cawacko
Well-known member
I have friend's who have paid thousands for consultants like this. On one hand it's mind blowing, but at the same time we'll do anything for our kids. Since this board is dominated by Boomers, I'm guessing most of you didn't see anything like this growing up.
There are the parents who want to know what the “magic number” is to donate to guarantee admission. The moms who ask whether a friend-of-a-friend should put in a good word. The dads who call shortly before decisions are released asking, What will it take to get the deal done? The parents whose behavior was so crass that Los Angeles school consultant Sandy Eiges added a clause in her contract stating that the use of profanity could terminate their working relationship.
All this is to get eighth graders into high school.
“I don’t mince words,” said Eiges, owner and founder of L.A. School Scout, which guides families through K-12 school admissions. “That’s part of what they’re paying me for—to get them through this successfully.” Eiges wouldn’t disclose her fee but said that consultants in L.A. typically charge between $5,000 and $10,000 for their services. That is on top of annual school tuition that can range from $25,000 to $50,000, she said.
Getting into high school has become a brutal competition for many families. Across the country, school choice for public and private institutions has surged amid expanded access to vouchers, educational savings accounts and Covid-era learning loss. There are a large number of high school options there to fill that gap, but the systems and admissions are difficult to navigate–not to mention competitive. Freaked-out parents are paying up.
New York City is widely considered the most competitive and confusing market. This week, middle schoolers received random lottery numbers that determine their priority in public school admissions. The system includes four different types of schools: the lottery schools, charter schools, specialized schools that require a test, and then arts schools that require an audition. Private schools are a whole other story.
Consultants are charging accordingly, with fees of more than $200 per hour for a la carte services or between $5,000 to $15,000 for someone to manage the entire application process. That unlimited access includes a curated list of “best-fit” schools, interview preparation for the parents and students, essay guidance and deadline management.
“Navigating high-school admissions can feel as overwhelming as college admissions,” said Whitney Shashou, founder and CEO of Admit NY, which creates bespoke plans for clients and offers tutoring for high-school entrance exams. Packages at Admit NY typically range from the low thousands to the mid-teens, depending on the student’s age and the level of support, Shashou said.
For parents interested in private school, clients should expect to pay between 10% to 25% of the child’s annual tuition for the firm’s services, she said.
Laurie and Stephen McCarthy hired Brooklyn-based schools consultant Joyce Szuflita to guide them through high school admissions for their son Thomas in fall 2023. Laurie said she could have spent six months trying to figure out the best options, but within two hours Szuflita gave them “the real scoop in real time,” pointing out schools that “weren’t on our radar.” They paid $560 for a two-hour Zoom and left the meeting with 15-20 schools to investigate.
“It was money well spent,” Laurie McCarthy said. Their son ended up at a Catholic school, Regis High School.
Test prep has also become bespoke. Nicholas LaPoma, founder of the Long Island-based test prep company Curvebreakers, said that when he started as a test prep tutor during law school in Manhattan in 2011, it was “straightforward.” They taught strategies, evaluated their students’ weaknesses over several weeks and then focused on where to improve.
Now testing software and AI offers targeted diagnostics in minutes after taking a practice test online. The contrast LaPoma sees between then and now is stark.
Said LaPoma, “We knew it was important then, but it didn’t seem to be the wild pressure cooker situation it is now.”
After Covid, Amy Seeley’s Cleveland test-prep business went “all in on eighth graders” and expanded to Cincinnati, which has a “booming high-school admissions test-prep business.”
Covid was an eye-opening experience for a lot of parents, she said, and independent schools received a surge of interest. Seeley has seen a rise in her firm’s high-school business, which prepared about 100 students in 2020 and now has nearly 400. Another boon to the business: Families that live in cities like New York, where test-prep tutors can charge an average of $200 per session, realized they can hire Seeley’s firm, which charges $100 no matter where the client is based and holds virtual tutoring sessions.
The number of students who use vouchers, public funds to subsidize private schools, increased by 25% nationwide between 2024 to 2025, according to EdChoice, an education advocacy organization. And the number of students who registered for the private-school entrance exam known as the ISEE (aka, the Independent School Entrance Exam) increased 8.6% from the 2023-2024 school year to 2024-2025, according to Mike Flanagan, the chief executive of E3n, an organization that provides data insights to independent schools. He added, registrations across the ISEE and SSAT (the Secondary School Admission Test), another entrance exam, have increased 2.2% over the past five years.
The only involvement Tina Singh had in her daughter’s private high-school search last year was to interview educational consultants and hire one.
“I’m very judgemental and my Indian-mom brain is conditioned to want rank, prestige and status,” said Singh, of Mercer Island, Wash., a wealthy Seattle suburb known for quality public schools, adding those weren’t important factors for her daughter. “I knew having an independent person guiding the process would lead to our daughter getting what she wanted.”
Singh paid $3,000 for her daughter Roop to have unlimited access to Christy Haven, owner of Mindful Education Consulting in Mercer Island. Roop attended public middle school but wanted to switch to private high school to ensure she’d be “in an environment where people around her were serious students.”
Roop applied to two schools and was accepted to both.
“We had peace in the household and that is worth more than the money we spent,” Singh said.
Consultants train parents on how to authentically boast about a child’s academics and social-emotional health. “What you say about your child should match what teachers are going to say,” said Haven, who charges $3,000 for unlimited access to her, or $300 per hour. “If you don’t, schools either think you don’t know your kid or you’re lying.”
They also help their kids write their admissions essays, though they say they simply help them “find their voice,” not write the essays.
The hardest part, consultants say, is ridding parents of the notion they must get their kid into a “name-brand” school. Shashou said parents increasingly viewed high school as setting their kids up “on the right path for school—and for life.”
