Good guidance shouldn’t hinge on what your family can spend.
Start with a full Direction Snapshot for nothing. Premise Plus opens more room at $19 a month. The Access Program keeps a price tag from being the reason a student stops looking.
The going rate for good advice.
Real college guidance has mostly been something families buy. Here is what it runs, before you get to the number Premise charges.
- Private consultant
- About $6,500 for a package, and roughly $4,000 to $12,000 across the market.Attributed to IECA member surveys · reviewed Jul 2026
- The elite tier
- $120,000 a year, the fee one of the most-covered firms charges the 190 families it works with.New York Magazine, Jan 2024 · checked Jul 2026
- Pay-to-play research
- $2,500 to $10,000 to turn a teenager into a “peer-reviewed” author, across at least twenty programs.ProPublica and the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2023 · checked Jul 2026
- Premise Plus
- $19 a month.Cancel any time.
A consultant’s price protects the scarcity that makes it feel valuable. Premise works by reaching a lot of students at a low number, so the number can stay low.
Pick the amount of room you need.
Every plan gives the same guidance and the same honesty. What changes is how much of it you get in a month.
$0
resets every month
Best for a first look.
- 1 Direction Snapshot / month
- 30 mentor replies / month
- 1 action experiment / month
- 1 reflection & profile update / month
$19/ month
cancel any time
Best for staying with it week to week.
- 100 mentor replies / month
- 3 snapshot refreshes / month
- Essay Studio & story themes
- Experiments & profile updates included
Premise is in a small tester phase right now. Plus opens when it ends.
$0–5/ month
trust-based, no documents
If cost would otherwise stop you.
- 50 mentor replies / month
- 1 snapshot refresh / 90 days
- A short application, no proof of hardship
Asking for support is normal. There’s no public label, ever.
More room, the same answers.
- Mentor replies
- Free30 / mo
- Plus100 / mo
- Access50 / mo
- Snapshot refreshes
- Free1 / mo
- Plus3 / mo
- Access1 / 90 days
- Tools
- FreeEssay Studio
- PlusAll features
- AccessAll features
Paying buys room, never different answers. No plan predicts your admissions odds, writes a word of your essay, invents a passion project, or pushes you toward a name. The refusals are the product, at every price.
Cost shouldn’t decide who gets guidance.
The application is short and trust-based on purpose. Paperwork turns away exactly the students this is for. Asking for support is normal.
No documents
No tax forms, pay stubs, FAFSA, transcripts, or GPA. Just a short form with your situation and a few honest sentences.
Same quality
Access uses the same models and the same three meters as Plus, at lower numbers. There is no second-class version of the guidance.
No public label
Nobody sees that you’re on Access. Renewable every 90 days by request, with a short list when seats are full.
The rules we hold ourselves to.
Premise charges for compute and time. These are written down so you can hold us to them.
No fear conversion
We never imply you’ll fall behind by not upgrading. The only reason to pay is wanting more room to keep going.
Access sits next to paid
Reduced-cost help is on this page, beside Plus, not hidden. What you can afford never changes the quality of the guidance.
Clear cancellation
Plus is billed monthly. Cancel any time; leaving takes one click.
No paywalled basics
Core college-access knowledge stays free. We never lock fundamental guidance behind a subscription.
The free starter is a real first read.
A full Direction Snapshot, your evidence shown plainly, one thing to try this week. Pay only if you want to keep going.