Fascinating article from the WSJ re the methods of an "elite" college counseling firm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Such a sad state of things!

if you cannot be a "top performener" then drop that area. And we wonder why kids have anxiety and mental health issues. Not everyone can be #1 at everything. I for one prefer that my kids did what they enjoyed in ES/MS/HS. From a young age we "required" them to have one artsy/music activity and one active/sporty/physical activity. They got to pick it, but once selected they had to stick with it for the seasons/session we paid for. (can't drop soccer halfway thru just cause you no longer want to do it---but you can drop it at the end of soccer season).
As they got older they developed preferences and we let them focus on what they wanted to do. Both kids were in HS band, but dropped their lessons by 9th grade. One did baseball the other was a dancer. Both were good, but not "tippy top". Who cares? They were doing what they loved and learning to work as a team and had friends from their activities.
But I would never make them drop something because they are not #1---that seems ridiculous

But this is the reason why so many are now pursuing obscure instruments and sports, origami competitions, and other crap. The claim is that this "makes them interesting". In reality, they couldn't be #1 doing popular stuff so they excelled at weirdness.

Who said it’s weird?
Everyone doesn’t have to be doing the same thing…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why no one will hire students from these colleges ever again. They are all fake people who have done nothing real on their own. They will be terrible team players on projects.

These schools have turned out some of the worst, most nefarious politicians. When you have to be perfect, weak, amoral, and maladjusted people will cheat and lie to win. It begins before college. They really need to weed out the sociopaths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly we need a new checkbox on the Common App: Did you work with a college counselor other than the one at your school on this application?

And then what? Colleges have no interest in removing these students from the applicant pool. There’s a host of reasons people use counselors: maybe parents are from abroad and find our system confusing. Many a kid is first gen and getting free counseling from a CBO. Maybe a kid has learning differences and searching for a special college that fits well. Maybe students are looking for merit and a counselor is advising them on list building?

Using a counselor isn’t problematic. But using someone who writes your essay & creates a false profile is. Big difference

Yup! A good CC (by my definition) helps you over the 4 years (if needed) to create a list of courses to be ready for college (someone first gen may not have parents who understand this fully), helps you know that you need some EC activities in HS and that it's good to find a few that you like and pursue them for all of HS (dont' just bounce from 1 activity to another every few months---they like to see 4 years of band/orch or 4 years of drama club or 4 years of a sport), encourage you to find volunteering that is meaningful and does more than just check a box, help you find a few EC activities to supplement your academic interests, help create a great list of potential colleges for your intended majors (they are highly skilled at this and will help you have a great list of ones you can afford as well as true Reaches, targets and safeties that your kid actually likes), help with test prep, and help with essay development (brainstorming, but the kid does 99% of the work, CC just guides and makes them think and revise). And most importantly, it saves your sanity senior year so you do NOT have to nag your kid to stay on schedule.

Yes, it's a privilege to be able to afford that. Yes, you can do most of it yourself. Aside from the essay writing, I can do the rest. But our CC helped find some hidden gems for my kid---ones I may not have found. Then they let us know the top choice really wants you to do an "interview" so after the visit if we liked it, you schedule an interview immediately. My kid did, did the interview the next week over the Summer and is attending that school. But I wouldn't have know just how important that interview/expressing interest is to getting admission. o it's the little things that help Make the process easier.
But our CC told me I could do 95% of her job, as I demonstrated (did it all with my first kid). But My kid was much more receptive to hearing about schools from the CC than from me, and listening to suggestions of small things to do. So it made my life easier and less stressful. A nd I figure if I'm willing to pay $90K/year for college, the least I can do is pay $1K/year in HS (or 4K total) to assist

I would not pay $20K+---not worth it

Wake?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see a grass root movement of applicants using the additional information section to note that they didn't use a private counselor

How can you ensure the students wont lie about using a college counselor? They lie about ECs, race and everything in between..

There is no way to track it. Also, it's not a fair question. Given that Private school kids get the equivalent of what I hired (a $4K for 4 full years of college counseling, all in), IMO most Private school kids should have to check that box.
But there would need to be a different box for people spending $10-20K, and 20K+

I think it's an assumption based on your zip code of what level of CC you likely have

That’s true.

Colleges expect a more curated application full pay private school students.
All the bells & whistles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly we need a new checkbox on the Common App: Did you work with a college counselor other than the one at your school on this application?

