Ivy Success sued for a $200,000 failed Ivy League guarantee

Parents Forum
21

<p>I'd just point out that in this case is it not a "failed guarantee" but outright theft -- according to the suit, Shaw took the money and then turned down the client and refused to provide services. </p>

<p>What has "failed" is not the "guarantee" -- this is an outright (and very simple) breach of contract form -- $200K cannot possibly be the amount required for an preliminary review of the clients credentials, it must have been the fee charged for the services that Shaw refused to provide. </p>

<p>There may very likely be more to this story --- but as reported it looks fairly straightforward. It doesn't matter whether the kid was or was not "Ivy material" or how he got into Columbia -- the only question is whether Shaw provided the services promised for $200K -- and it looks as if he did not.</p>

22

<p>If it can be demonstrated that Shaw/Hsueh accepted $200,000 in a foreign bank in Hong Kong, and the "consultant" not only failed to return it but failed to declare it, this case might take a different dimension. This lawsuit, because of the last name of the plaintiff is all over the world.</p>

<p>And, fwiw, $200,000 even if paid by a relative of a foreign dictator is simply obscene. Accepting such a fee (if it is true) speaks volume about the lack of integrity of Shaw's company. People do not pay such fees for rewriting essays and creating an innocent series of fabricated EC. Even the IvyWise(r) Katherine Cohen must have thought that 200K could buy a lot of Met Internships or potential chick flicks and bestsellers!</p>

23

<p>If the going rate is $200,000 to tell someone he has no chance, we are all undercharging for opinions on thousands of chance threads!</p>

<p>I would have gladly offered an opinion to Daniyar Nazarbayev for the bargain rate of $50,000.</p>

24

<p>If the funds were deposited in Hong Kong, good luck to Shaw. The PRC has a vested interest in keeping the Nazarbayev family happy.</p>

<p>Let's see if student activists at Columbia take up this story.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Nazarbayev is a Karimov endowed with oil wealth: their regimes are so similar, ideologically, as to be almost interchangeable, and this is due in large part to their very similar biographies. Like Karimov, Nazarbayev rose up through the ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: he became head of the Kazakhstan Communist Party, and was "elected" – with 99 percent of the vote – as the nation's president after the Soviet collapse. This enabled him and his cronies to boogie with the president of the World Bank, collect untold millions in the form of kickbacks from Western oil companies, and kick his subjects around with impunity. </p>

<p>The Byzantine tale of corruption that is the recent history of Kazakhstan was ably detailed by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, and it is a subset, in many ways, of what happened in the former Soviet Union during the Yeltsin era, when the oligarchs – using their political connections – looted the nation's wealth and grabbed entire industries for pennies on the dollar in the Great Soviet Fire Sale of the 1990s. Describing the scandal that subsequently became known as "Kazakh-gate," involving Mobil Oil, former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian Mafia, Nazarbayev, and other top Kazakh government officials,

[/quote]
<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6256%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6256&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hersh wrote:</p>

<p>
[quote]
"More than a billion dollars of Mobil's cash was paid to Russian companies in unorthodox transactions; questionable accounting practices were followed: and multimillion-dollar transfers were made that, as a Patton Boggs report put it in one case, 'did not have any apparent valid business purpose.' The investigators' working papers and summary reports, many of which were obtained for this article, suggest that Mobil's activities' in Russia and Kazakhstan were not driven entirely by a desire for quick profit. The company also had a strategic goal: access to Kazakhstan's rich Tengiz oil field. … Internal Mobil documents gathered for this account provide an unparalleled view of a major American oil company's dealings in the former Soviet Union. They raise questions about the company's decisions to enter deals that ultimately benefited powerful figures in the region, including President Nursultan Nazarbayev, of Kazakhstan, and former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, of Russia."

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/07/09/010709fa_fact_hersh%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/07/09/010709fa_fact_hersh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

25

<p>Poor kid. He's gonna have a tough time finding a roommate if that's posted on the walls.</p>

26

<p>A roommate? For his $5M Wall Street apartment?</p>

<p>Nah...not gonna be a problem, LOL.</p>

27

<p>$200,000? That's more than an Ivy League Education currently costs. Some years ago, I heard about a place that wanted $18,000 and guaranteed a spot in the Ivy League. I got the impression that some of the people who worked for the company were former admissions officers and it seemed very shady to me. What could they possibly be doing for that amount of money?</p>

28

<p>To me, what was more interesting was the linked story about the Asian girl from Holmdel who hired Ivy League Success. Apparently as a result of their advice, her family moved from Holmdel, which had very competitive schools, to a nearby town that was more working class.</p>

