As fall approaches, many students are beginning to worry about college applications. Panicking is natural during these indecisive moments, but have no fear—the college counselors are here.

College counselors are private tutors who help students with any papers or documents related to college applications. Senior Alix Farhat is among the students who use this college counseling system. “I got a college counselor during the summer and it was because I was getting really stressed out about everything I had to do,” Farhat said. “I’m also the first generation in my family to start applying to colleges, so I wasn’t too sure of how everything worked.”

Usually taking place in a college preparation center, college counseling is always one-on-one. “You make an appointment once a week and it’s private,” Farhat said. “So you go in and say, ‘All right, I need to work on this and this and this and [they help] you with it.” Farhat goes to Admissions Academy, a local center on Alma St.

Furthermore, tutoring sessions are planned according to each student’s needs. Farhat, for example, received guidance on her college essays, letters of recommendations packet and list of colleges, while senior Iris Shieh only worked on her college list. “I know what I want to major in, [so we] worked on narrowing down a list of colleges that would be right for me.” Shieh said. Since Shieh wanted to attend an eight-year college for medical school, her counselor at Admissions Academy came up with a list of colleges offering these programs.

An advantage of using college counselors, according to Shieh, is that they provide hard-to-find information. Shieh’s counselor presented her with facts about “a bunch of obscure colleges all over the United States that most people don’t really know about,” Shieh said. “Some of them are actually well- suited for me, but I would never have found them just by going on the Internet.”

Nevertheless, college counselors may not be able to compare students to their school districts, whereas a guidance counselor can. “Sometimes when [private counselors] come up with a list of recommendations, they’re using what I call the panoramic view, and it may not be as accurate as a read from your home school’s guidance counselor because we are tracking what happens to our kids and the kids coming out of our pond,” guidance counselor Linda Kirsch said. Comparing a student to his or her school district is crucial, according to Kirsch, since many colleges evaluate all of the applicants from one school before deciding whom to accept and decline.

Though some students are hesitant about informing their guidance counselors that they are seeing a private counselor, guidance counselor Jovi Johnston reassures these students that the guidance department has no problem with college counselors. “We won’t discourage them from getting a college counselor, but we can probably help by doing things like directing students to check that [their counselors] are certificated under some association,” she said.

Kirsch said a number of college counselors have not been through special training and simply jump into the business because they guided their kids to college or were once an SAT tutor. “There’s been a big trend in hiring people strictly based on the school from which they graduated from,” Kirsch said. “Your advisor could come from Princeton, Harvard or Yale and have no training whatsoever. “

Even if a counselor is well trained, his or her workers may not have the same qualifications. “Sometimes a well-established private counselor will open a business and have a lot of college counselors underneath him who don’t have the same credentials, so that’s something to check too,” Johnston said.

Despite that fact, students benefit more from college counselors when it comes to being up close and personal. “Even when you’re not at the center, you can e-mail [the college counselors] something and ask them to look it over, check it out and give their opinion,” Farhat said. Annually, a college counselor tutors around 10 to 20 students, while each guidance counselor at Gunn is assigned to roughly 300 to 400 students.

So far, Farhat is seeing progress within her college application process. “I’ve gotten really organized so I have my finalized list of schools,” she said. “My essays are better than if I’d written them on my own and [my counselor] makes sure that I get stuff done.”

College counselors may also serve as additional reference sources, according to Gunn alumnus Jonathan Lin. “If [they give] a lot of insight, then you know what other people see in you and what’s outstanding about you,” he said. “You have a better understanding of what you are to other people.”

As helpful as they may be, some think these counselors are not worth the money. Junior Victor Zhu attended an one-hour trial session with a counselor and does not plan on returning for more. “The guy looked over my stuff and gave me a list of things to do,” Zhu said. “But I already had a pretty good idea of what I was supposed to do; he just reiterated my idea.”

A typical college coach costs about $100 per hour and some students may find this to be unreasonable. “It’s pretty expensive, but then again, all tutoring is,” Farhat said. “I don’t have a normal tutor so I wouldn’t know how the prices compare, but my college counselor takes away a lot of the stress and makes the application process seem a lot easier.”

Since parents are the ones hiring these private counselors, they inevitably have influence over what goes on during the meetings. In other words, the counselors must obey what the parents want first, and then attend to the needs of the students.

In contrast, parents cannot control what their children and guidance counselors discuss. If a guidance counselor is satisfying the student, but not the parent, then that may be another reason for hiring a private counselor. “Sometimes one of the issues we encounter is that parents and students have very different viewpoints,” Johnston said. “So sometimes [the parents will send the students] to a private counselor to focus their search.”

Lin advises students not to use the college counseling system unless they can easily pay the financial costs. “If you don’t have the money, I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said. “But guidance counselors are free. Your family is free. Friends are free. Random strangers are free.”