Elite Prep Students Should Hire a Private Educational Consultant
Students fortunate enough to graduate from a top-tier Ivy League feeder prep school can still benefit greatly from working with an IvySelect private college counselor. While the direction provided to students by guidance counselors in elite prep schools is generally superior to that provided by their public school counterparts, they still do not provide the level of individualized and comprehensive guidance available through IvySelect.
First, although they work with many fewer counselees than public school counselors, they are limited in the attention they can provide their students due to a myriad of duties and responsibilities that they must meet. As a result, although they generally will review their student’s main Common Application personal statement once or twice, they rarely carry it through the multiple revisions that are provided to IvySelect’s students.
Nor do they necessarily give the guidance that students require. For example, we have seen multiple examples of students coming to us with essays that their guidance counselors from elite prep schools have approved. Yet, the topics may drastically harm a student’s ability to gain admission to the Ivies and other top schools. The philosophy of in-school counselors is often that it’s the student’s idea and although they’ll help give advice about the essay, they won’t prevent them from following through with a bad idea.
At IvySelect we guide our students to their strongest topic for their main Common Application essay. We help direct you to do what our experience has shown will give you the best chance to stand out from the crowd based on your academic and extracurricular background. Your IvySelect college admissions consultant will provide much more sustained guidance on your essay, often spending five or more sessions on your personal statement, touching upon everything from content to structure and emotion.
Here is another significant way in which IvySelect college consultants provide much greater help than guidance counselors from elite college prep schools. We offer detailed and comprehensive assistance on the multiple essays that students need to write in response to the supplemental essay questions that are required by the Ivies and top-tier schools.
Our students, on average, apply to 12-13 schools. This commitment can easily translate into 25-30 essays and short answer questions beyond the main Common App essay. IvySelect’s private college counselors will work on ALL of those essays with you. Few guidance counselors in prestigious prep schools will work on any of these writings with their counselees.
Loyalty is another important factor to consider. The counselors at prep schools loyalty is first and foremost to the school, not the individual student. They are concerned about their reputations, so their advocacy for a particular student may be muted if they don’t consider their counselee to be among their top students.
IvySelect college admissions consultants have no divided loyalties. We work solely on your behalf. We advocate for you and help you make your strongest case for admission.
Finally, although guidance counselors at top college prep schools may provide general input about extracurricular clubs that you might want to check out at school or hand you a list of summer academic and extracurricular options, they absolutely do not, in our experience with multiple prestigious college prep day and boarding schools, provide the strategic planning that is part and parcel of the IvySelect college admissions process.
Whether it is not in the DNA of the guidance counselors at top prep schools, or they feel it is not their job to help their students define and ramp up their profiles, they will not provide you with the strategic planning that helps IvySelect students stand out from the crowd. Through a detailed and sophisticated positioning strategy, IvySelect college consultants help our clients maximize their competitive stature to the Ivies and other top-tier universities.
For all the above reasons, families and students from the most prestigious college prep schools in the country, including Exeter, Andover, Choate, Deerfield, Horace Mann, Dalton, Harvard-Westlake, Sidwell Friends and many, many more have wisely turned to IvySelect for expert guidance through their college admissions process.
