Benefit Spotlight: College Admissions Counseling

One of the latest benefits that has been growing in popularity among some of the top companies in the world is employers providing employees with special access to college admissions counselors. 

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The increasing prevalence of college admissions counseling benefits also coincides with the general rising popularity of education-related employee benefits, with a growing number of employers already offering tuition assistance and/or student loan repayment help and guidance. 

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Some companies that have added college admission counseling services to their employee benefits package offerings include JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Mastercard, and Johnson & Johnson.

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While the practice of adding college admissions coaching has a longer history as a perk among hedge fund employees and other executives in the financial sector, the offering has seen much broader adoption in other industries in recent years as its effectiveness in attracting proactive, creative, and forward-thinking employees has been on display.

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Further, given the high stakes and highly competitive college admissions environment, and given how the sometimes overwhelming nature of the application process can become somewhat all-consuming for applicants and their parents alike, offering benefits that can help both streamline that process and reduce the accompanying stress  can be a significant benefit to business productivity as well.

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While critics of college admissions coaching as an employee benefit rightly point to the fact that these offerings can worsen inequalities that already exist in the college admissions process, including inequitable distribution of limited college admission coaching resources as is, the effectiveness of this kind of counseling and its scarcity both increase the value of their value as an employee perk.

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Currently, most families in the US depend on the advice and advocacy of the college counselors provided by the public high school system, who only spend about 22% of their work hours on college admissions advising according to the National Association of College Admissions Advising. Given the available time and resources and in light of an already overwhelming case load, it has become essentially impossible for college counselors to provide personalized attention to every student. 

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It’s also worth noting that one of the main reasons that personalized attention and the guidance of admissions counselors is at such a premium in the current admissions environment is the complexity of the admissions process itself. The colleges and universities themselves could take significant action to minimize the advantage that access to college counselors provides to applicants and close the outcome gap between the haves and have-nots simply by streamlining their own admissions requirements and updating their user interface to meet the abilities and expectations of their applicants without the assistance of third-party, professional help.

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Often even more complex than the admissions process is the process of obtaining scholarships and financial aid. Finding applicable scholarships and/or other forms of financial assistance and then applying for those opportunities in such a way as to have a realistic chance of obtaining them is another area that admissions counselors can be crucial in navigating, which further exacerbates the inequality gap and places these forms of financial help further out of reach for those who need them most. 

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Until more colleges and universities take those steps, however, the value of college admissions counseling services as an employee benefit will likely continue to grow as more and more companies and their employees take advantage of the opportunity.

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