Ultra-Rich Buy Ultra-Luxury Counseling to Get Kids into Harvard
bloomberg.com
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The biggest surprise to me is that: 1) Enterprising wealthy parents haven’t figured out that the value of elite schools is only based on their own value of it. I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there.
2) Elite institutions haven’t decided to capture the value of these services that hack their own admissions by acquiring them or offering paid “on-ramps” and “bootcamps” themselves.
They kind of did this with USC over the past few decades.
Schools like Harvard and Columbia are older than the country they sit in. They’re also very wealthy. It’s hard to imagine them losing their status anytime soon.
Harvard runs pre-college and summer school programs for high school aged kids.
Yale has something similar.
University of Chicago runs a full high school called the Lab Schools. Which is considered extremely elite, and was started by John Dewey himself in 1896
lab school is for university faculty primarily though and in addition the school's own admin (ie the lab school's teachers and etc) can get reduced (zero?) tuition for their own kids. it is a feeder for sure though.
1. Academic superstars with charity work, awards from science competitions, perfect SAT and 4.0/5.0 GPA/QPA but are rejected from every Ivy
2. People who got more than a couple B or lower grades in school, participated lightly in a scouts org or similar but get accepted to one or more Ivy.
All my friends at the ‘elite’ university I transferred to fit into the second group, so it always seemed bewildering at how hard you could try and still not get in.
Group 2 might represent students and families that have adopted newer signals that group 1 does not yet perceive. Hard to know for sure without knowing the individuals.
Note, transfering into an elite school is a fantastic entry point. For others interested in this track just be sure to understand how your prior credits will or will not transfer.
I would be interested to hear more about what they’re like as humans. How it works emotionally. What these people are like, how self-aware or not they are of how they pursue such goals.
It is my impression that a big part of any society and in any historical period there have always been parents doing what they can to elevate their children into higher status. And this has always included an elaborate game of coaching, gaming and presenting children as some sort of prodigies or achievers. Hiding the flaws in shame, embellishing where possible. I’ve seen members of my own family invest obsessively into this sort of game, and I have mixed feelings about it all.
On paper, the child is the client and we work with them. In practice, their are decisions that the family needs to make and sometimes parents are in a better position to build or start relationship networks. Parents typically come with crazy impressive networks already though and we help them leverage what they have.
The sense I get is that these are people who highly valued their elite education and want the same opportunities for their kids.
None seem particularly entitled or like jerks. They just have the resources to get their kids opportunities that most people cannot.
I would think of it like this. There is almost no way two otherwise equal kids will get equivalent SAT scores if one has done any kind of prep course and the other has not. One kid is going to be answering questions that look just like ones they practiced while the other is still reading the test instructions.
We do that kind of leg up but for every aspect of the admissions process.
Looking at my cousins' kid I didn't know what to think. They didn't do it on the level that you describe, but they definitely trained the boy to perfection. I couldn't say a bad thing about him, really - humble, ambitious, smart, clever, all perfect grades etc. Doesn't seem very "happy" though.
How do you feel about it? Seeing how this sausage is made would you see it worthwhile to get your kid to do this sort of thing?
Sometimes we see the injustice clearly such as when a affluent person evades jailtime for the same crime that sent a under privileged person to jail.
I am planning for my kids to attend college absolutely and have guided them to play a sport I think is a signal. By grade 8 they had all done the requisite volenteer hours at the places I feel are right. They took a language I feel they will need to be successful. They take advanced courses to boost their GPA above 4. I have encouraged them to be in the after school clubs I think are important even though they refuse to do them. They keep certain friends of our family apprised of their grades and other milestones.
All that said, they play their fill of among us, hang with friends and refuse to clean their rooms and know they are free to push back on my recomendations.
We keep them directed and motivated but empowered. They will leverage that life lesson as well come application time.
One thing we dont do is have them work temporary jobs.
I recognize that is a necessity for many families but we are fortunate that we have the resources that make that a non factor. My kid's sports are already basically part time jobs and build plenty of character, pride and respect for hard work.
My impression is that the biggest insight there is, is that this stuff is formed early and with the smallest things. Like going to a club when your parent tells you even if you don't want it or knowing both the consequences and the benefits of pushing back and asserting yourself.
The narrative around temporary jobs is hard, I had those at a young age and thought they did something for me. Looking back, I'm not so sure that they really did anything for me character-wise.
The reason we dont want our kids to have jobs is that their plates are already full with volenteer work and club and varsity sports that often overlap. If they also worked part time jobs it would eat into their free range time which we also think is important.
I also find this fascinating because of my own confusing dual-national upbringing. Every society has slightly different elites with unique ideals driving how kids are selected in admissions processes. What’s silly in one echelon, can be important in another. In my European country people would laugh at this idea that somehow having a simple job helps with anything.
i worked at "crimson research institute" for a while during the beginning of my phd - they paid 125/hr so enough said about why i did it. the kids were almost all classic overachievers - smart enough but groomed by their parents for the life. all of them except one were unspectacular in that regard and just going through the motions of the "research projects" - i wasn't big on cracking the whip so most of them slacked off after a couple of months. all of them very clearly extremely wealthy.
> presenting children as some sort of prodigies or achievers.
no one gave that impression - it was always just a necessary component of getting into HYPS(whatever).
Oh, so playing the game but without grandiose delusions you mean? Almost sounds healthier
Seems that a lot of straight A Asian students had a tough luck with Ivy and other 1 tier colleges so they need to go to lower tier college which sapped opportunity from other Asian students with less than stellar grade.
In fact, I believe a few years back, uPenn turned down like 100 students with near perfect SAT scores.