And then what? Colleges have no interest in removing these students from the applicant pool. There’s a host of reasons people use counselors: maybe parents are from abroad and find our system confusing. Many a kid is first gen and getting free counseling from a CBO. Maybe a kid has learning differences and searching for a special college that fits well. Maybe students are looking for merit and a counselor is advising them on list building?

Using a counselor isn’t problematic. But using someone who writes your essay & creates a false profile is. Big difference

Yup! A good CC (by my definition) helps you over the 4 years (if needed) to create a list of courses to be ready for college (someone first gen may not have parents who understand this fully), helps you know that you need some EC activities in HS and that it's good to find a few that you like and pursue them for all of HS (dont' just bounce from 1 activity to another every few months---they like to see 4 years of band/orch or 4 years of drama club or 4 years of a sport), encourage you to find volunteering that is meaningful and does more than just check a box, help you find a few EC activities to supplement your academic interests, help create a great list of potential colleges for your intended majors (they are highly skilled at this and will help you have a great list of ones you can afford as well as true Reaches, targets and safeties that your kid actually likes), help with test prep, and help with essay development (brainstorming, but the kid does 99% of the work, CC just guides and makes them think and revise). And most importantly, it saves your sanity senior year so you do NOT have to nag your kid to stay on schedule.

Yes, it's a privilege to be able to afford that. Yes, you can do most of it yourself. Aside from the essay writing, I can do the rest. But our CC helped find some hidden gems for my kid---ones I may not have found. Then they let us know the top choice really wants you to do an "interview" so after the visit if we liked it, you schedule an interview immediately. My kid did, did the interview the next week over the Summer and is attending that school. But I wouldn't have know just how important that interview/expressing interest is to getting admission. o it's the little things that help Make the process easier.
But our CC told me I could do 95% of her job, as I demonstrated (did it all with my first kid). But My kid was much more receptive to hearing about schools from the CC than from me, and listening to suggestions of small things to do. So it made my life easier and less stressful. A nd I figure if I'm willing to pay $90K/year for college, the least I can do is pay $1K/year in HS (or 4K total) to assist

I would not pay $20K+---not worth it

Agreed...but if you run Tiger Asset Management (I assume that guy probably used Crimson for their own kids which is why he is a major investor), earn easily $100MM+ per year and have a multi-billion NW, do you care if you pay $20k or $100k or $250k?

What schools have interviews that are driven by the student reaching out to schedule the interview "immediately," as opposed to the school reaching out to offer an interview?!?

The top10s all reach out to the student, if an interview is offered. Wake is one where the student has to reach out and the interview is on a FCFS basis yet the interview counts as part of the app(ie part of demonstrating interest)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article should tell you how fake everything is.. from what activities to choose to what classes etc to take. Everything is curated. What a way to kill your innate passion and creativity.. 11 year olds already on this path to get into an Ivy.

From the article..

One of her stu­dents has 23 tu­tors help­ing her on aca­d­e­mic sub­jects and test prepa­ra­tion. The stu­dent is also writ­ing a novel, edit­ing an es­say for a com­pet­i­tive jour­nal and work­ing on a re­search pa­per that looks at the lin­guis­tic pat­terns in Tay­lor Swift songs.

I'm happy my kids had a happy childhood (actual childhood) and got to choose their activities because they enjoyed them.

BTW, one attended their top choice the other attended their 2nd choice (top was a T10, 2nd was a T40 and in reality a better fit for them and they are thriving there).

Best part, my kids got to grow up as they should and were not trying to write a novel in HS or do research as a 12 yo.

The one at a T40 is majoring in one of the hardest engineering (Chem Eng) and has all As in every Chem Eng Course. The kid thinks Thermo and Heat&Mass transfer is easy and fun. They have a bright future ahead and most importantly are healthy and happy!

There are kids at T10, in ChemE or similarly hard fields, who also are healthy and thriving there, who got there after a healthy childhood with no novel writing or middle school research or founding nonprofits or 23 tutors. We are parents to 2 and have another like yours where t30-40 is going to be the better fit—they likely won’t apply to T10 knowing how well it suits the others and that environment is not where they will thrive. It is a false dichotomy to suggest that being at a T10 means you either faked your way in or did not have a healthy happy childhood. Those schools are a wonderful fit and the right environment for many who are there. These crimson kids are not the norm at these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article should tell you how fake everything is.. from what activities to choose to what classes etc to take. Everything is curated. What a way to kill your innate passion and creativity.. 11 year olds already on this path to get into an Ivy.

From the article..

