How to choose an Independent Education Counsellor
Last week, we looked at how best to work with your school’s university counsellor. Many of you will have one at your school or college, so if you do, please have a look at last week’s article.
Many of you, however, won’t have access to expert advice and support in your school or college. This will mainly apply to those currently at schools outside of the UK, but even some of you in the UK might feel that the support you are receiving is not quite enough for you.
If this is you, then read on.
This week we’ll be looking at independent education counsellors, while next week we will look at student recruitment agents. Both may be options for you, and which you choose will depend on your needs and circumstances.
Independent Education Counsellors
These are individuals, or companies, who should provide an unbiased, objective, expert service to help you. They work for you, and not for the universities, and they charge you a fee, ranging from a few hundred pounds, up to several thousands of pounds.
I personally know a handful of such individuals, and typically they come from a background where they have previously been a teacher, a school guidance counsellor, or a university admissions tutor. Occasionally they may have just been a parent who helped their own children, or even a student who found themselves helping others and then turned it into a business. Sometimes they work on their own, and sometimes in partnership with others as part of a small business. And sometimes they are part of a large business, maybe focusing just on university guidance, or perhaps part of wider education and tutoring service.
From your perspective, what is critical is that they are:
Unbiased and objective.
Expert.
Are actually going to help you.
These are the three things you should really check before agreeing to buy their services.
Are they unbiased?
To see if they might not be as unbiased and objective as they seem, check that they are only making income from you via the fee you pay them. If they are also charging universities a fee for your admission, then they are not objective, as they will be likely to try to send you to a university who they have an agreement with. Put another way, they are misleading you, as they are actually an agent. In charging both you and the university, they are what is known as ‘double-dipping’, and this is not OK.
Assuming they are only acting on your behalf, and only making income on your fee, you then it is also worth checking if they have any other allegiances, such as working for a university in a different capacity or having active involvement in a university alumni group. This might allow bias to creep into their advice.
Are they expert?
The second question is about their expertise. The sorts of questions I would ask would be about what they did before they became an independent counsellor, and about their current record of success as a counsellor. If they have substantial experience as a school counsellor at a school with a track record of sending students to UK universities, then there is a good chance they know what they are doing. But if they have just been part-time in such a role for a short time, you’ll want to ask more questions of them. If they have worked in university admissions, then I’d be curious to know where, and whether they have knowledge of just one university, or have a broad perspective from several universities. Clearly the broader their knowledge is, the better.
A number of the larger companies offering so-called expert advice actually connect you with people who have no experience at all of working in universities or schools, and instead use current students or recent graduates, on the basis that they have been through the process themselves so are best placed to advise. While peer-to-peer connections and peer mentoring certainly have huge potential benefits (see for example Unibuddy and Zero Gravity), paying for the advice and support of another student doesn’t seem like a sensible option to me.
In terms of their current work, you should ask them how they keep up to date on trends and developments in the sector. Do they belong to any specific professional groups or networks? Do they attend training and development programmes, such as those offered, for example by UCAS, the British Council, or individual universities? Do they have any professional accreditation, from these or other organisations? And is the training and accreditation available to all of their staff, or just a select few?
Good answers to these questions will give you confidence that they are not just working to their own agenda, but want to learn, to keep up to date and provide you with the best service possible.
Are they actually going to help you?
The third thing that I would suggest you check before signing up an independent counsellor or company is the matter of whether they are really there to help you.
They should always offer an initial consultation for free and you should use this as an opportunity to check whether you think they are really listening to you, or whether they are more inclined to quickly push you through to choices and options before they really have the measure of you. A good counsellor will always really listen first, and will take their time before suggesting options. Their initial job should be to ask the right questions, and this is a good test for your first meeting with them!
Check the small print
If you find a counsellor who you feel confident is unbiased, expert and focused on helping you then the final check you need to do is look closely at the small print of the contract. Be very careful not to sign up to anything that will give the counsellor, or company, the right to use your work, your essays, or your image without further consent from you. I have no problem with companies using past students' work to help inspire future students, but the rights to use your essays in this way should always lie with you, and not the counsellor.
They should also never stand in the way of direct communications between you and the universities to which you apply. Any counsellor or company that demands control of your applications, such as insisting on the sharing of passwords or using their address or email instead of your own, is not someone that you should work with.
Are any of these advisers dodgy?
Some of you may have watched the Netflix Documentary ‘Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal’. It is a sobering tale of widespread corruption in US admissions, with a greedy independent counsellor at its heart, aided and abetted by those in the universities themselves. I can say hand on heart that I have never come across anything like the equivalent of this in UK admissions. If you need an independent counsellor because your school does not have the expertise, then crack on. The one or two independent counsellors who I have known over my career have been decent professionals, with their students' interests at heart.
I am aware of one or two of the larger counselling and tutoring companies operating in a way that could be regarded as sharp practice (e.g. with regards to contract small print), and who charge fees that I would regard as excessive. However, you should not let the behaviour of a few prevent you from working with the good ones. So, exercise a little caution when choosing your counselling company, and you should be able to find a good one!
Keep your school informed
One final comment on working with an independent counsellor. If you are applying through your school and are using an independent counsellor, please tell your school that you are getting this extra help, otherwise you can put them in an extremely difficult position. Someone at your school will be writing your reference, and signing off your application. If you were to mislead them about having outside help with your application, and they find out, it could jeopardise your application. So be open, honest and upfront.
What next?
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like: Applying through a student recruitment agent.
