Why I Refused to Have a College Consultant
With overachieving students inflating grades, extracurriculars, and summer programs, there’s a constant pressure to create something new and unique to wow admissions officers. As a result, many families are resorting to independent educational consultants (IECs) for guidance. IECs advertise themselves as sincere assistants who respect student autonomy and authenticity. However, I’ve found that it’s instinctual for college consultants to overreach.
Firstly, it’s important to know the perspective I’m coming from. I’ve always been fortunate to know where I want to be in the future. I’ve also never had any major conflicts with my parents throughout the whole process. These facts alone eliminate two major merits people see in IECs: help with finding a path and mediating communication with parents.
My mom had automatically figured that I would have a college consultant in my life. All her friends had gotten one for their kids; it seemed necessary considering the current climate of applications. I was under the same impression, so I didn’t protest meeting with one.
The consultant himself was a cheerful young man who fit the short-hair-and-glasses Asian stereotype. It was a noble attempt from the company to find someone relatable to me. We talked for about an hour. I tried to convey my passion for ancient history, while the consultant repeatedly circled back to my enrollment in AP Computer Science. He seemed convinced that I would have a future in digital humanities, a field that seeks to preserve historical sites and artifacts through online mediums.
I could accuse the consultant of many things: how he attempted to subliminally influence me to relate to him; how he strategically ignored parts of my case that seemed disadvantageous; how his conclusion sounded like someone who didn’t believe in the inherent purpose of the humanities as a field.
But at the end of the day, these are all parts of his job. College consultants are hired to pan students until only the gold nuggets are left. Most students, having never considered what that nugget looks like, are content with any possibility. It was I myself who was angered. The nugget looked nothing like how I’d imagined.
I told my mom that I didn’t think the consultant was for me.
College consultants do what any human would as they hear the narrative of someone they’re meeting for the first time: they build a mental persona of that person. Using their expertise, they begin to pre-empt elements of your life, your interests, even your aspirations for college. However, their mental image of you can only get so close to the actual you. As someone who has a clear vision of my own future, I found their exploratory thought experiments to be more restrictive and judgmental. I did need help, but to what extent would I give up my own roadmap? Frankly, I wasn’t sure yet either, so I gave consultants another shot.
On a call with a second consultant, I discussed the usual: how I spent my time outside of academics and how they aligned with my interests. She appreciated that I was interested in an undersaturated field, a fact I myself have come to be thankful for. However, when I mentioned a specific, crucial detail about me, her attitude shifted.
At the height of Covid-19, I was sucked into the world of Minecraft server development. During my weeks in quarantine hotels, I stayed up later than I had ever before, designing, programming, and advertising my servers. My presence online expanded rapidly, along with my joy. Sadly, towards the end of the pandemic, as school and the rest of life resumed, I had to put servers on indefinite hold.
When I described this to my second consultant, my voice had the jumpiness of a toddler harping about something new they’d discovered. In my head, the words glistened with the fond memories they represented. As my lengthy report concluded, the consultant didn’t respond. Snippets of mic interference filled the silence. After a few moments, she flatly replied:
“Could we find a more useful project you can represent yourself with?” A line delivered with scorn.
The conversation itself happened in Chinese, but the word “useful” has an ambiguity in both languages. Did she mean useful as in useful to the world? Like the non-profits high schoolers are now caught up with? Or did she mean useful as in useful to my application?
Somehow, I took each branched interpretation of her rhetorical question as a jab at myself. Though I wasn’t soul-crushingly insulted by her scepticism—it was just a video game project from years ago, after all—I could still recognise that my pride in it sounded childish. I felt as if once again, the consultant was lost in her own blueprint of what I should become. That’s what she was basing her advice on instead of the identity I was trying so hard to share with her. I angrily peeled the phone away from my ear and returned it to my mom sitting outside the room. “Our conversation is over,” I said.
The biggest critique of college consulting companies is that they tend to package students, gilding them beyond who they really are. Many of these companies are quick to deny this fact, fearing that the negative stigma associated with the word would worsen people’s views of them. I disagree with both claims. Packaging isn’t bad; it’s necessary. What else would we want to portray to admissions officers, if not our best selves? It’s why all college consultants will, unavoidably, do it. And admittedly, it’s what I wanted help with when I first explored them as an option. If being authentic means being guided down a wearisome path to be seen that way, then it’s a path we must strive to go down.
I believe that the main danger is risking what makes you fundamentally you—a student giving up control to be steered by the consultant. I desperately wanted my own control of the wheel, and a third hand on it felt inauthentic to me. While a college consultant has expertise in helping us navigate the complicated world of college admissions, we have expertise in our own authentic selves.