Affluent families used to be able to game the SAT with prep and tutoring but then motivated families (typically Asians) picked up on that signal and started to game it as well. Same thing happened with first chair violin as I have alluded to.
Now that it seems like everyone has great standardized testing and violin solos. The result is that those signals have much less meaning today. You might have picked up that elite colleges are looking for "more well rounded candidates" but I'll leave you to decode that yourself.
I'm assuming by Asian you are talking about Asian American, and thanks to some recent legal decisions things are looking a little fairer. It really should never have been a factor but motivated families coopted some of the signals. I want to be clear, no elite college wants to exclude east Asians, it is just that motivated east Asians dominate the gaming of signals like standardize testing that if colleges used only those signals then east Asians would dominate every notable American school. For context there are more east Asian A students than there are total US students.
If you are an American with a high school B average I would encourage an applicant who was not a client to apply to selective colleges those with admission rates between 25 and 50 percent. R1 institutions if possible. Make sure to apply to some safety schools as well though.
Dont dismiss a state school. They typically have higher acceptance rates with a mandate to educate, great value for the money, and often have vast alumni networks to leverage when it comes time to graduate and look for internships and jobs.
Do you think that some undeserving candidates get in because of the polish?
Do candidates from here go on to do hard subjects like Maths, CS, Chemistry, etc.? Or most are buying the Harvard tag through easier degrees? What percentage of successful candidates go on to do STEM vs. Gender Studies/similar?
We cant get a C student into and ivy/ivy-like school but our clients have admit rates many times the 4% of the typical applicant.
These selective schools market and work their selectivity knowing many applicants will apply for vanity reasons with no real hope of admission. A high selectivity also helps with rankings from places like USNews.
In addition to SAT prep and tutoring, we guide applicants on how and where to volenteer, what clubs to join and avoid. We guide them on when to submit their ACT scores vs their SAT scores and when to withhold them on and institution by institution basis. We work with them to cultivate and leverage the alumni relationships they have or help them grow them. We guide them on what to highlight in their family background and what to avoid. We help them get recommendations from people the colleges trust and value. We edit thier application submissions and resumes. Once clients get an offer we help them negotiate financial aid. Overall you might think of us like an actor's agent or manager.
Do less deserving candidates get in? That is a little hard to say because of the financial dynamics at play. There is no level playing field here and showing a client in the best ethical light is what we do. In that sense we make average candidates look like great candidates and they takes spots away from less polished gems. I guess in that sense yes.
Most client families are looking for the relationship network that an ivy-like school affords and that is what they pay for. It would not make sense in my mind to use a service like this one to get a student into a "slightly better" degree specific program. For some, money is no object and they might pay us to get them from CMU to MIT but most are looking for relationship building opportunities that lead to partnerships.
Most candidates want entrepreneurship opportunities or tracks in business, business tech or law that lead to partnerships. I'm not sure we have ever worked with someone who wanted to pursue women's studies.
> clubs to join and avoid
What clubs would you ask them to avoid?
> We help them get recommendations from people the colleges trust and value
Are there any financial motivations for people writing the recommendation?
> Most candidates want entrepreneurship opportunities or tracks in business, business tech or law
So, about none using such services opt for Math/CS/Physics major?
I'm not sure how much I can say about activities that help vs those that are now an anti signal from our perspective.
I think this is fairly public knowledge now.
20 years ago playing the violin was a positive signal to elite colleges. Now, that signal is saturated. It seems like every tiger mom wants thier child to be first chair but unfortunately colleges no longer see that as a positive signal (at least from our perspective)
Our clients typically want to track into business, business tech, and pre law, pre med.
From my perspective their are lots of great CS programs out there and lots of demand for CS grads. We work with families who want to track more entrepreneurial or into partnerships rather than into tech leads and project managers if that makes sense.
I was totally unaware of this industry. I knew about network leveraged recommendations, internships, etc.
Nobody in my circle ever used these services, despite some of them being able to afford it.
Thanks for all your responses and insights.
Typically though for most kids grade 7 or 8 begins school course tracking. You want to be able to take AP courses that can lead to GPAs above 4 and whenever that tracking starts in your school system you want to be aware of the choices you are making and when some choices will close doors in grade 11 and 12. To be clear, every kid does not need to track into every honors option and overloading a kid so they can't get high grades is worse than taking courses they can master.
From my own family, getting volunteer hours out of the way in middle school was relatively painless as other time commitments like club sports, homework, and free ranging were still easy to accommodate at that age.
Note though that there are a good many who start in high school and better late than never.
> Before the pandemic, Rim worked out of offices in the Beaux-Arts Bergdorf Goodman Building in Midtown Manhattan, not far from the Plaza Hotel. Today, he likes to court parent-clients at the sumptuous Aman Club (a members-only club, where the initiation fee runs $200,000). If that won’t do, Rim will discreetly drop by a client’s home — whether it’s a condo at 15 Central Park West or on Miami’s Fisher Island — for a modest $10,000 deposit.
The article alluded to a deeper challenge, how to motivate kids who have everything? I have treated kids like this, some of whom got more motivated and went to HYPBSC etc. But that is more like a therapist role. When these companies do those services, beyond working with the founder, it seems somewhat like psychiatry group practices where someone (hopefully good) hires a bunch of people to work under them. The head does not really know what they are doing but has some general supervision sometimes but a lot of it is you are just working with a less qualified person (who the founder is making $ off). for the record I don't have great love for that kind of practice and am old school solo practitioner dr.
I'm guessing she is not unethical though and cant get any kid into any school. That said if she knows what she is doing it could easily seem like she can to a casual observer.