I'm an IEC (Independent Educational Consultant). There are lots of us, and for very real reasons. The college admissions landscape is nuts. Expensive. Arbitrary. Bureaucratic. Just plain weird. In many districts, public high schools are under-resourced and college counselors simply don't have as much time as everyone needs.
We can be life-saving. Also, we can be a colossal waste of money—or worse, part of the problem, adding stress to students' lives instead of subtracting it. And sometimes you don't know which scenario you're in until you're in it.
In the Bay Area (and other metropolitan or higher-income areas) you cannot throw a rock without hitting a college admissions professional. It's not all that unusual for people like me to charge $350 per hour. Four-year comprehensive packages can cost anywhere from $10,000 to (yes, really) $100,000 (yes... really). And while there are exceptions, the strangely inexpensive folks can be a "you get what you pay for" scenario, if only because lower fees almost always mean a higher caseload and less individual attention. It's always worth asking an IEC how many students they work with per year. If they say "fifty," you're signing up for a very different service than if they say "five." That said, you might only need the level of personal attention being offered by the less high-touch person. Several of my students this year truly only needed someone to help them generate essay ideas and talk through the writing and editing process.
Does your student need someone like me? The annoying answer is "It depends."
Broadly speaking, there are a few groups of people for whom a guide to this process is almost always a wise investment.
Families who have not historically attended college or who were educated in other countries often find themselves completely lost in this process. You might want to consider an IEC.
Students who are transferring from a community college to a four-year school often have low counseling resources and a lot of atypical questions. College websites often do not offer much clarity to that demographic. You might want to consider an IEC.
If your student has "specialist energy" (think conservatory track artist or performer, definitely going for applied health sciences degrees like nursing, military-curious, or recruitable athlete, for example), there are things you need to know before you're an active applicant. You might want to consider an IEC.
Students with learning disabilities, psych situations and processing disorders sometimes have a massive leg up on this process—but often it's the opposite. (Try getting someone with OCD to admit they're done revising an essay, or persuading a chronically depressed teen to believe there's a point to putting themselves through this. It ain't straightforward.) A good IEC will be able to help manage low executive function, high reactivity, or a tendency to panic. Your student might even emerge from the process with a new sense of organization and mastery. Worth it.
And (and this one's important!) if your student is a stress-monster, highly sensitive, or a kooky perfectionist (or if YOU are any of those things), fair enough! But I'm going to be blunt and say you might want a buffer between them and you, for the sake of your relationship! The words "I don't know, sweetie, but I bet your college advisor can help" are magical. You will no longer be the bad guy. Harmony will reign in your home. Having been through this process with my own two children? IT'S WORTH IT. Get an IEC.
The Four Year Plan
I've been helping people apply to college (and grad school, and fellowships, etc) full-time since 2019, and sporadically since back in the the 90s. The crappy truth is that most IECs emphasize a relationship that begins when your kid is a rising ninth grader, not because that's generally ideal for the student but because it's ideal for us. We can cloak it in schmancy language to make you feel like you're getting something bespoke and special (look for words like "concierge" or "platinum" in the description of the service), or we can wantonly appeal to your anxiety ("We know what top colleges are looking for and PS your friends all hired us, don't be left behind.") to justify padded fees.
But the truth is, your ninth grader probably doesn't need us, and we'll probably only meet with them once or twice a year until they are in late 11th grade anyway... but you will find yourself paying a few grand for it. If that feels weird and possibly a little parasitic? Congratulations, you are not in a coma.
The Tactical Approach
On the other hand, many if not most students do benefit from a relationship with an IEC from approximately early spring of 11th grade to spring of 12th grade. We can do everything from develop a list of schools that meet their needs or at least reflect their interests, preferences and constraints, to help strategize how to approach declaring a major (or not), optimize their odds of admission, help them get through the scary, vulnerable process of applying, sanity-check them as needed, serve as executive function coaches and sometimes, as ad hoc therapists.