One of her stu­dents has 23 tu­tors help­ing her on aca­d­e­mic sub­jects and test prepa­ra­tion. The stu­dent is also writ­ing a novel, edit­ing an es­say for a com­pet­i­tive jour­nal and work­ing on a re­search pa­per that looks at the lin­guis­tic pat­terns in Tay­lor Swift songs.

I'm happy my kids had a happy childhood (actual childhood) and got to choose their activities because they enjoyed them.

BTW, one attended their top choice the other attended their 2nd choice (top was a T10, 2nd was a T40 and in reality a better fit for them and they are thriving there).

Best part, my kids got to grow up as they should and were not trying to write a novel in HS or do research as a 12 yo.

The one at a T40 is majoring in one of the hardest engineering (Chem Eng) and has all As in every Chem Eng Course. The kid thinks Thermo and Heat&Mass transfer is easy and fun. They have a bright future ahead and most importantly are healthy and happy!

There are kids at T10, in ChemE or similarly hard fields, who also are healthy and thriving there, who got there after a healthy childhood with no novel writing or middle school research or founding nonprofits or 23 tutors. We are parents to 2 and have another like yours where t30-40 is going to be the better fit—they likely won’t apply to T10 knowing how well it suits the others and that environment is not where they will thrive. It is a false dichotomy to suggest that being at a T10 means you either faked your way in or did not have a healthy happy childhood. Those schools are a wonderful fit and the right environment for many who are there. These crimson kids are not the norm at these schools.

I don’t know.
Think they are the same kids driving their G-wagons and Range Rovers around Ithaca….and a TON of wealthy international students (I am confident they used a service like Crimson if not, Crimson itself.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why no one will hire students from these colleges ever again. They are all fake people who have done nothing real on their own. They will be terrible team players on projects.

Yes this is a little cringe but people will fall over themselves to hire from these schools. Those that will not are a small subset and really a rounding error. These people are led on a path but you cannot deny that they are crazy smart in ways that matter. I would not worry about the team player with these kids. They can adapt to anything.

Not a fan of all this but these kids are in demand after graduation. You are filling yourself with fake news otherwise.

Its true. Ivy + grads get a boost with the first job, in many careers, and for professional schools to a degree, though one has to hope the 23-tutor-propped-up fakers will crash and burn once they get to whatever ivy they are chasing. Just look at the recently-starting CS bubble: ivies and a narrow group of other top CS schools (Mit, Cmu, caltech, stanford, Berkeley..) are not seeing the slowdown in hiring. Presumably it could change with the first TO cohort graduating in 2025, but it seems unlikely that ivy grads will suffer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why no one will hire students from these colleges ever again. They are all fake people who have done nothing real on their own. They will be terrible team players on projects.

Yes this is a little cringe but people will fall over themselves to hire from these schools. Those that will not are a small subset and really a rounding error. These people are led on a path but you cannot deny that they are crazy smart in ways that matter. I would not worry about the team player with these kids. They can adapt to anything.

Not a fan of all this but these kids are in demand after graduation. You are filling yourself with fake news otherwise.

Its true. Ivy + grads get a boost with the first job, in many careers, and for professional schools to a degree, though one has to hope the 23-tutor-propped-up fakers will crash and burn once they get to whatever ivy they are chasing. Just look at the recently-starting CS bubble: ivies and a narrow group of other top CS schools (Mit, Cmu, caltech, stanford, Berkeley..) are not seeing the slowdown in hiring. Presumably it could change with the first TO cohort graduating in 2025, but it seems unlikely that ivy grads will suffer

Why do you bring everything back to CS?
You are so tiresome.

[Anonymous]

I have an Unhooked kid at Ivy this year who did his own applications. No private counselor, etc.

He had a fairly typical app for a kid with uw4.0 and high test scores. But, his essays were awesome. He’s a very good creative writer. He did a ton of community service and at a fairly high level in his sport (not recruited).

He was accepted to several T10s-T20s so I have no idea what ultimately stood out for all of them. I’m certain he likely had very good recommendations as well. He was well-liked by teachers.

He’s not at all like the stereotypes being thrown around here, nor are his friends and roommate I met when visiting. Nice group of kids. They seem typical of most kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have an Unhooked kid at Ivy this year who did his own applications. No private counselor, etc.

He had a fairly typical app for a kid with uw4.0 and high test scores. But, his essays were awesome. He’s a very good creative writer. He did a ton of community service and at a fairly high level in his sport (not recruited).

