Counselors Provide Advice, for a Price : Aid in Picking the Right College

Virginia Soth and Peggy Ogden are professional matchmakers. For an average fee of $375, they will spend countless hours matching college-bound students to a compatible school, one that fits their academic skills--and their parents’ pocketbooks.

For the past eight years, Soth, a former counselor at UC Irvine, and Ogden, a former lecturer at Coastline Community College, have been working together in Costa Mesa as private, professional college counselors.

Soth and Ogden are among a handful of entrepreneurs nationwide who have tried to carve a niche for themselves as independent college counselors, providing information to parents eager to get their children into prestigious schools and hungry for some sound advice.

Parents like Mary Ann Hemphill of Corona del Mar are hiring independent counselors like Ogden and Soth, partners in a business called Campus and Career Counselors, to provide the one-on-one expert guidance that, Hemphill said, the “high school counselors didn’t have the time to provide.”

“We wanted more in-depth testing and counseling than was available at the school. A lot of it had to do with cutbacks after Proposition 13,” said Hemphill, who stressed that she was not criticizing the ability of high school counselors. “They just have too many students and not enough time.”

Drop in Counseling

Studies show that counseling services in California schools dropped dramatically after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. A 1980 study co-sponsored by the California Personnel and Guidance Assn. and the state Department of Education found that the number of counselors in California schools dropped by 15% between 1978 and 1980. The student-counselor ratio increased from 372 students per counselor to 427 to 1 during that period, according to the study. The result, the study says, was that one-to-one counseling was drastically reduced.

Soon afterward, a number of independent counselors went into business. Many were former high school counselors whose positions were eliminated because of budget cuts. Most hoped to market a service to meet the needs of college-bound juniors and seniors but ended up closing their doors because of a lack of business.

“When the (counseling) cutbacks occurred, a great many persons saw it as an opportunity to establish a college counseling service in the private sector,” said Richard Hoover, executive vice president of the California Assn. of Counseling and Development, a statewide organization of counselors in public schools and the private sector. “But the clientele was simply not there to support most of them.”

Sylvia Lenhoff, director of the office of Relations With Schools and Colleges at UC Irvine, said she saw “several excellent folk” start businesses and then “go by the wayside” because of a lack of demand for their services.

Only a few, including about half a dozen in Orange County, are still in business.

But Lenhoff believes “a need is still there,” and that there is a select group of parents who are willing and able to pay competent, reputable people to lead their teen-agers through the confusing maze of entrance forms, interest tests and college choices.

Ernest Cioffi, executive director of continuing studies in the School of Education at USC, agrees: “There are families out there who can afford to pay somebody to perform that kind of service. But a lot of them don’t know they need it until it is too late.”

Roger Rossier, a high school guidance counselor for 10 years and a counselor at Cypress College for 15 years, opened his own counseling firm in Garden Grove seven years ago.

‘Students Need Other Options’

“There is a need for independent counselors because students need other options,” he said. “Not everyone is necessarily satisfied with the counseling they receive in a high school setting. I think there are some tremendous programs (in high schools), but I think it is only fair that students have other options. With independent counselors, you do not have the wait you might have in getting in to see one in a school setting. And you can accomplish more in a shorter period of time. For some people, getting in quickly is important. It is not always a question of ‘better.’ ”

Jackie Ferguson, who hired Peggy Ogden and Virginia Soth to work with her son Mitch, 17, said it’s not a question of “quality, but quantity.” Ferguson, who lives in Laguna Beach, said that even in schools that still have counselors, “most do not have the time to spend with students. I think the more information the child has to deal with, the better,” said Ferguson, herself a former teacher. “It is a time of tremendous pressure. It is overwhelming.”

Ferguson admitted that she probably could have helped her son pick a college himself, but she added that she now realizes that if she had, she would have made a mistake. “I knew as much about college admissions as anyone I knew,” she said. “And Mitch was a good student to start with. My husband and I thought he should be an engineer.”