<p>She ended up being the only Oriental in the school and the valedictorian in her class. And got into Yale and MIT.</p>

<p>It really doesn't say much for the college admissions process.</p>

29

<p>And here's a quote from another story about Ivy Success:</p>

<p>
[quote]
While companies like Ivy Success tout their success stories, there are some who criticize counseling services, and they are not always looked on favorably by college admissions officers. Colleges want to see the "real" applicant - not an image "polished" by a professional service, said Thomas G. Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. </p>

<p>"There is a great deal of anxiety among parents who want to send their kids to the best college they can, and they're looking for every advantage they can afford," said Mortenson. </p>

<p>"But the college people don't want to be gamed.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Ummm, if you don't want to be gamed, why not take the top students based on their grades and test scores and not worry so much about extracurriculars, "diversity," and other stuff? Because obviously if extracurriculars are a big factor, students will start choosing them with an eye to college admissions.</p>

30

<p>The linked stories do not prove that Ivy Success was instrumental in getting the students into top schools. As the main story proves, one can get into such a school without any help whatsoever from Ivy Success. It is very possible that the students could have gotten in without their parents moving their families or paying good money to Ivy Success.</p>

<p>As for top grades and test scores, they are only part of a student's profile. In general, successful applicants to such schools have far more than high GPAs and test scores. The issue for schools is how to distinguish between an excess of qualified students. Harvard claims that 80% of the 20,000+ students who apply for one of the 2,000 spots it offers annually are qualified. That's 16,000 for 2,000 spots (for a class of 1,600). Interestingly, the admit rate is 10%.</p>

31

<p>From the desk of the devil's advocate: haven't read the links, but we do all realize that filing a lawsuit is not the same as PROVING the allegations in that lawsuit. </p>

<p>Is the way admissions consultants charge their clients any different from the way insurance premiums are determined? Of course you'd want the client who had the strongest record, jsut as insurance companies love to sell policies to healthy non-smokers. Both enterprises exist to make money.</p>

32

<p>
[quote]
But the college people don't want to be gamed.

[/quote]

And they tell themselves that are not. And then they believe it.</p>

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<p>College counseling is not akin to practicing alchemy or turning sows into silk purses. A preliminary interview would ascertain whether the applicant is "Ivy material" or not, and on that basis a decision would be made as to whether to take him on or not.<br>
Yes, it is wise to take on only applicants with a decent chance of being successful., students who are potential silk purses rather than obvious sow's ears. What does this mean? In the context of Harvard, supposedly, 80% of the 20000+ applicants are qualified for admission. So it would mean working with one of the 16,000 who are deemed qualified, and turning that one individual into one of the 2,000 admits. In other words, there are plenty of potential customers out there.
Shaw was wrong to deem the applicant inadmissible--he clearly was, since he has been admitted. He seems to also have admitted to refusing to work with the student and also refusing to return the money. Since the parents of the applicant had already spent $200k and got their son into Columbia, I doubt that they would have filed a suit if Shaw had not made that admission. They were willing to spend the money. Few people are willing to pay for nothing or to be duped whether it is out of $20, $200, 04 $200k.
I looked up the fees for Michele Hernandez. Her most expensive package, covering all 4 high school years, costs $40k. Presumably, Katherine Cohen's Ivywise charges more, but I doubt she could charge that much more, at least nothing close to $200k. It seems that the applicant was charged $200k for only the senior year.</p>

34

<p>
[quote]
The linked stories do not prove that Ivy Success was instrumental in getting the students into top schools. As the main story proves, one can get into such a school without any help whatsoever from Ivy Success. It is very possible that the students could have gotten in without their parents moving their families or paying good money to Ivy Success.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I agree, although it is not outrageous to hypothesize that services such as Ivy Success may help their clients. </p>

<p>
[quote]
As for top grades and test scores, they are only part of a student's profile. In general, successful applicants to such schools have far more than high GPAs and test scores.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's true. My point is that if colleges put a lot of weight on factors that can be "gamed," it follows that a lot of applicants will attempt to "game" the system.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The issue for schools is how to distinguish between an excess of qualified students. Harvard claims that 80% of the 20,000+ students who apply for one of the 2,000 spots it offers annually are qualified. That's 16,000 for 2,000 spots (for a class of 1,600). Interestingly, the admit rate is 10%.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>One easy thing they could do is raise their qualifications in terms of grades and test scores.</p>

35

<p>lskinner- a lot of applicants already have near-perfect grades and scores. It is a challenge to compare grades from various schools, of course. