How to Uncover a Consultancy’s Internal Reviews

For a behind-the-scenes look at how ‘top ranked’ college admissions consulting companies treat their families, look them up on Glassdoor, the most popular employer review website in the U.S.. We have no financial, professional, or paid relationship with Glassdoor. Our mention of Glassdoor is solely for informational purposes, and we receive no compensation or incentives from them. GlassDoor is an independent platform where jobseekers can read how current and former employees anonymously review their employers. Unlike glossy ads, “top ranked” lists, or sanitized TrustPilot reviews procured by digital marketing firms, GlassDoor reviews are beyond revealing. Some companies have even been outed on GlassDoor by employees for asking its employees to write positive GlassDoor reviews.

How use Glassdoor:

Step 1: Visit GlassDoor and simply search for the name of the consulting company you’re considering. 

Step 2: Look for patterns in the feedback. 

Common complaints among the worst regarded firms include:

• High-pressure sales tactics that sell unnecessary, over-priced services to families
• Lack of a developed curriculum and/or inadequate consulting methodology 
• Over-reliance on under-prepared consultants (with prestigious college degrees) who receive little to no training before being matched with clients and told to wing-it
• Consultants who have competing employment interests or are currently in medical/law school, leaving little time for their assigned students
• Unrealistic sales promises made to families that the counselors are forced to clean up, plummeting morale and driving high turnover
• High consultant turnover rates mid-season, creating inconsistent student experiences and driving family stress levels through the roof
• Aggressively restricting where students are allowed to apply in order to influence the company’s cited admit rate for specific universities (vs the market rate)
• Legal troubles and lawsuits that prospective families would never think to look up

Pay special attention to companies that boast about the grandiose scale of their international operations. Americans often scoff at the $80,000+ price tags of some consultants. Such pricing is quite literally tourist pricing, as those firms are usually target in a specific audience: literal education tourists (foreigners). More on tourist vs local college admissions consultant pricing will be revealed down below. However, locals, while skeptical of exorbitant prices, are more susceptible to being fooled and falling victim to the perception that the bigger firms have earned more social validation and proof backing their success.

The GlassDoor reviews from larger and higher priced firms often reveal internal chaos, toxic growth-at-all costs environments, business practices that prioritize students last, and the lowest levels of consultant morale. GlassDoor internal reviews are never considered by ‘top list’ rankings, but they’re critical for families to consider. 

Affiliate Marketing Companies Are Behind 'Top' College Consultant Rankings

Historically, top lists originally became popular among digital marketing firms who had originally found them to be highly effective for getting their clients onto page 1 of Google search results. They'd make a ranked list, name the client as #1, and populate the remaining spots with other companies to satisfy Google Search algorithm's preferences for content high in: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. However, affiliate marketers soon discovered that by getting their own top lists onto page 1 of Google, they could then rent each ranking to a firm for lead generation. It's ingenious.

Top lists that specifically rank independent college admissions consultants are a new phenomenon. They didn’t exist before 2021. In fact, the idea that college consultants can be ranked is widely considered absurd because college admissions consulting is such a diverse and diluted village industry, dominated by single-person practices. Imagine the absurdity of compiling an industry rating for the top 1-on-1 therapists where larger firms with rosters of 100+ therapists each dominate the lists. According to CollegePlannerPro’s 2023 IEC Pricing Survey, 75% of college admissions consultants are solo acts—doing business as a party of one. The next 20% of firms consist of only 2 to 5 team members. The remaining 5% of firms have 6 or more consultants.  

The wrong question to ask is, "Is bigger better? Bigger firms do generally have better sales and marketing departments that can create a facade of perfection and achievement. The better question to ask is, "Do the leaders and systems in place enable the college consultants who actually work each child to be better? If so, how?" For some larger firms, the right leaders and systems are indeed in place. Other firms hire under-paid 1-on-1 college consultants who quit just as quickly as new ones are recruited, thrown to the wolves, and told to wing it.

The better consultants are often smaller, boutique practices who are booked solidly through an organic pipeline of strong word of mouth, local referrals. Such college consultants charge the industry norm, which is $4,000-$5,000 per package, or a little higher. However, it's never the outrageous $50,000+ prices touted by many ‘top ranked’ firms. The most in-demand college consultants don’t need to hunt for more clients. So, where do you find these firms and get in with them before they book up?

How to Find the Best College Consultants

Use Yelp (with the right search filters). Yelp is one of the most popular online platforms in the U.S. for discovering, reviewing, and rating local businesses that Americans interact with in everyday life. Most importantly, it's proactively and regularly used by its Americans to rate all kinds of businesses. By contrast, TrustPilot is not proactively used by anyone I know, its user base tends to be international, and the only times I've written TrustPilot reviews are when the business has asked me to. Note: We have no financial, professional, or paid relationship with Yelp. Our mention of Yelp is solely for informational purposes, and we receive no compensation or incentives from Yelp.  

Transparency note: My business, College Zoom, organically ranks #1 in the default “Yelp recommended” searches for "college counseling" and "college consulting" in Los Angeles. Numbered rankings, however, do not indicate that one firm is any better than another. When applying the filters that I personally like to use and recommend for Yelp searches, College Zoom doesn't actually rank #1.

So, if I were you and I wanted to find the best college admissions consultants on Yelp, I would follow these steps:

Step 1: Visit Yelp and search with the filter “highest rated” or “most reviewed” (not the default “Yelp recommended” search setting)

Step 2: Ignore and scroll past the many, many paid ads to find the organic search results half-way down the page

Step 3: If you need to widen your search, change your search location to a big city (e.g. Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc.) Nearly all college consultants now work virtually so you can work with the best fit consultant from anywhere in the world.

Follow these steps and you’ll find the best college consultants that locals consistently rate highly and recommend. College consultants with strong, authentic Yelp reputations are often respected by both clients and their peers for their passion, ethics, and professionalism.

Tip: Tourist Pricing vs Locals Pricing in College Admissions Consulting 

A parent from Canada recently found College Zoom. By the time we connected, he had already interviewed several of the 'top' college admissions consultants ranked alongside us on a top 10 list that I do not have a high opinion of. He asked me, "How come it seems that all of the top ranked consultants either charge $20,000 or $100,000? No one charges anything in between?"

I explained that the $100,000 price tags are laughably outrageous—literally akin to over-charing tourists who don't know better. Such firms predominantly appeal to, target, and onboard literal educational tourists—less informed, ultra-wealthy international families who are culturally conditioned to believe that luxury pricing = superior consulting. It's an intuitive and compelling formula for admissions success so long as families, or their personal assistant, remain ignorant of Yelp and don't research the industry further to discover that the high pricing with Ivy League branding is akin to a tourist trap.

Americans are more inclined to fall for a different intuitive cultural trap: that the bigger the firm, the more superior its social validation is.

The $20,000 price tag is more aligned with locals who are seeking a college consulting experience over four years that's expected to be more methodical, more proactive, and high touch. However, $20,000 for four years of college consulting is still eye-brow raising to me personally. Fewer students than you would expect actually have a level of need that rises to a $20,000 investment over four years. Having worked for 16 years in business at a so-called 'top ranked' firm, I can think of only a small handful of students who racked up a bill that high and legitimately needed all that help—it's rare. For most students eyeing elite universities, the cost of elite college consulting is significantly less. and worth a discovery call.

In summary: If I were searching for a consultant, I would use Yelp to read reviews by locals, for locals. I'd also use GlassDoor to consider employer reviews by employees, and if you like my candor, I'd check out College Zoom, too! 😉

Best of luck in your journey!