Pleased With Service

However, after Mitch took a series of interest tests administered by Campus and Career Counselors, results showed that he was much more interested in science, specifically scientific research. “He opened up more to them (Ogden and Soth) than he did to us,” Ferguson recalled.

Mitch decided to attend the Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, where he is studying science. Jackie Ferguson said she was so pleased with the service provided by Soth and Ogden that she will use them again when her daughter Jill, 16, gets ready to go to college.

Ogden said she believes that most high school counselors “are doing the best they can, but most don’t have the time. In public schools, counseling toward college is not a high priority,” she said.

Alternative Programs

For example, Ogden cited the Huntington Beach High School District, which eliminated its traditional guidance counseling program in 1981 and replaced it with an “alternative, career-oriented” program.

Cathy McGough, administrative assistant to the superintendent in the Huntington Beach district, said that “funding cutbacks forced us to look at alternative programs. We don’t have full-time counselors.” Instead, each high school in the district has a career center staffed by what McGough called “counseling-credentialed people.”

The career centers serve both college-bound and career-bound students, McGough said. “College and career are looked at as a whole,” she said. “Some go to college. Some don’t.”

In addition, McGough pointed out that the district also conducts a number of “college nights” and works with Golden West College to provide special counseling programs such as the nine-week “Career Life Planning” course.

“Also in association with Golden West College, we provide free counseling two or three times a week at the college,” McGough said. “I think our students don’t have a need to go outside for counseling. We think we are doing a good job in this area.”

When Bob Taniguchi’s counseling position was eliminated at San Clemente High School in 1982, Taniguchi, who is now employed full time as the school psychologist for the Capistrano Unified School District, decided to open a counseling business of his own.

Community Need

Taniguchi--who with his wife, Jane, operates a private, part-time counseling service in San Juan Capistrano--said he thought that when his postion was cut, it created a real need in the community. “I saw the value of working with students all through high school,” he said. “I worked as a high school counselor, and I believe the more information students have, the better decision they can make.”

Although Taniguchi said he does not “go out and advertise” his business, his clientele, with whom he works at nights and on weekends, is there.

On the other hand, Lea Dober, user-services representative for Eureka, the state’s career information system, does not believe that “you need to go to someone else (for counseling). There are enough books out there on the market that you can work with your child yourself,” she said.

Sharon Paul, administrator for the human services unit for the Orange County Department of Education, said she believes that school districts meet the counseling needs of the majority of the students. As examples, she cited the Garden Grove Unified School District and the Anaheim Union High School District. “Both have guaranteed guidance services programs that run from the seventh to the 12th grades,” she said. “These provide an outstanding opportunity for each student to look for career and educational futures. And similar programs are available throughout Orange County.”

A Parent’s Prerogative

However, Paul hastened to add that “it is certainly the prerogative of any parent to make a commitment to obtain private assistance in terms of career and educational counseling services. The important consideration is that students have an opportunity to work with their families and their schools to develop both short- and long-term goals,” she said.

Paul pointed out that “guidance and counseling” was recently identified as a “priority student need” by 13 separate school districts in an Orange County survey. “We received more than 18,300 responses in the survey,” she said. “And ‘making education and career decisions’ was third on the list.”

In the private sector, Taniguchi and Rossier provide career and college counseling, but Virginia Soth and Peggy Ogden specialize in college counseling only.

For a fee (which varies depending on services provided and time involved), private counselors such as Taniguchi, Rossier, Ogden and Soth will meet with both parents and students, administer a batch of interest tests, analyze test results, provide one-on-one counseling, advise parents and students about course requirements for the college or career choice, provide academic information about various colleges, help students and parents with college applications and provide information on entrance deadlines and financial aid.

“It (the information provided) is all public information,” Virginia Soth admitted. “But parents and students have trouble figuring it out, and it takes time. We are experts. We have this information at our fingertips. We visited 38 colleges in the East alone this past fall.

“The information is there,” she continued, “but it takes a lot of time and effort, and when you get right down to it, many parents just don’t have the time.”