Why work with a college consultant?
It’s a good question. Your high school probably has a handful of guidance counselors. If you attend an elite private high school, you may have more than a handful, or even a comprehensive college admissions curriculum. When you’re beginning the college search, it’s important to understand what an independent college consultant can do for you and what makes them distinct from high school guidance counselors.
Here’s a rundown of what makes May First special:
Attention: According to the American School Counselor Association, the ratio of students to counselors nationwide was 415 to 1 in the 2020-2021 school year. Guidance counselors have a tremendous amount of responsibility, including supporting students’ emotional health, keeping student records, managing student behavior, and advising students on course selections. And unless your high school is an exception, the counseling office is likely understaffed (and don’t even get us started on woeful guidance counselor pay). Through no fault of their own, your school’s guidance team is not equipped to identify the needs and best-fit options for each student in your graduating class.
At May First, we are able to spend as much time as we need getting to know you and your family. Through our personalized work, we learn what your interests are, what kind of learner you are, what you like to do in your free time, what makes you anxious and what makes you excited about college. Because we limit the number of clients we take on for each graduating class, we are able to focus on you from the moment we meet to the moment you commit to your best-fit school.
Prioritizing you: Your school’s guidance team is interested in you and your needs, for sure. But they are chiefly concerned about their own numbers and data. They want as many successful applications as they can get, period, and that means they aren’t necessarily invested in helping you get into your best-fit school; they just want you to get into a school. To that end, you might find that students from your high school seem to apply to and attend many of the same colleges year after year. That’s because your high school has relationships with particular colleges, which is helpful to applicants. But there are 4,000 colleges in the United States. Your best-fit school may be one your guidance counselor has little familiarity with. At May First, our only priority is you. We work to identify schools where you will be challenged, inspired, supported, and most of all, happy.
Expertise: For the most part, high school guidance counselors do not receive formal training around college advising or the college admissions process. Combine that with staffing shortages, mounting responsibilities, and a shifting and competitive college admissions landscape, and it’s no wonder high school guidance counselors aren’t able to guide individual students as effectively as they might like.
Hiring an independent college consultant means you have access to up-to-the minute admissions data, trends, and strategies. Better still, we use this information to identify schools that are right not just for kids coming from your high school, but for you personally. In most cases, we’ve actually visited the colleges you’re applying to. How are the restaurants? Eclectic and international. What outdoor activities are there near campus? Cool hiking and running trails, but no water. What’s the feel of the campus? Tight knit, lots of on-campus activities.
We know colleges, and we know how to help you gain acceptance to your best-fit school. The personal essay is an important piece of that puzzle. High school guidance counselors and English teachers will often steer students away from the kind of creative, personal work we advise for the personal essay. But we know from experience, research, and from listening to what college admissions readers have to tell us, that students who balance a unique approach with sincere personal reflection are more likely to end up in the “consider” pile.
Stress Management: Your high school guidance counselor only has so much time to instruct you on the admissions process. By necessity, they’ll hand you a list of important dates and deadlines, and if you’re lucky, they’ll check in once or twice a semester.
At May First, we use the grossest, most old-timey expression ever: eat the elephant in small bites. Our approach is to take on a little bit at a time so students and families don’t get overwhelmed. The college admissions process shouldn’t just be an endless stream of due dates and check boxes. It should be exciting and fun, and this really can happen with a strategic and measured approach.
Strategy: Sadly, there is a strategy to applying to colleges. We work with families to help them understand the advantages and disadvantages of Early Decision, Early Action, and Regular Decision. We advise students on how to approach -- and whether or not to submit -- standardized test scores. We guide students on how to craft an application that tells a consistent and compelling story about who you are and why colleges should want you.
Most importantly, when you have a question, a concern, a freak out, or an idea, we’re here to answer the phone and talk you through it. We’d love to work with you and your family as you begin the exciting process of finding your best-fit school. Send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617-851-9975) and let’s get started.
