Trajecta vs · Private consultant
A private college admissions consultant charges about $140 to $230 an hour, and full packages usually run $4,000 to $12,000. Trajecta is an AI college counselor that covers the same ground for $249.99 a year. It builds your profile, coaches your activities, reviews every essay draft, and then puts your finished application in front of a simulated admissions committee. This page walks through all six jobs that fee is buying.
01 · The price
The consultant numbers here are the industry's own. IECA, the professional association for independent educational consultants, puts average hourly rates between $140 and $230. Recent pricing surveys put comprehensive packages between $4,000 and $12,000, and premium firms in big metros sell multi-year packages for $50,000 or more. Package figures are totals, usually covering one application cycle or several years of work. Exact sources and retrieval dates are under the chart.
Trajecta Pro
$249.99 a year
Typical consultant package
$4,000–$12,000
Premium firms, multi-year
$50,000–$100,000+
Consultant fees: IECA-published averages and 2025–2026 pricing reports from Private Prep and Dewey Smart. Retrieved July 18, 2026. Trajecta pricing current as of the same date.
02 · The actual work
A consulting package is really six different jobs bundled into one fee. They overlap and loop back on each other rather than running in a neat order. Here is each one, and how each side does it. This is the part worth reading before you spend money on either.
01
With a consultant
An engagement usually opens with positioning meetings. The consultant asks about classes, interests, and what the family wants, then sketches the story the application should tell. This is real work and good consultants are genuinely good at it. It is also where the hourly billing starts, often a year or two before any application exists.
With Trajecta
Trajecta computes direction from the record itself. Grades, coursework, activities, and interest text place the student on a two-axis compass, scholarly to applied and analytical to creative, with a ranked evidence list explaining the placement. It suggests major clusters that fit, states how settled the direction actually is, and recomputes every time the profile changes. A separate narrative reading drafts the story the current profile could carry.
02
With a consultant
Between meetings, momentum is the consultant’s quiet job. They assign homework, check in, and keep a tenth grader moving on things with no deadline for two years. How well this works depends heavily on the individual consultant and on how many other families they carry.
With Trajecta
Trajecta turns the gap between today and application season into missions, concrete next steps picked for the profile and grouped into packs the student opts into. Each mission targets one of six profile-strength categories, so the student can always see which part of the file is thin and what this week does about it. Completed work updates the profile, which updates the direction and the recommendations.
03
With a consultant
The consultant reviews the resume a few times a year, suggests leadership pushes and summer programs from their own network, and sanity-checks next year’s schedule when asked. The advice is one person’s experience, and it is usually delivered in a meeting the family pays for.
With Trajecta
Every activity and award entry gets an AI coach read: what the entry actually signals, where the description undersells the work, and a rewrite in the student’s own words. An explore feed recommends new activities matched to the direction, and a custom evaluator scores any idea the student brings, with a fit score, a selectivity tier, watchouts, and concrete improvements before a summer gets committed to it. Course recommendations read the transcript against the direction, including which AP courses earn their workload.
04
With a consultant
The consultant drafts a list from experience and keeps it current in a spreadsheet. Experienced judgment is worth something here. It is still one person’s read, it usually covers the fifteen or twenty schools they know best, and it rarely comes with numbers the family can check.
With Trajecta
Trajecta scores fit and admission probability for schools across a 2,000+ college dataset, from the student’s actual record and each school’s published data: enrolled-freshman GPA, test bands, and the admission factors the school itself files in its Common Data Set. The list reranks when the profile changes, and every school links to a data page the family can read for themselves.
05
With a consultant
Essay coaching is where the hours concentrate. Two or three feedback rounds per essay is typical, every round is billed, and a student applying to twelve schools may face twenty supplementals. Families report this is the stretch where a package quietly becomes an hourly bill.
With Trajecta
Every draft gets inline feedback tied to the full profile, which is how it catches an essay that contradicts the activity list or retells something the reader already knows. A brainstorm workspace helps find the story before drafting starts. There is no per-draft meter. Running ten drafts of one supplemental costs the same as running one.
