Very expensive, info available free elsewhere
Very expensive: high initial fee plus ongoing monthly fee. "financial planner" asked me to give control of all my rollover IRA's to him, promised higher than market returns and advised using retirement funds to fund college - which is TERRIBLE financial advice (withdrawal penalties, etc). We tried several live seminars which were all plagued with technical problems. Online resources have content that is all available on YouTube from other creators for free. "application advisor" recommended my kid get one more activity to pad their application, regardless of interests or time in their schedule. kids are in at all their top tier schools and (full disclosure) were deferred at the one elite school to which they applied. they tout a math model to estimate child's chance of getting into a specific college - which is 100% irrelevant; either they get in or not. We didn't get any "80%" admitted letters. they offer to negotiate financial aid and scholarship offers. kids got the highest scholarship offers from all but one school, so no value for us. to be clear: we got TWO things out of this experience - "use your retirement accounts to pay for college" and "pad your application with one more activity." useless. who is this service for? you've got a couple thousand dollars to spend and no time to work with your kid through the process of planning, applying, visiting, deciding. otherwise everything they offer is already out there.
By John C.