Who can afford to apply to college?

According to a NY Times article, rich parents pay as much as $40,000 to independent college counselors who will help their children get into the best colleges.

How do I get a job doing that?

Comments

[Peter]

Most of the admissions counselors mentioned in the article used to work in college admissions offices. Or, in one case, *claims* to have worked in the office at Cornell, even though the university says no. It's probably very hard if not impossible to get into the field without such experience because that's the only way to get young people and their parents to believe your services will be valuable.

Like many "soft" news articles in the Times, this one is frustratingly vague in many respects. It says that up to 5,000 people are providing college admissions services but doesn't say how much business they actually do (in fairness, that information may not be readily available). It could well be that a few admissions counselors are "superstars" in the field, raking in all kinds of money, while for most people it's a part-time activity that doesn't earn them significant money. We just don't know.

[OneSTDV]

Those people are stupid. They're the same people that think studying really hard can have a huge impact on one's SAT score.

There are three ways to go Ivy:

1) Be a NAM or a female applying in engineering.
2) Be a "leader of the world" type, even better if you come from a rich family. Leader of the world types were president of student government, wrote articles in their local paper, went to Model UN and Boys State, etc.
3) Be a huge nerd with perfect scores and perfect grades. Be in every single science/math club, but you must have some national or state level recognition, like really high place in Math League or participating in Intel Science Competition.

If you're not one of them, it's going to be tough. The fourth group might be incredibly smart kids with perfect everything and was in every geek club, but didn't have a national recognition. Only some of them get in.

I was on a college website where some kid with perfect scores in everything, valedictorian, played two sports, and published science research got rejected from every single Ivy.

[sabril]

"How do I get a job doing that? "

I would guess a good way to start is to have worked as an admissions officer at a top school.

Beyond that, you just need to hang out a shingle and act like you are worth a lot. I doubt you are up to it. Anyone in New York City who is skeptical of "global warming" and HBD-denialism probably prefers truth to impressing other people.

And the truth is that any intelligent person can read a few books on college admissions and give out decent advice.

[Shawn]

These people should just go to the library. All the information is available for FREE(obviously)!

[Mercy vetsel]

I'm about 90% sure that what they really pay $40k for is a personal connection with people on the admissions board.

That's not enough to get someone in, but in might be enough to persuade them to take a closer look.

-Mercy

[sn]

online forums like collegeconfidential have lots of relevant info. OneSTDTV: your example sounds unbelievable! published papers and couldnt get into an Ivy?? maybe a specific Ivy but surely some other top univ would have admitted this kid?

[Billare]

OneSTDV,

3) is very hard. The funny thing is at the same time America is undergoing this dysgenic trend, smart people are endogamously breeding to spawn very smart kids (the mating market is NATIONAL now), which makes competition for the Ivy League harsher than ever. And the Ivy League itself is richer than ever, so you no longer have smart kids from blue-collar backgrounds deferring on Princeton or Harvard 'till graduate school or 'till the Ph.D. Honestly, the behavior of these parents makes perfect sense to me; the spare spots for "ordinary" kids without "hooks" has become much smaller, so they are paying for the privilege to move up the ladder where IQ is not as determinative and softer considerations are.

[Kudzu Bob]

Your blog interests me the most when it touches on how America's increasingly credentialist system holds back intelligent kids from working-class and lower-middle class backgrounds. (I also got a kick out of Steve Sailer’s recent posts on selecting the easiest AP tests for free college credits.)

Using that sort of thing as a jumping-off point, why not write a book on how to game the credentialist education/admissions system? Not only could it benefit anxious but naïve parents who want to give their bright children a head start, you might end up making some money.

[HS: This is one of the best suggestions I've had. I think I would make it not just a college prep book, but a guide for middle class parents to groom their kids for an upper class lifestyle.]

[agnostic]

If you want in on the spoils of the education bubble, you should tutor. Worst option is working for a tutoring center -- you only get a fraction of what the parents pay, although the work is steady and predictable.

Next is working for a contracting tutoring company -- they refer you to clients, and you charge your own rate.

After that is under-the-table work. Shouldn't be hard to find this in Manhattan.

Most in-demand is SAT / ACT prep, as well as GRE, LSAT, etc. Then school subjects like math, science, and foreign languages. No history, English, etc. -- that shit's easy.

You have to have decent people skills, but it won't kill your earnings if you're somewhat lacking.

[Alex]

OneSDTV wrote:

"1) Be a NAM or a female applying in engineering.
2) Be a "leader of the world" type, even better if you come from a rich family. Leader of the world types were president of student government, wrote articles in their local paper, went to Model UN and Boys State, etc.
3) Be a huge nerd with perfect scores and perfect grades. Be in every single science/math club, but you must have some national or state level recognition, like really high place in Math League or participating in Intel Science Competition."

Well #1 is entirely outside of a student's control, unless they are of mixed race and need to know how to appear as much of a minority as possible. #2 could probably benefit a lot from counseling and spin work. #3 is really outside of the student's control, unless they want to invest a lot of time in SAT prep and getting into competitions.

