The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard (big lesson: Optimize childhood )

Jamie Beaton’s Crimson Education offers a pricey, yearslong boot camp preparing kids to apply to the Ivy League. Parents, and Wall Street, are on board

By Douglas Belkin of The WSJ. 

One part of the article mentions supply and demand followed by this paragraph:

"The number of students applying to the top universities in the U.S. has increased about fivefold over the past three decades, while the increase in class sizes at Ivy League universities is negligible. Admission rates are now below 5% at schools such as Harvard and Yale—down from around 20% two generations ago."

Imagine a vertical supply line. Then if demand increases, there will be a large price increase. But is there a limited supply of what this "guru" does? He certainly is not the only person offering this type of service. After more excerpts from this WSJ article I have a link to a post from January this year about another company that charges large fees to help get applicants into Ivy league schools. All of these companies can't guarantee success because there are only so many seats at these schools. I wonder how parents decided who to hire?

Now more excerpts from The WSJ article:

"Beaton’s message to the kids distilled: Optimize childhood by starting to build skills and interests years before high school. Strategically choose areas where you can excel—if you aren’t going to be a top performer in an activity, drop it and move to something else. And find ways to be unique, whether through entrepreneurship, scholarship or well-placed PR."

"This year, Beaton’s clients made up nearly 2% of students admitted to the undergraduate class of 2028 at several elite schools including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his clients, 24 earned admission to Yale, 34 to Stanford and 48 to Cornell."

"Clients pay Beaton’s firm from $30,000 and $200,000 for a four- to six-year program that includes tutoring in academics and test-taking, and advice on how to gather stellar teacher recommendations and how to execute extracurricular projects."

"Revenue in college consulting overall has tripled to $2.9 billion over 20 years"

"Around 10,000 people work as full-time college consultants in the U.S., with another 3,000 abroad"

"That’s up from less than 100 in 1990."

"At Harvard, 23% of freshmen who started in fall 2023 reported working with a private admissions counselor, up from 13% in 2017"

"Last year, for freshmen from families with incomes over $500,000, 48% used one."

"Critics say the Wall Street-backed college counselors are preying on the anxieties of well-to-do families desperate to get their children into elite schools. Admissions deans say they can actually do more harm than good.

Authenticity in an application is critical, said Mark Dunn, a senior associate director for outreach and recruitment at Yale. Hiring an enrollment counselor can work against a student if an application seems “overly engineered,” he wrote in an email. 

“We encounter many applications that present to the admissions committee as just a long list of accomplishments, with no sense of the dynamic adolescent behind them,” he said. “We admit people, not accomplishments!”"

"Admission decisions depend on the needs of the university and the various programs they are trying to fill, she said. From the outside, that isn’t knowable."

"Some critics said Crimson’s success is exaggerated because its student clients are highly motivated and already at the top in academics and activities, and would likely be among the students to get into Ivy Leagues anyway. One admissions official said the chances of many of those students being admitted, with or without Crimson, “are probably pretty high.”"

"One father from Massachusetts whose eighth-grade son works with a Crimson tutor sang the praises of the company but asked that the family not to be identified because the parents didn’t want the accomplishments of their son diminished.

“We don’t want people to think he didn’t do these things himself,” the father said."

 "Beaton said he advises students to aim for 10 activities connected across one or two themes, and that at least one should have a social-justice component. Leadership falls into two categories, institutional positions such as captain of sports teams or class president, and entrepreneurial positions."

"Good teacher recommendations aren’t good enough. Teachers should highlight that a student is exceptional, ideally among the most remarkable the teacher has taught in their career. Crimson offers strategies to elicit recommendations of that caliber."

"Crimson likes to start working with students at age 11 to build their study and time management skills before high school begins."

"She [Sarah Tierney, a platinum strategist at Crimson] and other strategists brainstorm with students to generate ideas for projects and then find experts to help execute them—what employees compare to companies hiring consultants to help their businesses run more efficiently.

Sometimes Tierney works as her students’ public relations agent to help generate publicity for something they did, since media coverage can help set applications apart."

"“You’ve got to be able to differentiate yourself, whether that’s through a unique family circumstance, or unique research or unique interest, such that you break through the competitive clutter,” she said.

Another interesting link is Is Hiring a College Admissions Consultant Worth It? It is a very detailed analysis of what many companies do. It lists prices for many of them. But it does not address the question of return on investment. Yes, Ivy League graduates make alot of money. But is the extra money they make worth spending $200,000 on a consultant? That $200,000 could be put into a financial investment and you would make money that way. And if your child is a very good student, they could still make a good salary even if they graduate from a second tier school.

None of these articles mentions families that spent alot of money on these consultants and their child did not get into an Ivy league school. That has to be part of the analysis as well.

Related posts:

"Independent education consultants" help high school students and their parents navigate the competitive college-admissions process (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2024) 

Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007) 

This may sound surprising, but counselors advocate making a mistake on your college applications like an intentional typo. This makes you seem more "authentic." Too often all students look slick and identical. They got good grades, test scores, were on teams, did volunteer work, etc., all with the idea of getting into college. But is that who you really are if you do it just to impress the college? That is why counselors suggest making mistakes. Then your application makes you seem like a more real person, not too good to be true. Of course, colleges project an image, too with their pictures of the nicest parts of the campus and groups of smiling students in their catalogues to make you want to go their. Seems like everyone is trying to impress everyone else with an image.