Oof. “Saying the quiet part out loud” sure is becoming the norm, isn’t it?
Wow. Ethics have gone the way of the dinosaur in some circles.
Wow wow wow. This is completely unethical. Why don’t they just call a spade a spade and state outright that they want someone who will help their clients cheat?
Frankly, the $5k a month salary really isn’t enough for selling your soul to the 
Isn’t this fraud of some kind that can be investigated/prosecuted? Or am I being naive yet again?
I wonder if it’s some kind of a “gotcha” thing for anyone who follows it. But since the author of the ad had numerous instances of subject/verb disagreement, it seems as though more than the students need some writing help.
However naively, the person in higher ed who brought this to my attention did tag FBI in their post. What the interest in investigating something like this is, who knows.
This makes me crazy (in a bad way).
Here’s the company website: https://www.prepsc.com/
Doesn’t seem so, this is a large real college counseling outfit advertising at least per google.
I’m not sure what would be wrong with providing this service from a legal perspective. No different than all the companies out there writing HS (and college) term/research papers.
Agree not sure, and if there is fraud it would be by the student not by the company I would think.
I hope these numbers are fake. Since the website also has some grammatical errors that most people accepted to a Top 30 university would notice, why on earth would they trust them to write an essay for them, even if they were going to go down the morally dubious path? Or, is there so little verifiable information on the students’ applications that admissions officers are actually accepting the b.s. that this company (and its possible ilk) are spewing? How many people read a “chance me” post and then talk to the author about having verifiable information to back up their claims? Are college admissions offices just buying some of these stories hook, line, and sinker? I really hope not, and I also hope that the numbers on the company’s website are fake. Perhaps the FBI can get them for fraud with respect to misleading their potential clients, even if they can’t get them on fraud for forging essays for applicants to schools.
I don’t know if these numbers are real. If the team members listed are real, they went to good schools.
I don’t get the sense that many admissions peeps are verifying info on apps, seems like there’s no time for that (but I am not an AO).
I’m not a lawyer - but when you submit your college application you’re affirming that it’s accurate and your original work. Submitting other people’s work is fraud, and this company is at least an accessory. Prosecutable? I don’t know.
Perhaps it can be prosecuted under aiding and abetting fraud.
Yes, but haven’t AOs ever heard, “If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is?” I’m not an AO, but if the LORs weren’t mentioning some of the questionable stuff and alarm bells are going off that there’s a 99% chance that it wasn’t possible to do all this stuff, then I’d put in the reject or defer pile. Of course, this is assuming that the “competitions” and other things that this company offers are added in. The essay, if it’s the only thing made up, might be passable, but the other stuff? I’d let some other school take the chance on whether all the info on the application was legitimate.
I doubt this firm is an anomaly. There are so many admission consulting firms, charging $20k, $50k or more. And the higher the price the more “complete package” they provide. The kids end up with lab research, published papers, awards, (*) etc. I will bet that a $50k package doesn’t simply get you essay guidance - it’s got to be way beyond that at that price.
(* - want to clarify that yes, there are really bright kids who do all this on their own and have genuine accomplishments. I’m merely speculating about what a $50k consulting package might deliver)
This is yet another way in which families with money can increase their chances at admissions to “elite” colleges, compared to low income families.
I know of desperate academics who have taken jobs with places like this, so it’s probably legit, or at least as legit as such a thing can be.
I’m surprised at the bad grammar, though. Based on their website (and at least some of the people check out), they are a bunch of well-educated people people, and this company must be pretty lucrative, since the degrees that they have (again, the PhD from Cornell checks out) would allow them to get well paid jobs elsewhere. As for the “Ivy League editors”? A pretty decent income for somebody with a creative writing degree from Princeton or Yale who is trying to make it in creative writing (writer, poet, journalist, etc).
The sad thing is that these creative writer would be able to write an essay the reads as though it were written by a highly talented teenager. They would not make the mistake of being too polished or sophisticated, since they generally are pretty good at writing with another person’s “voice”.
I do not know why they did not use one these editors to write the job ad.
I also think that whoever wrote that job ad has just dropped the company in deep trouble. Providing “support” for kids writing essays, editing the ssays, etc, is OK. But they are admitting that they are writing the essays for kids, which is now a legal issue, since the are participating in fraud. After the Varsity Blues trials, you would think that they would be more careful.
I don’t know if I should laugh at or feel sad about “discover the deep meaning from applicants’ negligible real-life events and turn them into SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS THAT HAD LIFE-CHANGING IMPLICATIONS.”
Lab research and resultant papers generally aren’t accessed through college admissions consultants. There are a number of dedicated (legit) companies that do only the research piece.
I am not sure how college admissions consultants help with awards, I am not aware that’s a thing.
$50K college admissions packages are NOT the norm. The average college consultant hourly rate is around $190 hour (last report I saw). Some consultants do hourly, some do packages, some do both. There are also many academic and/or test tutors that charge as much, or more than, that average admissions consultant rate.