Does anyone recommend a professional admissions consulting company?

[star_n_hearts]

Does anyone recommend a professional admissions consulting company - such as Kaplan or Petersons - which are designed to help applicants perfect their SOP's and writing samples? I am currently not a student and so I do not have resources such as a college writing center or professors to help me with this process. I've been looking into this and

Comments

[roseofjuly]

I think it's a rip-off, personally. $500 is a lot of money for someone to just look over your SOP and writing sample - you could probably hire a professional editor for cheaper than that if you wanted some help tightening it up, or if you have a local university, you could probably hire a grad student in your field or an advanced English grad student for cheaper than that to look over your statements.

Also, even though you're not a student any more some of your old advisors may be willing to look over your statements for you.

[roseofjuly]

I know right? I was just thinking "Hm, how can I get into this?"

However, Kaplan is pretty good about making sure that their workers don't receive most of that money. I worked for Kaplan as a private tutor for the SAT. They charged $2300 for a 16-week course - 2 hours per week, for 16 weeks. How much of that did I see? $560, plus $0.38/mile for travel.

I could've made more money going into business for myself, charging $20/hour for tutoring courses and my students would've saved too - they could've just bought a book for $30 from the bookstore and we would've used that. It's not like Kaplan's courses had anything in them that weren't in their $30 books, and it's not like their training taught me anything I hadn't already learned by taking the SAT myself.

[circumfession]

I worked for Kaplan as well. They still owe me several thousand dollars for paying my prep time below min. wage, and not paying me overtime.

I actually did "break off" from Kaplan, partially at the urging of my students to do independent private tutoring. Rather than the $20 an hour that Kaplan was paying me, I charged $50-$80 (depending on the test), and my students were STILL paying less than half of what Kaplan would have charged for the same service. Because I didn't have to stick to Kaplan's sometimes stupid rules, I was able to tailor my teaching to their needs, and they ended up doing better.

Kaplan--and its fellow testprep empires--has its moments, but to echo the chorus, it's largely a waste of time.

I also wanted to second your other suggestions. My (English) department pass on "wanted: testprep tutor" and "wanted: SoP/writing sample editor" emails all the time. Definitely look into emailing your local university, and see if they can help you find a graduate student that has sufficient experience to help you.

[acommonreader]

This is great advice, I think.

[roseofjuly]

Kaplan only paid me $14/hour - in the South wages are generally a lot lower. They got around the minimum wage for prep time thing by only paying us for 15 minutes of prep time after we had completed 24 hours of tutoring.

I think in the Northeast where I live I could get away with charging $30-50 an hour for test prep tutoring, possibly more - I live in New York City. And, like you said, they would still be saving money and I would be teaching them the same material, because really none of the test prep empires has any 'secrets' to prepping for the test - they all teach the same strategies which are strategies that good test takers have known for years.

[pamphiliaf]

Yes! Yes! Hire your local freelance tutor or editor!* Trust me, there are plenty of us around who are severely suffering in this economy.**

Kaplan = Mr. Potter
Freelance editor = George Bailey (only without the questionable financial policies)

* In this case, I would look for a grad student with a background in editing or an editor with a background in graduate stutentage. There are a LOT of former PhD candidates-turned-editors.
** Well, the economy + the fact that in the age of the interwebs, publishers seem to think that copyediting and proofreading aren't necessary anymore...grumble...blatant mistakes in online versions of so-called "respected" newspapers...grumble grumble.

[roseofjuly]

That's what I figured - any graduate student would be happy to earn the money AND will probably be far more helpful than procuring services from Kaplan.