[HS: The purpose of college counseling is to help kids who are smart, but not smart enough to get perfect SAT scores, to seem more like Leadership Material so they can increase their chances at getting admitted to a better college.]

[Shawn]

Why not lie and say your are a NAM and apply to the engineering department or say that you are interested in math?

Once you are in switch to a better major.

[Ned]

Here are a few useful hints that you won't have to pay $40,000 for:

* Mention on your application that your parents have just endowed a professorship (if it's at the school to which you're applying, you won't need to tell them - you'll get in with no problem)
* Have a parent who's an alum, preferably one that has given a lot of money
* Participate in an elite sport, such as polo or equestrian

[sabril]

"I'm about 90% sure that what they really pay $40k for is a personal connection with people on the admissions board."

The same thought occurred to me.

Actually, there is a legend about a con-artist who went around charging people thousands of dollars with a money back guarantee he would pull strings and get them into Brown University. All he supposedly did was collect checks and then return the money of people who got rejected.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

OT,

Sigma, could you drop moderation in favor of requiring posters to set up a TypeKey account in order to comment?

Comment registration would let you ban the accounts of trolls while also allowing a more free flowing discussion to take place.

[Alex]

Shawn wrote:

"Why not lie and say your are a NAM and apply to the engineering department or say that you are interested in math?

Once you are in switch to a better major."

If you are a female, lying and saying that you want to be a mathematician/engineer is probably a good strategy. The thing is that you can't lie about your race or gender and get away with it (I think they cross reference your applicant with a report from your guidance counselor), so if you are a white/asian male than that strategy is fresh out of luck.

[Winston Smith]

"I think I would make it not just a college prep book, but a guide for middle class parents to groom their kids for an upper class lifestyle."

Sigma, you write a lot about what really smart (IQ 125+) people should do. But that only applies to about 5% of the population. I would find it interesting if you did a more inclusive analysis of the options and cost/benifit of career tracks for the rest of the population. ie for those of average intelligence, bright but not super smart (IQ 115), male female etc.

[nothing]

"How do I get a job doing that? "

Think about some of the neurotic, upper-class misfits you would have to deal with on a daily basis? And what would happen if you failed to get their prince or princess in their choice of ivy league school? Think of the lawsuits.

[Peter]

Here's some advice: unless you're going to an Ivy, or one of a very few Ivy-equivalents (MIT, Cal Tech, U. of Chicago, a top smaller college such as Amherst, perhaps NYU and Georgetown) make sure that where you go has major-league football and basketball teams. It doesn't matter if you loathe those sports. Universities get known by their football and basketball teams, and that can be a vitally important factor if you're looking for work elsewhere in the country.

[sabril]

"a guide for middle class parents to groom their kids for an upper class lifestyle."

Is the goal money or status?

[OneSTDV]

@ sn:

Unsurprisingly, CC is where I saw that story. If I have time, maybe I'll look the kid up and post it at my blog or here.

@ Alex:

Posted about credetionalism and poor whites/Asians a few days ago.

http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2009/07/affirmative-action-and-economic.html

[tmmm]

The system in Finland seems to much better than the US one. Here in almost all the universities the ONLY thing that matters is high school grades and/or entrance examination. Club memberships, sports, hobbies, parents ect. doesn't mean anything. Universities also don't have any sports teams.

[BrunoBrazil]

The only thing that matters in Japan to get into Tokyo university is a very tough exam. Students get into examination hell: study in courses specifically designed for the exam, study two or three years after high school and try to be extremely good in high school, so they can get competitive.

It is a fairer method: who gets in is who studied hard and deserved it. If you studied hard before gettin in college, you gotta study in college and be a good student.

Ooops, getting the smartest candidate or the candidate who studied most is not a priority to American universities. If they relied on content tests, colleges would have too many jews, too many asians, too few blacks and too many non-leaders (so, the elites can´t guarantee that their children stay in the elite).

The evaluation of leadership potential is just a cheating the rich people created to guarantee that only their kids willl get in the Ivies.

I heard that people whose parents earn less than 45k per year get full ride at Harvard. What crap! Can anybody that studied in public school and has blue collar parents fulfill Harvard´s requirements? Of course not.

But in the

[Bruno from Paris]

If you're from a rich family, it's easy to get the sort of experience wich will get you in. There are lot's of case of rich french people who weren't able to enter even a low grades Grandes Ecoles and got into Harvard MBA or Princeton College. They landed an interview with the dean before being admitted. So i think money can buy you a ticket inside the school. But it's like having sex for promotion, you've got to chose the good one.

[blue anonymous]

> It is a fairer method: who gets in is who studied hard and deserved it.

I agree. Exams are better than grades. Grading at different schools does not adhere to a common standard, but that's not even the worst of it.

Grades give perverse incentives. Some knowledge from prior courses helps you in later ones - but for the most part, in trying to get good grades you have a maximum time horizon of 4 months. It is very different with culminative exams after high school or after college. You need to retain the knowledge permanently, and you need to deeply understand how the different subdomains of subjects are related.

Suppose you study bio in college. There is a pronounced difference between the behaviors that will maximize your grades and the behaviors that will maximize your score on the rather punishing and extremely comprehensive Biochem GRE.