A guy from my HS went to Sarah Lawerence in the early 90s. He was in multiple open relationships when he came home for Xmas his freshman year. It was like 8-1 ratio. The ratio was so bad that the straight girls who wanted dick didn’t care if they had to share.
Assuming you aren’t talking Varsity Blues, consultants, IMHO, do two things: the hard work of crawling the sub rankings, programmatic strengths, lurking College Confidential to get a sense of accepts/rejects, as well working your High Schools Naviance. From there they develop a tiered list of schools which is realistic. We all want to think our kid can go to Princeton or Stanford. But they almost certainly won’t. The hard part is being honest and developing a list of Matches and Reaches that meet your child’s needs and you can actually get into. Then developing an application that will “stick” on the admissions table.
They also work as essay consultants. Depending on how much they cost, that can be anything from light editing and creation brainstorming, to more or less writing your kids essay. And the Essays are so important. AO’s read thousand and thousands of terrible essays. Tired takes on a trip to Europe, or building houses in Appalachia. A thoughtful, well written essay is the golden ticket to getting to the final admissions round and charming your regional AO to fight for your application when the tough decisions are being made.
The SAT/ACT thing, imo, is mostly about practice and test taking technique. I think with a couple of guide books and dedication you can jump your score pretty dramatically. Two things:
1. Have your kid take a practice test of each kind and see if they have a preference, then focus on that. Don’t just do the SAT because that’s what you did.
2. if Money is tight, there is free SAT online prep, officially sanctioned by the College Board, on Kahn Academy.