expectation, but what else does a truly good college counselor provide?

In our systematic approach to college admissions, we recognize that every family has different academic, personal, and financial needs and goals for the college admissions process. In addition to application management and personal statements, we create a personalized admissions strategy for each student, coming down to a proper major, selecting the right universities, and producing resumes to garner recommendations.  We use temperament theory to figure out what areas a student may excel in and compare with his/her areas of interest. Unlike anywhere else, we use proprietary task tracking software to allow you to see where you stand in the process and remove the uncertainty of admissions.

An emerging area of college admissions counseling services involves the use of state of the art web-based technology to assist with various aspects of the process. Typically these are useful online tools for those who are highly self-motivated and organized, however we have yet to see a holistic solution that packages these various bits and pieces into a streamlined end-to-end offering... stay tuned, because here at College Consulting we plan to keep you posted on new developments in this area.

With our services, you can be certain that anything and everything you need to maximize your admissions--your goal and ours--will be taken care of, which is the most sensible approach for something as important as a one-shot chance at university admissions.

Tags: “college admissions”, “college counselor”, “admissions counseling”, “college applications”