The college application process can, for many families, be incredibly stress-inducing, what with the many aspects that tend to feel nebulous, such as how exactly admission officers evaluate an application or the social conceptions people sometimes feel around prestige.
Because of these stressors and unknowns, some families turn to IECs (Independent Educational Consultants), who offer to shepherd a student through the admissions process.
As families begin their journey with an IEC, a myriad of questions naturally arise. Parents and students alike often wonder about the best strategies for strengthening a college application, the kind of support that can truly make a difference, and the outcomes they can realistically expect.
In response, it’s common for IECs to highlight statistics such as success rates or claim that working with them could significantly increase a student's chances of admission into top-tier schools. However, we think it can be misleading to quantify results that are based on the subjective reading of applications by a group of humans (aka admissions officers) who operate under the varying institutional priorities of different colleges. Numbers can simultaneously be both accurate for last year's cohort who worked with that company, and not a reliable indicator of how a family can impact their chances of admissions in the current cycle.
It’s important for families to delve deeper and ask insightful questions that go beyond these surface-level metrics. This not only helps in setting realistic expectations but also ensures that the IEC’s approach aligns well with the student's unique aspirations and needs. By understanding what truly distinguishes one IEC from another, families can make a more informed decision that is tailored to their specific goals in the college admissions process.
We want to recognize and emphasize that there are many caring, trustworthy IECs who prioritize the student’s success and well-being throughout the admissions process. We are proud to count ourselves among them. (If you want to read about CEG’s impact, head to that link.)
With that said, we want to expand some on how families can be better served by digging beyond the numbers.
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(click to skip ahead)The Allure of Statistics
Please exercise caution if someone offers you a sense of certainty.
Here’s why: Presenting information through the use of numbers often suggests a level of certainty that simply doesn't exist. No IEC can guarantee an X% increase in your admission chances, due to the many variables involved in the college admissions process.
As a parent, I fully understand the desire for certainty and control over the support my child receives. It’s a natural inclination—we want the best for our kids. However, it’s important to consider whether we are being swayed by a desire for (false) certainty rather than evaluating the actual support offered.
I believe that most IECs are acting in good faith when they share these statistics, proud of the success of last year’s cohort. However, it's important for us to remain discerning—understanding how such claims play into our natural concerns about the application process and ensuring we aren’t swayed by promises that may exceed realistic outcomes.
Think of it this way: one of our team members used to work in the admissions office at Pomona. He says that roughly 80% of the applicants were academically admissible—meaning that who gets admitted often comes down to things like hooks and institutional priorities (and that many students who would be great at that school simply cannot fit).
With that context, it should hopefully be clear why you should be skeptical of claims of certainty.
To avoid calling out other companies directly, we’ll happily pick on ourselves, since we at CEG admit to falling into the stats trap: we (reluctantly) trot out three statistics on our site, not because we think they’re actually representative of effective student and family support (more on that below), but because because parents and students have been conditioned to think so. (Which we’d say is kind of like believing that you can judge the quality of a film, and how much you’ll like it, simply by how much it made at the box office.)
And those numbers are real—our students get into amazing schools every year. This is why I don’t think consultants are lying about the numbers directly or necessarily intentionally: those numbers don’t seem outlandish to me in any way, since I see them repeat every year.
But, because of things like institutional priorities and application saturation, we actively avoid promising anything like certainty of outcome.
We’ve considered sharing our stats more fully, because they are pretty awesome. For example, one year, half of our students that applied to MIT got in… and yes, it was enticing to say that our company’s success rate was 50% at MIT. But the reality is that we had a really strong crop of STEM kids that wanted to apply to MIT that year. The year before, about 17% of our students that applied got into MIT… so it was more about our students’ qualifications and MIT’s institutional needs… not just our services.
But we don’t share these statistics because it comes down to our strong belief that we didn’t get students into college—we helped them navigate the complicated process, supported them in self-reflection, and guided them in telling their unique narrative to colleges…and they had a great result.
To take full credit for their hard work feels disingenuous to us.
Questions families should ask an educational consultant
So what should families focus on instead of numbers?
To help navigate through some of the complexities of choosing an IEC, here are key questions I’d recommend students and parents consider when evaluating a potential educational consultant:
How do you keep up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in college admissions?
What qualifications and characteristics do you look for in your team of college counselors?
Could you share your or your coaches’ experience working with high school students before joining your current team?
How do you tailor your services to meet the individual needs of each student?
What kinds of colleges and programs do your students generally target?
Do you maintain ongoing dialogues with current admissions professionals?
What an Ethical IEC Should Offer
Instead of appealing statistics that might give a sense of false certainty, here’s what I think a great IEC should offer:
Self-discovery and strategy.
The strategy for every applicant should be different, and will depend on factors like location (students from different areas will be assessed differently), type of high school, income level, race and culture, major interests, etc. Since colleges all have different needs, it's important to help a student identify their unique narrative to actually improve their chances of standing out.
The true role of an IEC should be to help students understand themselves better while developing this personalized strategy for college applications.
Here’s a way that our Editorial Director and one of our senior coaches, Andy Simpson, puts it:
I don’t view a great personal statement as the goal of this process. I view it as a fantastic byproduct.
Here’s what I mean by that.
I think the purpose of a lot of the most valuable writing humans do, and especially college app writing, is to practice and develop skills of reflection and metacognition (as in, an awareness of how one’s mind works) that help a human being better understand themselves and how they want to spend their limited time in the world. (And, through metacognitive awareness, how what they think they want has itself been shaped, so they can consider how they may want to reshape it.)
I think that kind of reflection is generally slow and difficult, since students have, on average, rarely if ever been asked to engage in it, and also leads to students feeling like this was an empowering and meaningful process. Kind of like this:
“No matter where I end up, I will always be grateful that I got to embark on this journey of self-exploration and reflection with you.”
— one of our former students
In a culture with few-to-no rites of passage, I think this kind of writing can function as a great one, one in which students begin to claim their sense of identity and meaning.
Key Takeaways
If you walk away from this article with only one thought, I’d want it to be the importance of looking beyond glossy statistics and choosing IECs that commit to the genuine support for students.
I’d highly encourage you to conduct thorough research and ask critical questions like those above before hiring an IEC.
Thanks, take care, and best of luck with your application process.
Special thaks to John Tsai for writing this blog post
John (he/him) is our Chief Strategy Officer and holds a M.S. in Social Entrepreneurship from USC and a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. At CEG, John supports the needs of students and families by helping them find the right tools and services as they navigate the college application journey. He spent the first decade of his career as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. As a first-generation college graduate and a fierce advocate for access to higher education, he volunteered as a tutor and college counselor for high school and community college students in the Bay Area. After moving to Los Angeles, John transitioned away from technology to become a full-time educator. He was a college counselor, essay specialist, and the Director of Academic Services at an independent educational consultancy. He then taught high school math and entrepreneurship at a South Central LA charter school, while working with UnidosUS to support dozens of first generation college applicants. Recently, he was the Director of College Counseling at an independent school in Hollywood. Outside of work, John is constantly hunting for the next great bite of food.
