New Service Threatens College Admissions Consulting Industry

March 4, 2010 - PRLog -- A Cleveland company is taking aim at the college admissions consulting industry by looking to make high quality college admission advice available and affordable to high school students and families.  

According to the American School Counselors Association, average counselor to student ratios have risen to over 1:475 (versus the association’s recommended ratio of 1:250).  With counselors being spread so thin and across multiple student issues (class schedules, learning problems, course selection, etc.), the amount of time counselors are able to spend with students on college admissions is diminishing at a time when college competiveness is on the rise.  

This trend has resulted in a growing number of families turning to private college consultants to assist with the admissions process.  A recent New York Times article cited an increase in the number of these for-profit counselors from 2000 to 5000 over the last few years.  The same article revealed professional fees for these services can be as high as $40,000 making it less accessible to lower income families.  The industry is largely unregulated and quality and type of services can vary significantly.

In response, Admit Insights, a Northeast Ohio company, recently launched www.AdmitInsights.com.  Users of the service provide information about their college admissions profile – high school grades, test scores, course load, extracurriculars, honors, demographics, etc.  In addition, users select colleges they are targeting among the over 1100 covered by the site.  Admit Insights then applies over 200 algorithms to the inputs and a custom report is created.  This seven to ten page report provides users – a Candidate Strength Score assessing the relative competitiveness of the admissions profile, strengths/weaknesses of the application profile as seen through the eyes of a college admissions committee, advice on how to improve the strength of the profile, odds of admission at the selected schools, and suggestions for other schools that maybe looking for students like the user.

The company is also contracting with several school districts to provide the service to all students in the district.

Says co-founder Mike McLaughlin, a teacher and soccer coach at Cleveland’s prestigious Saint Ignatius High School, “Admit Insights provides valuable, actionable college admissions advice at a price point that almost any family can afford.  We are hoping the service becomes an important tool for families who find the college admissions process daunting.”

Admit Insights also provides its service schools directly.  High schools and districts are able to license the product and make it a part of the prescribed college counseling process.

Two of the three co-founders are Northeast Ohio residents and the majority of the technology and multivariate algorithms for Admit Insights were designed by Empyra, a Youngstown, Ohio full service technology company.  “Admit Insights is a perfect example of Northeast Ohio leaders developing new products for the service sector – something we need to encourage,” says Vipin Gupta, CEO of Empyra.

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Admit Insights helps high school students get in to the college they want to attend. Students enter profile and immediately download a customized 8-page report with profile assessment and advice, odds of admission at selected colleges, and college match.