I have helped many students navigate the college admission process using a student-focused program that allows students to discover their best fit by:* Limiting the number of students I take to ensure student access and quality* Attending numerous conferences to stay current on college admission trends * Visiting dozens of college campuses every year to learn about majors, scholarship opportunities, and campus vibe* Working with students one-on-one either in my office or via Skype* Helping students create essays that are authentic and allow their unique voice to be heard* Working in collaboration with high school counselors and teachers
Unfortunately, we had a horrible experience with Michelle Fleming and this company. My son is young for his grade and was not college ready when we started with her (but he is now, and was left holding the bag without receiving the services we paid her for). Knowing these things about him, she assured us that it would be no problem, and that she had extensive experience with immature and young students, and she had great success with them. We are dubious to her claims. She ultimately blamed my son for her deciding to stop helping him prepare and apply for the Fall 2022 college year, but he is just a kid. She is supposed to be the expert. I know she became incredibly frustrated with him, since she expressed that to me personally whe she recommend a GAP year or community college. (We had hired her and paid up-front $3,752.50 for a comprehensive college planning package to help him appy for Fall 2022.) Later, I had come to learn that her frustration with him was being made apparent to him in their meetings, and he became afraid to really engage with her because she was so terse and harsh with him. Not a good way to handle a shy person. I think she got mad at us (the parents because we challenged something she was doing), and then took it out on our son. The only thing he did was miss a few deadines (just like several other students she was working with). Our son said the best way he could explain his experience was that she is very cookie-cutter, but he didn’t fit her mold, and she was heavy with the deadlines, which were always different (some days he had a week to complete something and other days he had 48 hours). If you have a shy student, one that is immature, young for their grade, and that doesn’t know what they want to study, this is not the right counselor. Also, my son is an athlete, and I got the feeling she didn’t understand what is demanded of Varsity and elite club athletes. So, if you have an athlete, this is important for you to know. My daughter (she used a different counselor) also participated in their essay workshop, and they watched Ethan Sawyer’s Youtube videos. My daughter who is an over-achiever felt the workshop was a waste of her time, and she would have been fine just watching the videos independently. Lastly, throughout the short time we ended-up working with her, Michelle kept making preposterous statements as if we were asking her to do our son’s work for him. It was truly perplexing, and just plain weird. She was never asked to do anything for him except what she was hired for. It really makes no sense to me that she makes such unqualified statements. All we wanted was someone to actually help our kid with his college planning so he would have options at the end of his senior year. Please dig deep. Just because a counselor says the have certain experience, has a fancy website, and belongs to a few organizations doesn’t mean it is factually accurate. In our case, Michelle was nothing like she represented herself to be, and our son suffered the consequences of our misplaced trust and belief in her. Otherwise, you student may end-up having the same type of experience ours did. My son can’t get this time back. What we do know is that he is college ready now, but she discontinued her college planning services for Fall 2022 so late in the process that we were unable to hire a different college counselor to replace her. We have no idea how this will affect him and his future. I truly hope this never happens to you.