I can get your kid into an Ivy | Hacker News Reader

I can get your kid into an Ivy

finance.yahoo.com

11 pointsimgabe22 comments

Great, someone has figured out the recipe for high-performing, cookie-cutter drones. They might as well submit their super-early-action resumes to Wall Street alongside their college applications.

I have so many more snide remarks to make about this, but I can't say there aren't upsides... at least it tells you there is always a way, if you're willing to find it.

She's not necessarily creating drones here. She's helping kids go to the college of their choice. And since their families have money, they were probably going to get there no matter what. The only difference is, Hernandez gets a fat check, too. Cool work if you can get it.

I actually think she's creating something very different from drones. It sounds like she's pushing kids to do extraordinary things that they wouldn't think of doing by themselves, but as long as those are the things about which the kids are passionate (music, science, photography, etc). Even if the end goal is to get into a good college, I don't think it diminishes from those kids' achievements under her guidance.

In the end, it sounds like if the parents and the kids were a bit creative they wouldn't need that woman's services. But she helps the would-be uncreative drones be less drone-like, and that's what helps them get admitted.

Ok, but how many of her clients would still be clients if the tag line was "I push your kids to do extraordinary things". I could be wrong, but I think the target audience wants to trade their money for a college acceptance, regardless of the means.

She might be taking the role that parents would have played in other situations where money or time was tighter, telling the kids to find one realistic interest and focus on it.

She's hacked the system. This can only be a good thing if it forces the schools to patch it.

1) This is wrong.

2) Why didn't I think of it first.

I can't knock her hustle but she genuinely annoys me.

it would be cool if people did things they wanted to do instead of things that look good on applications

if colleges didn't care about them, I think membership in student council, natl honor society, habitat for humanity, chess club, band, etc, etc would fall by 99%

people should just be real

Article is incorrect. The Academic Index is an agreement between the Ivies about the minimum GPA/SAT necessary for recruited athletes. The cutoff is different for each school, based on the average of the overall student body. However the AI has nothing to do with the general admissions process.

The AI, or something like it, is probably used at every school in the country as one of the many pieces of the evaluation. It's nice to have one number that sums up the academic goodness of a candidate.

I don't doubt that you're right in the stated purpose of the AI, but that doesn't necessarily mean the admissions officers don't use it for anything else.

I know a lot of people who were able to get into ivies or ivy league caliber schools without paying 40k. They did it on their own, for free. If you have to pay 40k to get your kid into an ivy, they probably don't belong there in the first place.

As I read this article, part of me was disgusted, but another part kept saying, "Brilliant!"

What a business model...

Find prospects with essentially unlimited resources and find out what they CAN'T buy. Then provide a service to dramatically increase their probability of getting it. Do that service excellently. And, most of all, find a way to guarantee (if even only semantically) your success.

I know tons of people with lots of money who constantly surprise me with how they spend it chasing something they CAN'T BUY. They chauffer their kids back and forth to every imaginable activity (to improve their chances later on). They take vitamins, eat weird foods, and go to "holistic" retreats to "insure" their health and longevity. They even donate tons of money to religious and spiritual institutions to insure their place in the "world to come".

They can't buy any of it. But they sure can pay to improve their odds. I say this woman is really onto something.

Now if only I could find my angle...

For only $49,995, I will guarantee your ycombinator application gets accepted in the next round. This includes personal start-up business counseling and 2 weeks at my exclusive retreat at a world class resort.

(This guarantee doesn't apply to lame ideas or applicants. "Lame" to be defined by me at a later date.)

Or just offer a money back guarantee and honour it. Make 50k off of the 20% who make it through, and Robert's yer mother's brother.

Alan Dershowitz once told the story of a court clerk who would approach the plaintiffs in every trial and say "For $5,000 I'll try to convince the judge to rule in your favor. If you still lose the case I'll give you your money back." Then he would make the same offer to the defendants.

His mistake was not keeping the vigorish.

OTOH, with the speed of our court system, he probably could've made a nice little income on the interest.

> For only $49,995, I will guarantee your ycombinator application gets accepted in the next round.

Since that's more than their typical investment anyway, you might want to cut them in on that racket... ;-)

I had the same feeling after reading the article.

Brilliant for exploiting and exposing an apparently broken system.

Disgusting because the victims are the kids who use the service (I bet 99% of the time it is the parent's decision, not the kid's), not to mention the kids who lose out to people who bought their admission.

Hey, if she was a publishing agent, she would take 15 percent of all the kids' future salaries.

depressing.

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