06
With a consultant
Before submission, the consultant reads the finished application once more. It is a careful read, and it is one pair of eyes, with one taste, reading a file they have seen evolve for months and can no longer see fresh.
With Trajecta
Committee Review stages the room the file is actually headed for. A specialist essay reader files a report first. Four AI officers then read the entire application through different lenses, academics, narrative, impact, and context, and disagree with each other in writing. A chair weighs the split and writes the decision with next steps. It is a rehearsal of the conversation a real room will have, grounded in the school’s own numbers.
Watch a real committee run →03 · Side by side
| Private consultant | Trajecta | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | $140–$230 an hour. $4,000–$12,000 for a typical package. | $249.99 a year for Pro. Free tier to start. |
| Who reads your file | One counselor, with one point of view. | Four AI officer reads plus a chair. They disagree in writing before you get a decision. |
| Your essays | Read and coached, with the hours billed. | Every draft gets inline feedback, as many drafts as you want. |
| Grounded in | The counselor's own experience and network. | Each school's published Common Data Set. |
| When it works | Scheduled meetings, usually weekly or less. | Whenever you sit down, including 11pm before a deadline. |
| Honest limits | The field is unregulated, so quality varies a lot from one consultant to the next. | No view of your recommendation letters or interviews. Not a human relationship. |
Both columns are honest. The limits row applies to us too.
04 · Credit where due
This page would be easier to write if consultants were useless. They are not. Here is what the fee actually buys when it works.
They know your kid
A consultant who works with your family for years notices things no profile form can hold, like a student burning out or an interest that keeps resurfacing. They also manage the family itself. When a parent needs talking out of an Ivy-or-bust list, a trusted person does that far better than a dashboard.
Pressure from a person
Some students need a human across the table to hit deadlines. An app can surface the next task and track what stalls. It cannot look you in the eye. For a student who will not open the app, the fee buys a standing appointment with someone who notices the silence and calls.
The parts outside the file
Interview prep, recommendation-letter strategy, a phone call with the school counselor, navigating athletic recruitment. A good consultant works all of those. Trajecta does not. If your application will turn on an interview or a coach’s call, that human layer is worth paying for.
05 · FAQ
Most independent consultants charge between $140 and $230 an hour. Comprehensive packages usually land between $4,000 and $12,000. Elite firms in big markets sell multi-year packages for $50,000 to $100,000 or more. Those figures come from IECA-published averages and 2025–2026 pricing reports, retrieved July 2026.
A typical engagement runs from sophomore or junior year through application season. It opens with positioning conversations, then moves through activity planning, course selection, a college list, essay coaching, and a final review before submission. The good ones also carry the human side, like interview prep and keeping a stressed household calm. The work is real. The question for most families is which parts need a person and which parts are volume work that software now does well.
Sometimes. If your family wants a multi-year human relationship, in-person accountability, and help with things like interview prep, a good consultant earns the fee. If what you need is the work itself, the direction, the activities, the essays, the college list, and a hard read on your finished application, software now covers that ground for a small fraction of the price.
When the family wants a standing human relationship and can afford four or five figures for it. When the student needs a person across the table to get work done at all. And when the outcome depends on things outside the written file, like interviews, recruitment, or a complicated transcript story that needs an advocate. If none of those describe you, start with software and add targeted human help by the hour if a specific need comes up.
Not fully, and be suspicious of anyone who says it can. A consultant offers a human relationship and handles the parts outside your file. What AI does better is volume and grounding. Trajecta reads every essay draft, scores every school on your list against real published data, and runs your finished file past four readers who disagree with each other. Some families will use both. Neither replaces your school counselor.
Unlimited inline essay feedback and brainstorming, AI coaching on every activity and award entry, personalized activity and course recommendations, a college list scored by fit and admission data for 2,000+ schools, and Committee Review, where an essay specialist, four AI officers, and a chair deliberate over the entire application. Profile building, the direction compass, mission planning, and college-list organization are free.
Yes. The free tier includes profile building, the direction compass, mission planning, and college list organization. No credit card required to start.
Start free with profile building and the college list. Upgrade to Pro when you want the essay reviews and the committee.