These Parents Are Willing to Pay Up to $15,000 to Get Their Kids Into High School
Getting into high school—private and public—is more competitive than ever. Parents are paying up.
There are the parents who want to know what the “magic number” is to donate to guarantee admission. The moms who ask whether a friend-of-a-friend should put in a good word. The dads who call shortly before decisions are released asking, What will it take to get the deal done? The parents whose behavior was so crass that Los Angeles school consultant Sandy Eiges added a clause in her contract stating that the use of profanity could terminate their working relationship.
All this is to get eighth graders into high school.
“I don’t mince words,” said Eiges, owner and founder of L.A. School Scout, which guides families through K-12 school admissions. “That’s part of what they’re paying me for—to get them through this successfully.” Eiges wouldn’t disclose her fee but said that consultants in L.A. typically charge between $5,000 and $10,000 for their services. That is on top of annual school tuition that can range from $25,000 to $50,000, she said.
Getting into high school has become a brutal competition for many families. Across the country, school choice for public and private institutions has surged amid expanded access to vouchers, educational savings accounts and Covid-era learning loss. There are a large number of high school options there to fill that gap, but the systems and admissions are difficult to navigate–not to mention competitive. Freaked-out parents are paying up.
New York City is widely considered the most competitive and confusing market. This week, middle schoolers received random lottery numbers that determine their priority in public school admissions. The system includes four different types of schools: the lottery schools, charter schools, specialized schools that require a test, and then arts schools that require an audition. Private schools are a whole other story.
Consultants are charging accordingly, with fees of more than $200 per hour for a la carte services or between $5,000 to $15,000 for someone to manage the entire application process. That unlimited access includes a curated list of “best-fit” schools, interview preparation for the parents and students, essay guidance and deadline management.
“Navigating high-school admissions can feel as overwhelming as college admissions,” said Whitney Shashou, founder and CEO of Admit NY, which creates bespoke plans for clients and offers tutoring for high-school entrance exams. Packages at Admit NY typically range from the low thousands to the mid-teens, depending on the student’s age and the level of support, Shashou said.
For parents interested in private school, clients should expect to pay between 10% to 25% of the child’s annual tuition for the firm’s services, she said.
Laurie and Stephen McCarthy hired Brooklyn-based schools consultant Joyce Szuflita to guide them through high school admissions for their son Thomas in fall 2023. Laurie said she could have spent six months trying to figure out the best options, but within two hours Szuflita gave them “the real scoop in real time,” pointing out schools that “weren’t on our radar.” They paid $560 for a two-hour Zoom and left the meeting with 15-20 schools to investigate.
“It was money well spent,” Laurie McCarthy said. Their son ended up at a Catholic school, Regis High School.
Test prep has also become bespoke. Nicholas LaPoma, founder of the Long Island-based test prep company Curvebreakers, said that when he started as a test prep tutor during law school in Manhattan in 2011, it was “straightforward.” They taught strategies, evaluated their students’ weaknesses over several weeks and then focused on where to improve.
Now testing software and AI offers targeted diagnostics in minutes after taking a practice test online. The contrast LaPoma sees between then and now is stark.
Said LaPoma, “We knew it was important then, but it didn’t seem to be the wild pressure cooker situation it is now.”
After Covid, Amy Seeley’s Cleveland test-prep business went “all in on eighth graders” and expanded to Cincinnati, which has a “booming high-school admissions test-prep business.”
Covid was an eye-opening experience for a lot of parents, she said, and independent schools received a surge of interest. Seeley has seen a rise in her firm’s high-school business, which prepared about 100 students in 2020 and now has nearly 400. Another boon to the business: Families that live in cities like New York, where test-prep tutors can charge an average of $200 per session, realized they can hire Seeley’s firm, which charges $100 no matter where the client is based and holds virtual tutoring sessions.
The number of students who use vouchers, public funds to subsidize private schools, increased by 25% nationwide between 2024 to 2025, according to EdChoice, an education advocacy organization. And the number of students who registered for the private-school entrance exam known as the ISEE (aka, the Independent School Entrance Exam) increased 8.6% from the 2023-2024 school year to 2024-2025, according to Mike Flanagan, the chief executive of E3n, an organization that provides data insights to independent schools. He added, registrations across the ISEE and SSAT (the Secondary School Admission Test), another entrance exam, have increased 2.2% over the past five years.
The only involvement Tina Singh had in her daughter’s private high-school search last year was to interview educational consultants and hire one.
“I’m very judgemental and my Indian-mom brain is conditioned to want rank, prestige and status,” said Singh, of Mercer Island, Wash., a wealthy Seattle suburb known for quality public schools, adding those weren’t important factors for her daughter. “I knew having an independent person guiding the process would lead to our daughter getting what she wanted.”
Singh paid $3,000 for her daughter Roop to have unlimited access to Christy Haven, owner of Mindful Education Consulting in Mercer Island. Roop attended public middle school but wanted to switch to private high school to ensure she’d be “in an environment where people around her were serious students.”
Roop applied to two schools and was accepted to both.
“We had peace in the household and that is worth more than the money we spent,” Singh said.
Consultants train parents on how to authentically boast about a child’s academics and social-emotional health. “What you say about your child should match what teachers are going to say,” said Haven, who charges $3,000 for unlimited access to her, or $300 per hour. “If you don’t, schools either think you don’t know your kid or you’re lying.”
They also help their kids write their admissions essays, though they say they simply help them “find their voice,” not write the essays.
The hardest part, consultants say, is ridding parents of the notion they must get their kid into a “name-brand” school. Shashou said parents increasingly viewed high school as setting their kids up “on the right path for school—and for life.”
