College Consultant Reviews.com

College Consultant Reviews.com is an open directory of college admissions counseling services and user reviews written by students and families who've hired them in the past.

The Independent Educational Consultants Association counts several hundred among its numbers. There are hundreds elsewhere. Who gets results? Who's worth working with? These are questions that need to be asked and answered someplace.

Anyone can submit a consultant to the directory. Anyone can write a review. No registration required. However registered users can add useful information like URL's, images, detailed contact info and more to consultants they add to the site. Register here.

1. What's a college admissions consultant?
   
   According to Wikipedia, a college admissions consultant is a professional person who helps students and their families plan the student's college application effort. Often this will involve choosing schools for a student to apply to, planning for standardized testing, choosing high school classes and helping with college application essays and materials.


2. Who runs this site?
   
   College Consultant Reviews is published by Brad Flora, a former Princeton admission officer (you can see a cartoon of him from the Princeton student paper here) and current freelance journalist who sees a need for greater accountability and information sharing in the independent counseling arena. As an admission officer he realized that many of the applications he read had probably benefited from professional help, something he'd never even heard of before he attended college and learned about it from classmates.
   
   With so many people offering to help students get into elite colleges these days and record numbers of students applying to the most exclusive schools, it seems important to answer some of the outstanding questions about this industry. What qualifications do these counselors tend to have? What do their services cost? And how successful are they at "placing" students?
   
   College Consultant Reviews aims to be the definitive, objective source of information on this industry by listing all known consultants and giving their clients a place to weigh in on them.


3. Is this site affiliated with any consultant or service?
   
   Nope. This site is an independent operation, meant to bring an objective perspective into the admissions consulting arena.
   
   Admissions help services are welcome to advertise on the site and can dictate how they are represented in their listing by claiming it (see below), but the reviews themselves are user-submitted and independent.


4. What should I write in my review?
   
   Write as much or as little as you like, but the more information you provide, the more helpful your review will be. Information on services offered, pricing, reasons for hiring a consultant...it's all terribly useful.


5. Will my review be edited?
   
   Reviews will be moderated for offensive language. Otherwise they'll be left alone.


6. What's the deal with the "Claim it" button?
   
   We invite consultants to "claim" their entries in the directory. Once an entry has been claimed, the consultant can add images, live links, detailed contact information and more. Claiming a directory entry is free and easy to do.
   
   First a consultant needs to register with the site. Then he or she should contact the site's administrator through the "contact" form on the site. The administrator will then tie the consultant's account to his or her listing and they can edit it at their leisure.


7. Can you get me into school X?
   
   While Brad has himself consulted with families on admissions-related issues in the past and does provide pro-bono advice to schools on occasion, he is currently focusing his energies on this site and other projects (like graduate school!). He's always happy to field questions when he can, however.