The young woman was nearly hyperventilating 30 minutes later.
“So, it’s been like half an hour, and I’m like, semi-calmed down — to the point where I’m not shouting expletives any more . . .” she explained, addressing her camera phone. “But, yeah. I got into Yale. Oh, my God! I got into Yale!”
In the community of college admissions consultants, who help students snare closely fought-over places in US universities, this was the money shot. The selfie video appears on the website of one of the premiere practitioners of the art: Manhattan-based IvyWise.
Interlaced with the promise of Yale the company also offers what may be unnerving advice for anxious parents: they should start early — ideally signing their children up by the time they are in the eighth grade — and be prepared to spend upwards of $100,000.
“The reality is there is an ‘arms race’ in the admissions process but it was not created by our profession,” Katherine Cohen, who founded IvyWise 21 years ago and boasts degrees from Brown and Yale — as well as a certificate in college admission counselling from UCLA — wrote in an email from Asia.
The real culprit, Ms Cohen argued, was that US university places had remained stagnant even as applications surged in recent years, including from abroad. Many secondary schools have a single counsellor who is meant to guide hundreds of students through the minefield.
The role of admissions consultants and their place in the university ecosystem is attracting fresh attention with the revelation last week that dozens of parents had paid approximately $25m in bribes through a crooked California consultant, William “Rick” Singer, to secure places for their children at top schools.
On Friday, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, promised a “searching investigation” that would include a focus on the role of private consultants “whose work is conducted out of the view of admissions officers”.
“The admissions process has become extremely competitive, leaving this economy ripe for a market for those who need more help navigating this process,” Ms Cohen said. Hours later, her communications adviser insisted Ms Cohen had not meant to suggest there was an arms race — and that there was not one.
The industry varies widely, from individuals who hang out a sign and call themselves admissions consultants, all the way to established firms. Their services range from test preparation and helping students select appropriate schools to coaching them on application essays and, in some cases, building an application over the course of years. “How do we help this kid become a better version of himself?” is how one consultant earnestly described his mission.
There are also self-styled gurus, supposed Ivy-whisperers, pseudo-scientists and bold promises in the mix. Mr Singer’s former business partner has pioneered what he calls the “academic mentorship” model. A rival offers his unique four-stage “method”. (“The approach is deceptively simple, but its effects are transformational,” says his website, which features a picture of Harvard.)
Amid the crowd, Mr Singer, a former basketball coach, was an outlier. For a fee, he would doctor students’ entrance exam results or sneak them through a “side door” by conniving with corrupt coaches and administrators to make them appear as top athletics recruits — even if they did not play a particular sport. Mr Singer has pleaded guilty and has been co-operating with authorities.
Long before last week’s revelations, some viewed him warily. “He was kind of seen by people in the industry as a blowhard, kind of shady,” said one test preparation consultant on the west coast who has known Mr Singer for years. One red flag: he never seemed to attend the mainstream industry conferences, this person said.
He was also boastful. “He would brag about how he worked with Steve Jobs’ kids. He would brag about how many companies used him,” this person added.
Even if Mr Singer’s criminal conduct was egregious and far outside the industry’s norms, the mere existence of admissions consultants raises questions over a US higher education system that presents itself as striving for fairness but looks to many critics like a game rigged for the wealthy.
“There always has been the legal advantage one has if you have financial resources,” Stefanie Niles, the president of the National Association for College Admission Counselling, acknowledged.
Ms Niles, who is also vice-president of enrolment at Ohio Wesleyan University, noted that most consultants adhered to ethical guidelines and were motivated by a desire to help students navigate what has become a confusing and cut-throat landscape.
“As this process has become more competitive,” she said, citing the “exponential” growth in applications, “it has led families to seek guidance on how to secure admission.”
When asked whether their high-priced services represent an unfair advantage, many consultants point to their pro bono work, as well as the free offerings on their websites.
“We work really hard to put out a lot of free resources and information to level the playing field and provide access to everyone,” Ms Cohen wrote.
Still, for those willing to pay, IvyWise’s pitch is tantalising: access to a team of counsellors who — like Ms Cohen — have worked in the admissions departments at elite universities, including Yale, MIT, Columbia and Northwestern, giving them first-hand insight into what those schools are seeking.
Last year, 91 per cent of its students gained admission to at least one of their top three universities, according to IvyWise.
“Whether it’s immediate access to a speciality tutor for an upcoming exam or flying counsellors halfway around the world for a meeting with a student, we’re willing to do what we can to make sure families are supported in every aspect of the college counselling process,” its website advertises.
Although some rivals accuse the firm of pressure tactics, McGreggor Crowley, who oversaw student selection at MIT before joining IvyWise, describes its approach in more nurturing terms. He prefers to begin working with students years before they are even applying to university. The goal is to help them begin to understand what interests them, and then cultivate those interests.
“My goal is to help them see that a lot of these opportunities exist but that they have to be generated,” he explained.
Much of his work, he said, also involves managing expectations — often more for the parents than their children. “The schools that parents think their kids deserve — it’s really impossible to get in,” Mr Crowley observed. “Everyone wants to get their kid into Stanford but the admission rate is, like, 4 per cent.”
Parents had never asked him to do anything untoward, he said, but had sometimes inquired how to make a donation to a particular university.
Many of his clients would kill for Mr Crowley’s credentials: he attended MIT and Harvard Medical School, having made it there from south Texas and without any help from fancy admissions consultants. Given his background, his work sometimes felt a bit surreal, he confided, but never inappropriate.
“It’s a company and it’s the US,” Mr Crowley said, “and this is a capitalist country where these kinds of services exist.”