I personally suggest a one- or two-year relationship in most cases. By the middle of 11th grade, most high schoolers are actually ready to think about what comes next, they're motivated to start acting on it, and they're beginning to understand who they are as intellectual beings. A good relationship with an IEC can mean fewer rookie mistakes in your applications, confidence that you're applying to schools you'd actually want to attend, a sense of what is and isn't going to be economically feasible (colleges are like car dealerships—the sticker price isn't necessarily what you're going to pay!) and importantly, permission to be who you really are. (As in: "yes, it's OK if your essay is about that thing you heard 'they don't want to hear about' or 'no, you absolutely do not have to major in business if you want to work in the corporate sector! Follow your passion for languages and major in Russian. I swear it will work out.'")
When you're shopping for a college advisor, there are a ton of things to keep in mind.
Your budget, obviously.
The cost of the services versus what they are actually offering. I would argue that almost no one "needs" an IEC who charges more than you'd pay for a bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley, like ever. I'd equally be wary of anyone claiming to be a full-service admissions guru and charging a three-digit fee. Clearly, there's a lot of middle ground there. Ask questions. It's OK, we expect it.
The cost/benefit ratio for your specific family also matters: if your student has below average grades, isn't very motivated yet, and is still a stranger to self-reflection, they will not somehow get into Stanford because you shelled out for a $50K relationship with an IEC instead of $5K. Not after Rick Singer, anyway! Thankfully that scandal was high-profile enough to scare most colleges straight. (Don't mistake me, there are still plenty of schools with questionable admissions practices, but luckily it's now out of style to PhotoShop your head onto the body of a varsity rower and have a professional nerd take your SAT for you.)
Personal chemistry matters. Your student should feel comfortable with their counselor, able to trust them, able to be a little bit vulnerable, to ask "dumb" questions, to push back on them if needed. Someone who frightens, discourages, shames or just straight-up annoys your kid is not a good investment.
The Secret Sauce
Past all of that, the single biggest thing to look for in an IEC in my admittedly biased opinion is this: Can they teach writing? Because here's the thing. Great college essays probably won't get a kid with a C- GPA into Harvard, but I've certainly seen them get a "below scattergram" student into a reach school. Many times. Most 12th graders have seldom or never had to write about themselves in their lives, and this is a very intimidating first-timer assignment! Whatever you might be told about how essays don't really matter? They matter! Believe me, colleges wouldn't give themselves the brutal chore of reading hundreds of thousands of them a year if they didn't.
But also—and this is important—learning how to present yourself authentically in writing is the part of this process that, whatever the college admissions outcome, is money in the bank for the rest of the student's life. That Common App essay is the first of a bajillion times they will have to do that. Graduate school. Grants. Fellowships. Job applications. Social media posts and online dating profiles. (I'm serious!) In the adult world, we have to use words to convey who we are, how we think, what we value and what we want all the time. In a given year I might have one or two students at most who already understand autobiographical writing and even find it enjoyable. Most 12th graders have simply never had to do it yet.
When students sign up to work with me, they aren't just getting someone who enjoys high schoolers and took some classes in college admissions counseling (though I've definitely done that too!). They're getting someone with an advanced degree in creative writing who has taught it a LOT, to children, teens and adults. I've been a published writer since Ronald Regan was in the White House and I am intimately familiar with the unique cringey fear of sending something heartfelt out into the world to face rejection. I've won awards for poetry, fiction and essay writing. I've worked as a full-time journalist and interviewed scientists, actors, winemakers and film producers on four continents, so I'm pretty dang good at drawing out people's stories. AND I know the cultural differences between the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut, who's more likely to fit in at Harvey Mudd or Colorado School of Mines, when it is and isn't OK to get recommendation letters from people who are not your teachers, and what will actually happen if you declare a major in dairy science at Cal Poly thinking you can side-door into the business school. (Pro tip: resist the urge unless you honestly do love cows.)
No one can guarantee a specific outcome for your student's college applications—and you should back away carefully from anyone claiming otherwise. But if you're looking for someone who can help them learn the craft of written self-expression and use it to create college applications that really sing, we should talk.
I currently have a limited number of spaces available for the class of 2026, and fairly ample space for the class of 2027. Got questions? Ask away.
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