Best College Admissions Consultant Rankings Include the Worst

• A Top Ranked College Admissions Consultant Tells All
• Numerous 'Top Ranked' Firms Are Actually Among the Worst Regarded in the College Admissions Industry 
• How to Read Company Insider Reviews That Expose Poorly Regarded Firms 
• Affiliate Marketing Companies Are Behind Some of the Most Visible 'Top' College Consultant Rankings
• Importance of Truly Independent Reviews and Where to Find them
• How to Quickly Find the Best College Consultants For You

A Top Ranked College Admissions Consultant Tells All

As of 2025, College Zoom has been ranked on 9 different publications' ‘top ranked’ lists of the best college admissions consultants. We've never paid for rankings and have never solicited publications to rank us. So I am always flattered and pleasantly surprised when we make someone's top list. However, being listed isn’t always the badge of honor it seems. In fact, some of the most notorious and poorly regarded firms are included on many of these 'top' lists.

Why ‘Top Ranked’ Lists Don’t Tell the Whole Story

While it’s flattering to be unsolicitedly recognized by multiple publications, the truth is that some of the most prominent “top ranked” college admissions consultant lists have no interest in who the top consultants truly are. Rather, they are affiliate marketing, pay-to-rank schemes. Such rankings are nothing more than dressed up, paid ads for families who don’t read the ranking’s methodology where the affiliate disclosure is.

‘Top ranked’ college admissions consultant lists by affiliate marketing companies often do of the following:

• Make college admissions consultants pay for placement outright
• Target a college admissions consultant with a temporarily free ranking and then encourage the consultant to pay to stay (or level up to a higher ranking) under an affiliate marketing contract

Of all the lists we've been included on, only one publisher cared enough to request a vetting interview with us before including us in their ranking. They later proposed an affiliate partnership that we cordially declined and we have remained on their 'top' list.

Discover Which 'Top Ranked' Firms Have Terrible Reviews—From Their Own College Consultants

Some of the ‘best’ college admissions consulting companies dominating these rankings lists are actually among the worst our industry has to offer. As it turns out, it's usually the largest firms that have developed exceptionally poor reputations within the U.S. college admissions industry for one or more of the following:

• Trying to become the Uber of admissions consulting and matching ill-prepared college student "consultants" with clients
• Lacking substance and quality control,
• Questionable ethics, 
• Aggressive and exploitive sales tactics, 
• Prioritizing sales growth over service fulfillment,
• High consultant and staff turnover,
• Misleading or fraudulent success rates,
• Poor client experiences and admissions outcomes. 

College Zoom regularly fields clients who’ve either outright abandoned work contracts with such ‘top ranked’ firms mid-process. Other families have rode it out with unsatisfactory college admissions consultants and then hired someone else for the younger sibling. I like to ask, "Why are you choosing not to continue with your previous college consultant?" The complaints I hear from families routinely echo the negative reviews by the ‘top ranked’ firms’ own current and former employees on GlassDoor.  

How to Uncover a College Admissions 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 exposed on Glassdoor by their own employees for pressuring staff to post favorable 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. 

The most eye-brow raising 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, or broadcast their movement towards an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Americans often scoff at the $80,000+ price tags of some consultants yet are just as susceptible to being fooled by 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 rarely, if ever, considered by ‘top list’ rankings, but they’re critical for families to consider. 

Affiliate Marketing and 'Top' College Consultant Rankings

Top lists that specifically rank independent college admissions consultants are a new phenomenon. They didn’t exist before 2021. For context, college admissions consulting is a village industry dominated by single-person practices. Imagine the trying to compile an industry rating for the top 1-on-1 therapists where larger firms touting rosters of 100+ therapists each dominate the rankings 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.