It’s late on a Friday night and I’ve just submitted my Common App. I proudly skim over the PDF of my submission, giddy from the lack of sleep and the stress that’s just been lifted off my shoulders. Suddenly, my heart stops. At the place where my activities essay was supposed to go, there are three lines of blank space – had I forgotten to paste it in?
Overcome with panic, I start to cry, picking up my cell phone and dialing the first person on my favorites list.
“Hello? Sabrina?” my college counselor says confused, “What’s… up?”
I even forget to apologize for bothering him as I explain in short breaths and incoherent sentences what I feared had happened.
“Calm down. Stop crying, it’s going to be fine,” he said. “You can just add the essay into your supplement – admissions won’t know the difference.”
Over the past three months my college counselor has become a friend. He’s been there for all my mental breakdowns, from “there isn’t space for me in multivariable calculus class” to “I just flunked the ACT,” and he always has a solution.
A growing business especially in the Bay Area, college counseling has incited much controversy, arousing questions about unfair advantages and ethical implications.
Being a fairly new industry — the Independent Educational Consultant’s Association (IECA) was formed just 36 years ago — there is little to no centralized regulation and many counselors in this area are either overworked or charging exorbitant prices for their services. At the same time, choosing a reliable, dedicated counselor can relieve seniors of significant amounts of stress during the application season.
Many argue that the large sum of money some parents pay for college counseling puts others without the money to pay for the service at a disadvantage; according to the IECA, the average charge for college counseling is approximately $4,000 per year.
Yet how is it any different from paying more to go to a private school or paying for a private tutor? Parents simply want the best for their children, and if they can afford it, college counseling can be a valuable investment.
College counseling provides students with resources that aren’t readily available at school. Though I dreaded spending my weekends at all-day essay workshops and three-hour interview lectures, I admit they paid off in the long run. Unlike many of my classmates who will be frantically navigating Common App at 11:59 on New Years Day, I’ve already completed most of my applications.
Furthermore, though the school guidance department does do comprehensive workshops for filling out applications and essay writing, there is no way a single guidance counselor can read and edit the applications of all 90 of her students in the detailed way a private counselor can. In fact, according to the American School Counselor Association, the student to school counselor ratio is about 470 to 1 in the United States.
Critics of college counseling say that it’s not worth the price — that students should be able to handle a couple applications; after all, there wasn’t such thing as college counseling a couple decades ago. What they fail to realize, however, is that times have changed and that admissions is a rat race with millions of 4.0-plus GPA students, with page long lists of extracurriculars who are all applying to the same elite universities.
College counselors can help to set a student apart, to find “quirks,” as my own counselor puts it. When I was having difficulties deciding on an undergraduate major, my counselor sat me down and asked me a series of questions. I organized my thoughts, realizing that I wanted to incorporate science and humanities into my college experience. My counselor suggested public health, a field I’d hardly ever heard of. After looking into it, however, I realized it was the perfect fit for my personality and aspirations.
While some students choose to use other resources like collegeconfidential.org for advice and English teachers for essay editing, they lack the advantage of constant, knowledgeable support through the application process. College counselors provide assistance even beyond academics, including emotional support in times of crisis.
My parents too are relieved that we chose to use a college counselor. Dinner table conversations are no longer debates about early action schools and interview strategies. My mom in particular loves that I no longer beg her to edit my essays or have stress attacks when I come across ambiguous instructions on Common App.
Especially at the peak of college app season, I am beyond grateful to be working with someone who can guide me through each step of the process, though I feel that with a few more surprise phone calls, that feeling won’t be mutual.