Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s overrated. A lot of the insanely intelligent types of students go to public university, breeze through at the beginning and then challenge themselves in grad courses.

This is the answer.

Why would you want your kid to breeze through?

Many brilliant kids would rather breeze through a prerec or two than spend high school curating a fake story about whatever fashionable nonsense AOs want these days. There’s no third option where you can just be brilliant and driven and get into an elite college on the strength of that alone. Schools that practice “holistic admissions” are openly hostile to kids like that.

As a parent of two brilliant kids that did not “curate” anything are at different ivies and most of the friends they have met are similar to them: bright students who write well and took all the hard classes, who did 2-3 impactful ECs that mattered to them. Almost all unhooked but they are engineering and math majors which typically are the least hooked group of admits. The ivy/elite experience in the classroom is intense and challenging. The professors are almost all caring and helpful. My kids have no connections that are useful to their fields: their summer experience and research all came from professor leads and talking to grad students and advisors

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The right choice is the "best fit" school that offers the degree that DC seeks.

DCUM can't be cured of its obsession with perceived prestige, however.

+1

Class anxiety is strong here.

Very true; the back and forth is fascinating to those of us with generational wealth. The SLAC vs University arguments are hilarious.

What a strange comment.

Seems to be implying wealthy people need not care about the quality of education. Not like we can't readily see examples of that being the case.

Actually the opposite. Myself and those that I know well worry about the quality of the education and the schools fit to our kids. We don't care nearly as much about "prestige" which whether spoken or not drives so much of the conversation here. We realize that there are many great schools and that our kids will do fine and thrive as getting a great education at the school which is the best fit for them.

It's safe to say that when you read about college counselors charging $750k to families to get accepted into the very top schools (and their phones are ringing off the hook)...that in fact there are many ultra-wealthy families that care very much about prestige.

Maybe, but most of those paying astronomical sums were Asian or Hollywood types trying not for ultimate prestige but getting really mid kids into schools like USC. They weren't shotgunning Ivies.

Nope..that's not the group I am talking about.

It's Command Education out of NYC and it's plenty of super wealthy, native born Americans that work for private equity or hedge funds or are tech moguls from all across the country.

It's not "were"...its "are". The guy has been expanding like crazy. He was charging a mere $250k when the WSJ profiled him in 2019. He is now in July 2025 charging $850k to clients.

His high paying clientele is wealthy overseas Asians...... I remember he had a deal with a parent out of Hong Kong where they earned a $100K bonus for getting teh kid into Syracuse. He is a huckster and a grifter at heart.

Again, that’s one of his clients…but plenty of good old fashioned white Americans as well living in the USA.

The only demographic that dominates is green.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it funny how black and white grown adults can be when arguing on this forum. Yes, it's true you can get a quality education at a large state school just as you can get at an Ivy/T20. But it is also true that the academic quality of your peers is going to be universally higher at the T20. I went to a state school and I worked my butt off and got an amazing education with some great opportunities, and had some very smart peers. But the general quality of my peers and what they've accomplished nowhere compares to my son's ivy league peer group. Does that make one experience objectively better than the other in every way? No, of course not.

I think that I generally agree with this but limiting this to the T20 is insufficient.

But what I absolutely do not agree with is the idea that outside of about 10 schools the peer group is significantly different. Those 10 schools aren't uniquely special and in a group of their own in terms of peer group. They are part of a group of about 25-30 universities and about 12-15 SLACs which all have student populations whose profiles mostly overlap and any assertion that any one of these campuses provides an environment that is significantly different than any of the others in terms of intellectual peers is just nonsense.

it may be more than 10 where the noticeable drop is, but it is not 25-30 unis and 10-15 LACs before the gap

I haven’t studied the latest ranking, but it’s about 15 or so in my humble opinion.

+1
This thread is a lot of copium

Anyone that actually knows and has direct experience would agree.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really wonder whether these college counselors making hundreds of thousands per client aren’t bribing admissions officers. They are connected to admissions circles so they can access them. AOs make peanuts. If the counselor is presenting someone qualified and offers an AO say 50K who would ever know? If the AOs spouse was a small business person who would ever know that some other LLC invested 50 K?

The Varsity Blues was different in that the entire profile was wildly fabricated. These kids didn’t meet the lowest bar and never played the sports they were recruited to play.

Top schools you go to committee for a vote, so it could never be a guarantee even if it was tried. Yale podcast made it sound like a decent amount of people voting.

Gee would you like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.? The process you believe is happening is not scalable. No way this is plausible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The right choice is the "best fit" school that offers the degree that DC seeks.

DCUM can't be cured of its obsession with perceived prestige, however.

+1

Class anxiety is strong here.

Very true; the back and forth is fascinating to those of us with generational wealth. The SLAC vs University arguments are hilarious.

