Your International College Admissions Consultant Should be a Recognized Specialist

Westerners have long admired elite American institutions of higher learning. Through the years, many affluent parents from these countries have enrolled their children in Ivy League and other top-tier American colleges and universities. In recent times, globalization and rapid modernization have enabled many students from affluent families in formerly less-developed countries to be able to afford and seek to be admitted to prestigious American institutions.

In line with the rise in demand from these countries, competition for admission has grown ever more intense. International students applying to top U.S. colleges face even longer odds in admissions than Americans due to additional obstacles that must be overcome. For these students, reliance on an international college admissions expert with a Specialist Designation, such as that attained by the Founder, Director & Lead Educational Consultant at IvySelect, has become increasingly vital to the successful navigation of the American admissions process.

Working with a private college advisor who is a recognized international college admissions specialist is critically important. Note that any college consultant can claim that they have expertise in assisting international students. However, only one organization has a protocol for vetting their Professional Members with a background in counseling international students seeking university admission — the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), the premier association in our field.

IECA Professional Members share a common body of knowledge as educational consultants. However, IECA members can also apply for and attain Specialty Designations, including the International Specialty Designation. The Director of IvySelect is one of the few IECA Professional Members to have been awarded this prestigious designation when it first became available.

IECA’s criteria for vetting its Professional Members seeking Specialty Designations are rigorous and thorough. They reflect the range of experience necessary to qualify a consultant as an effective guide for international students. Members must demonstrate experience and competence in their specialties. Having the requisite background and training is a critical part of the evaluative process.

The information that IvySelect’s Director submitted to the IECA included a summary of the students successfully placed in U.S. institutions and a list of their native countries. As part of the vetting process, IvySelect’s Director also demonstrated an understanding of the required student entry and exit documentation necessary in the U.S. and other countries. We detailed our methodology to determine that students possess the fluency in English required by American schools. IvySelect’s Founder also provided a description of our business model and related details. Additionally, we submitted a summary of the services that we perform for each international student.

Recipients of IECA’s International Specialty Designation have all submitted the above information in order to be recognized specialists in the field. However, there are several noteworthy characteristics of IvySelect’s approach that demonstrate IvySelect’s expertise even within this elite group. These characteristics include the following:

• IvySelect consultants have developed expertise in understanding students’ results from the educational systems of other countries. These include curricula, transcripts, grading methodologies, teacher evaluations, recommendations, the extracurricular activities available to the student and the significance of the ones chosen, and tests taken in lieu of or in addition to American standardized tests.
• Notable among IvySelect’s qualifications is the range of countries from which our students hail. These include Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the U.A.E. and the United Kingdom.
• IvySelect consultants coach students and families on the admissions process for highly selective colleges. We help students to select which elite colleges are the best fits for them based on their goals, interests, talents, and preferences. We are familiar with each institution’s climate and physical environment, academic milieu, campus amenities, the surrounding community, and, most importantly, the nuances of each institution’s unique culture.
• Our effective use of digital and telecommunication technologies, including free Skype accounts, renders the distance between us irrelevant. We can speak face-to-face as needed.

In an upcoming post, we will focus on the particularly difficult circumstances that confront Asian students seeking admission to top-tier American colleges. IvySelect has developed an approach that helps this set of aspiring students to surmount these obstacles.