When we went through the college admissions process, we watched friends and classmates spend tens of thousands of dollars on college counselors who often were not that helpful. Some families paid because a counselor had a big reputation on social media. Others paid because another parent recommended them. Most of the time, people were choosing from the few counselors they happened to hear about, not from a real set of options.
Even worse, these discovery processes are not always honest. College counselors have a clear incentive to exaggerate their results online, overstate their influence, and make admissions seem more mysterious than it is. We have also seen counselors use fear as a sales tactic: spreading misleading information, emphasizing worst-case outcomes, and convincing families that they need to spend huge amounts of money just to avoid falling behind.
Word of mouth is not perfect either. In theory, recommendations from other families should make the process more trustworthy. In practice, they often create a cycle of misleading information. Parents may recommend a counselor because their child got into a good school, even if the counselor had little to do with the outcome. Students may also avoid being honest about how helpful their counselor was, especially when their parents have already spent thousands of dollars.
We saw this happen directly. Two of our friends worked with expensive college counselors, but the fit was so bad that they ended up writing fake essays to show their parents and counselors while secretly submitting different essays they had written on their own. They did this because the counselor was not helping them tell their story, and they did not want their parents to feel like they had wasted so much money. They told their parents that their counselors were helping, and that story eventually turned into recommendations to other families.
The college consulting market is strange. Families are making one of the most expensive and important decisions of high school based on word of mouth, vague reputations, and fear of missing out. If everyone around you is hiring a counselor, it feels risky not to. If you do not know where to look, the safest option can seem like paying whoever is most visible, even if they are not the right fit.
We believe this lack of discoverable options creates two major barriers to effective admissions help.
High prices
Right now, counselor discovery is dominated by large, overpriced college counseling organizations and a small group of individual consultants who spread mostly through private networks. Because it is hard for families to compare alternatives, these providers can charge high prices without facing much visible competition. Those prices have taught families that college consulting has to be reserved for the wealthiest, when it should not be. By building a marketplace for college consultants, we make discovery easier and add competition that can push prices down. When families can compare counselors, pricing becomes more transparent and less driven by fear.
Misaligned support
The best college consultant is not always the one who has helped students get into the most elite universities. Admissions advice is only useful when it applies to the student receiving it. The process changes depending on the student's background: what schools they are applying to, what majors they are considering, what high school or state they come from, what resources their family has, what activities they have done, and what story they are trying to tell. A counselor who is great for one student may be wrong for another. Finding someone who understands your goals, background, and constraints can improve the help you receive. And beyond expertise, interpersonal fit matters. Sometimes you just do not click with a certain consultant. Having more options means students are not pressured into working with someone who does not understand them.
What CounselorCart does
We built CounselorCart to improve the admissions counseling space by making it easier for students to find the right help and easier for counselors to reach the right students.
For students, CounselorCart makes counselor discovery simpler and more transparent. Instead of relying on scattered recommendations or expensive firms with the best marketing, students can browse many counselors, compare their backgrounds and specialties, and find someone who fits their situation.
For counselors, CounselorCart reduces the friction of starting and growing an independent counseling practice. Profile creation, student discovery, meeting booking, and payments are handled in the app, so counselors can focus less on logistics and more on counseling. This lowers the barrier to entry for qualified counselors who may not have the time to build their own client pipeline from scratch.
In the long run, we think this creates a healthier admissions counseling market. More counselors can participate, more students can find applicable help, and families are no longer forced to choose between paying huge fees or navigating the entire process alone.