(by Susan Salisbury, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer)
Robin Abedon, a Wellington-based certified educational planner who operates Taking the Next Step and has been on the college counseling “beat” since 1995, said some students apply to 15 to 20 colleges. “Take one good kid applying widely, and he will only pick one of those schools. But his acceptances create enormous pressure for those other kids who might have been accepted,” Abedon said.
Schools also are doing more marketing than ever as enrollment managers seek to increase the number of applications, one of the criteria used to rank colleges in U.S. News & World Report’s annual college guide. “The colleges love to hate U.S. News & World Report. By the same token, they are afraid to ignore it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world on both sides of the equation,” Abedon said. Add to that the admissions processes that vary from school to school, such as early decision, early action, rolling admissions and regular admission, and it’s easy to see why some families turn to consultants.
Dawn and Paul Strenk of Parkland hired Abedon to advise their daughter Sara, now a sophomore at Stetson University. Sara plays the oboe and is majoring in music education. “She had to travel for auditions. I knew that Robin would help her with her applications. The colleges have become very picky,” Dawn Strenk said. Abedon is now working with the Strenks’ younger daughter, Melissa, who is a high school senior. “I want them to get the best place that fits for them. You don’t want to go there and it is not the right place. You spend a lot of time and money,” Strenk said.
The college consultation business has been around for 30 years but did not begin to grow dramatically until five or six years ago, said Mark Sklarow, executive director of Independent Educational Consultants Association. The group’s membership has grown to 1,000 from 550 five years ago, and he estimates there are about 5,000 full-time consultants nationwide. With high school guidance counselors handling as many as 700 students each, there’s little time for personalized attention.”When a student’s need is, ‘I do not know where I want to go to college,’ that’s far down on the list,” Sklarow said.
“A great consultant probably tells parents to chill,” Sklarow said. “There are no great secrets that consultants know. There are no levers to push, no secret phone calls or handshakes that will get an average kid into the Ivy League. But they can help that family find a school that is just right for their particular child.