I am grateful that SET and DYS are both helpful resources that are provided free of charge.
What has impressed me about SET so far has been the personalized outreach. Within the first year, we received a personal email from the director to come in and meet with her over the summer if/when we have time. Their counseling office is staffed with highly qualified/trained personnel if your child ever needs assistance and they will provide college recommendations. Then we received a number of mailings that while not personalized (other than with your child's name/address) was targeted to fit your particular child's (i.e., scholarship opportunities) age/grade. I think that SET membership is low enough that they can afford to give individualized attention. SET also tries to keep tabs on their members by having the kids provide an update each year. The Imagine magazine and SET newsletter are also nice resources/references.
DYS has great seminars for both parents and kids and both my kids and I have taken advantage of many of them over the past years, although not within the last year or so. DYS also stands ready to jump in and help you advocate for your kids with the school administration. In fact, it appears that they have many form letters ready to go in typical situations and they have responded really quickly both times that I approached them (once for DS before 4th grade and once for DD beginning of 8th grade). Their staff, in my experience, tends to be on the young side but very friendly/approachable. The only issue I had was lack of access to a copy of their correspondence with the school - although I could have requested a copy from the school but that seemed a bit odd given DYS was our advocate. Obviously, DYS also has all the other resources like the Summit, THINK and online courses but we don't have the personal experience to comment.