What a strange comment.

Seems to be implying wealthy people need not care about the quality of education. Not like we can't readily see examples of that being the case.

Actually the opposite. Myself and those that I know well worry about the quality of the education and the schools fit to our kids. We don't care nearly as much about "prestige" which whether spoken or not drives so much of the conversation here. We realize that there are many great schools and that our kids will do fine and thrive as getting a great education at the school which is the best fit for them.

It's safe to say that when you read about college counselors charging $750k to families to get accepted into the very top schools (and their phones are ringing off the hook)...that in fact there are many ultra-wealthy families that care very much about prestige.

Maybe, but most of those paying astronomical sums were Asian or Hollywood types trying not for ultimate prestige but getting really mid kids into schools like USC. They weren't shotgunning Ivies.

Nope..that's not the group I am talking about.

It's Command Education out of NYC and it's plenty of super wealthy, native born Americans that work for private equity or hedge funds or are tech moguls from all across the country.

It's not "were"...its "are". The guy has been expanding like crazy. He was charging a mere $250k when the WSJ profiled him in 2019. He is now in July 2025 charging $850k to clients.

His high paying clientele is wealthy overseas Asians...... I remember he had a deal with a parent out of Hong Kong where they earned a $100K bonus for getting teh kid into Syracuse. He is a huckster and a grifter at heart.

Anonymous wrote:I really wonder whether these college counselors making hundreds of thousands per client aren’t bribing admissions officers. They are connected to admissions circles so they can access them. AOs make peanuts. If the counselor is presenting someone qualified and offers an AO say 50K who would ever know? If the AOs spouse was a small business person who would ever know that some other LLC invested 50 K?

The Varsity Blues was different in that the entire profile was wildly fabricated. These kids didn’t meet the lowest bar and never played the sports they were recruited to play.

Top schools you go to committee for a vote, so it could never be a guarantee even if it was tried. Yale podcast made it sound like a decent amount of people voting.

I really wonder whether these college counselors making hundreds of thousands per client aren’t bribing admissions officers. They are connected to admissions circles so they can access them. AOs make peanuts. If the counselor is presenting someone qualified and offers an AO say 50K who would ever know? If the AOs spouse was a small business person who would ever know that some other LLC invested 50 K?

The Varsity Blues was different in that the entire profile was wildly fabricated. These kids didn’t meet the lowest bar and never played the sports they were recruited to play.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The right choice is the "best fit" school that offers the degree that DC seeks.

DCUM can't be cured of its obsession with perceived prestige, however.

+1

Class anxiety is strong here.

Very true; the back and forth is fascinating to those of us with generational wealth. The SLAC vs University arguments are hilarious.

What a strange comment.

Seems to be implying wealthy people need not care about the quality of education. Not like we can't readily see examples of that being the case.

Actually the opposite. Myself and those that I know well worry about the quality of the education and the schools fit to our kids. We don't care nearly as much about "prestige" which whether spoken or not drives so much of the conversation here. We realize that there are many great schools and that our kids will do fine and thrive as getting a great education at the school which is the best fit for them.

It's safe to say that when you read about college counselors charging $750k to families to get accepted into the very top schools (and their phones are ringing off the hook)...that in fact there are many ultra-wealthy families that care very much about prestige.

If I had $750k to pay some grifter, I think I could find another way to get my child accepted somewhere suitable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The right choice is the "best fit" school that offers the degree that DC seeks.

DCUM can't be cured of its obsession with perceived prestige, however.

+1

Class anxiety is strong here.

Very true; the back and forth is fascinating to those of us with generational wealth. The SLAC vs University arguments are hilarious.

What a strange comment.

Seems to be implying wealthy people need not care about the quality of education. Not like we can't readily see examples of that being the case.

Actually the opposite. Myself and those that I know well worry about the quality of the education and the schools fit to our kids. We don't care nearly as much about "prestige" which whether spoken or not drives so much of the conversation here. We realize that there are many great schools and that our kids will do fine and thrive as getting a great education at the school which is the best fit for them.

It's safe to say that when you read about college counselors charging $750k to families to get accepted into the very top schools (and their phones are ringing off the hook)...that in fact there are many ultra-wealthy families that care very much about prestige.

Maybe, but most of those paying astronomical sums were Asian or Hollywood types trying not for ultimate prestige but getting really mid kids into schools like USC. They weren't shotgunning Ivies.

Nope..that's not the group I am talking about.

It's Command Education out of NYC and it's plenty of super wealthy, native born Americans that work for private equity or hedge funds or are tech moguls from all across the country.

It's not "were"...its "are". The guy has been expanding like crazy. He was charging a mere $250k when the WSJ profiled him in 2019. He is now in July 2025 charging $850k to clients.