Why Use a Consultant?
Parents often ask why they can’t research and apply to schools on their own. Of course they can, and it often works out well. However, a consultant is a “student of schools” who has researched every boarding school and knows what types of students will thrive at each one. Consultants visit schools on their own, go on consultant tours of 5-10 schools in a week, and attend educational conferences. They work with so many applicants over the years, that they become very good at predicting outcomes and making recommendations that will be best for the student. The decision to send a child to boarding school is a costly one, both financially and emotionally, and it often pays to get well-researched advice.
I see many disappointed families who based their school application decisions on old reputations, on comments from friends and neighbors, or even from the schools’ own websites, which generally give no information on what an accepted student’s profile is like. I’ve had clients who wanted to find wonderful nurturing schools for their struggling students, but came to me with lists of schools that missed the mark. Consultants are effective in working with many types of family dynamics and in helping parents to allow their teenager some autonomy in the admissions process.
Kristin M. White has been the director of Summit Academic Advisors since 2004. She is an associate member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, the Small Boarding School Association, the NJ Association of College Admissions Counselors. She has attended the Harvard Institute on College Admissions and other yearly consultant conferences and boarding school tours. Kristin has over nine years of experience in secondary school placement. She was formerly the director of a non-profit which placed high-achieving minority students at boarding schools throughout the northeast. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.