I unfortunately have nothing good to say about the college counseling Help my daughter received…read morefrom Jari Hazard. We looked for college counselors and interviewed a few exceptional candidates who had high degrees and years of experience, same as Jari, but the other counselors had excellent demeanors, good personalities and were all well spoken. Alas, the deciding factor was that the other counselors were extremely expensive. Jari was cheap by their standards, so I hired her. This was quite possibly the worst decision I have ever made. Upon interviewing her there where some indicators I should have paid attention to i.e. she wore what looked like an Easter dress a five year old would have selected, but more importantly, she promised no hours spent with my daughter one on one, only help via email. When I thought about backing out, which in retrospect I should have, I questioned her policy of not sitting with my daughter for tutelage, and helping her with her college applications, she reversed her position and promised to come to our home anytime she asked. I had a bad feeling about this, but I hired her because she charged far less than all her competitors. Well, as they say, "you get what you pay for" in life.
Every time my daughter completed a college essay, Jari dismissed it in whole. She never sat with my daughter and did a single revision. My daughter finally wrote four total essays on two different prompts. Jari dismissed all four on sight; never editing or revising, simply dismissing. She rejected my daughter's topic as well, accepting as truth one author's article, that implied college applicants not use my daughters subject for their essay. My daughter felt passionately about her topic and felt the experience she chose to write about was pivotal to her development as a human being and her ultimate career choice. My daughter chose to write her chosen topic despite Jari's continual ridicule of my daughter's choice of topic. We have taught our daughter to not believe someone's opinion, simply because it is written. Eventually, she began to make fun of my daughter so much; I believed she was doing psychological and emotional harm to my child's self-esteem. Jari is reckless and demeaning in her approach at correction. She has tunnel vision and only wants your child to write what she deems "important" or "correct".
After dismissing all of my daughter's efforts at answering her college prompts, Jari eventually actually wrote my daughter's essay in full for her. I thought she had simply gone too far.
She not only refused to edit a single one of my daughter's essays, she had the gall to ask my daughter to edit her essay (Jari's), just in case there was something she felt was in error. Jari kept saying that the essay she wrote for my daughter was "Great!" and "Now your mother is getting her money's worth."
Well of course, when I emailed her to question her writing my daughters essay in whole (not one thought or idea was contributed by my daughter), she denied her intentions to submit this paper. She not only was going to submit it as my daughters paper, she asked my daughter to revise it, or edit any errors she found in it. Finally, she told my daughter to not say anywhere in her essays that she intended to be a practitioner, in answer to a prompt that asked what are your hopes and dreams. She proceeded to tell my daughter that her G.P.A. was too low and her S.A.T. scores were not high enough to say becoming a doctor was her life dream.
My husband and I both have post graduate degrees and I did not have a good G.P.A. in high school; I did not allow that to dissuade me from becoming a doctor. We were appalled by what Jari had advised my daughter to omit. We strongly believed Jari was doing more harm to our daughter than good. She attempted to have my daughter plagiarize which we definitely did not approve of. Jari Hazard was a Hazard from the start. I paid her a thousand dollars and she stole my money. I knew I had to let her go when she started harassing me with condemning emails when I questioned her intentions. I thought it was better to walk away from my thousand dollar sunk cost than have someone like this be in any further contact with my daughter.
Jari also recommends you apply to colleges like Arizona State University. She insisted we apply, even though we told her we weren't interested. We informed her it was ranked way down at 121st in nationally ranked schools. She made my daughter fill the application and ignored its low rank.
Please do your research before hiring a college counselor. If you hire Jari Hazard, you will get what you paid for and keep what you do not want.
