We realize how important ethics and integrity are in any profession, but they are especially important in a profession where the provider of the service is working directly with children and teenagers. We have taken best practices from consulting associations and combined them with principles we have found serve the client very well, in order to form 15 core practices we are deeply committed to. Our pledge to all of our clients is that we will adhere to and abide by the following practices.
As your educational consultants:
- Our primary obligation is to represent you accurately based upon a professional evaluation of circumstances and requirements.
- We will often be very confident that a specific school will accept your child, but we can never guarantee specific school admission or placement.
- We will neither solicit nor accept compensation from any school, college or institution for the placement of clients.
- We will present to our clients the most appropriate choices, representing each one fairly, and shall make clear the client’s responsibilities in dealing with any schools, colleges and institutions.
- We shall not deviate from our area of expertise by offering services outside of it. For example, our expertise is not in the area of therapeutic schools; therefore, we do not offer these services, even when requested to do so.
- We shall not discriminate against our clients on the basis of sex, race, age, gender, religion, nationality or ethnic origin.
- We will articulate very clearly what the fees and payment options will be for our clients. We will strive to strike a balance between assuming an advocacy position for our clients while candidly and accurately representing the student to any schools that we recommended.
- We are committed to establishing a national network of other professionals who can help our clients. We will proactively find those individuals who know more than we do in any area that is of importance to our client’s school search, and we will bring that knowledge back to our clients.
- We understand how important confidentiality is, and we will not discuss any of our client’s names with any of our other clients or potential clients without their prior consent.
- We are extremely dedicated to education. We repeatedly visit schools, read voraciously, research frequently, and continually increase our knowledge of schools and colleges.
- We are committed to telling the truth to our clients–even if it is difficult to share or hear what we have to say about student strengths, weaknesses or placement options.
- We will not recommend any school unless we believe that the school is in the best interest of the student, the parent and the school. This approach has served us well because it builds credibility with schools, and it is in the best interest of the student and parent.
- We will not recommend any school with which we are not very familiar. When our knowledge is less extensive about a school than is normal for us, we will communicate this to our clients or potential clients.
- We will spend a significant amount of time getting to know the student: their strengths, weaknesses, past accomplishments, setbacks, goals and passions. We do not believe we can truly serve the client without knowing the student and knowing him or her very well.
- We will not charge more for a service than we would be willing to pay ourselves, if we were in need of it. We will not automatically inflate our prices just because the market indicates that we can get significantly more than what we are charging.