He was accepted to several T10s-T20s so I have no idea what ultimately stood out for all of them. I’m certain he likely had very good recommendations as well. He was well-liked by teachers.

He’s not at all like the stereotypes being thrown around here, nor are his friends and roommate I met when visiting. Nice group of kids. They seem typical of most kids.

+1 our experience is the same—very nice groups of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's actually staggering that 23% of Harvard students used a private consulting firm. Once you take out FGLI, athletes, URMs, rural students, and other people who have hooks, then it's likely that a near-majority of unhooked applicants used one of these services.

Look at the profiles of applicants on Reddit or College Confidential. Kids have 2-4 internships at fortune 500 companies while in high school. They're managing non-profits with budgets of 200K. They've been published multiple times. It's ABSURD what they're doing and no 14-17 year old (at the time of the activities) is capable of creating those resumes on their own. No 14-17 year old would even know that half that stuff EXISTS, let alone how to make it happen.

It's completely the work of adults (paid consultants or parents or both) but admissions officers are eating it up. They fall for it every time.

I think the AOs know very well what they are doing. They can see the kid got tons of outside “help”, and it signals wealthy parents that can pay 90k a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This article should tell you how fake everything is.. from what activities to choose to what classes etc to take. Everything is curated. What a way to kill your innate passion and creativity.. 11 year olds already on this path to get into an Ivy.

From the article..

One of her stu­dents has 23 tu­tors help­ing her on aca­d­e­mic sub­jects and test prepa­ra­tion. The stu­dent is also writ­ing a novel, edit­ing an es­say for a com­pet­i­tive jour­nal and work­ing on a re­search pa­per that looks at the lin­guis­tic pat­terns in Tay­lor Swift songs.

I'm happy my kids had a happy childhood (actual childhood) and got to choose their activities because they enjoyed them.

BTW, one attended their top choice the other attended their 2nd choice (top was a T10, 2nd was a T40 and in reality a better fit for them and they are thriving there).

Best part, my kids got to grow up as they should and were not trying to write a novel in HS or do research as a 12 yo.

The one at a T40 is majoring in one of the hardest engineering (Chem Eng) and has all As in every Chem Eng Course. The kid thinks Thermo and Heat&Mass transfer is easy and fun. They have a bright future ahead and most importantly are healthy and happy!

There are kids at T10, in ChemE or similarly hard fields, who also are healthy and thriving there, who got there after a healthy childhood with no novel writing or middle school research or founding nonprofits or 23 tutors. We are parents to 2 and have another like yours where t30-40 is going to be the better fit—they likely won’t apply to T10 knowing how well it suits the others and that environment is not where they will thrive. It is a false dichotomy to suggest that being at a T10 means you either faked your way in or did not have a healthy happy childhood. Those schools are a wonderful fit and the right environment for many who are there. These crimson kids are not the norm at these schools.

Your kids are either legacy or Pell grant or URM. Simple as that. The only ones that got in to HYPS from my daughter school, a third been Asians, had counselors and did the fake research and non-profits more or less. The actual very smart kids they are at the state flagship, if CS they may end up at CMU or IUIUC or Purdue, the campers at MIT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see a grass root movement of applicants using the additional information section to note that they didn't use a private counselor

How can you ensure the students wont lie about using a college counselor? They lie about ECs, race and everything in between..

There is no way to track it. Also, it's not a fair question. Given that Private school kids get the equivalent of what I hired (a $4K for 4 full years of college counseling, all in), IMO most Private school kids should have to check that box.
But there would need to be a different box for people spending $10-20K, and 20K+

I think it's an assumption based on your zip code of what level of CC you likely have

That’s true.

Colleges expect a more curated application full pay private school students.
All the bells & whistles

Private school kids do not get the kind of CC you are paying for -- they are paying for the outside counselors too. Sadly, I learned that too late for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have an Unhooked kid at Ivy this year who did his own applications. No private counselor, etc.

He had a fairly typical app for a kid with uw4.0 and high test scores. But, his essays were awesome. He’s a very good creative writer. He did a ton of community service and at a fairly high level in his sport (not recruited).

He was accepted to several T10s-T20s so I have no idea what ultimately stood out for all of them. I’m certain he likely had very good recommendations as well. He was well-liked by teachers.

He’s not at all like the stereotypes being thrown around here, nor are his friends and roommate I met when visiting. Nice group of kids. They seem typical of most kids.

But now the few bad apples make the whole cohort "sus."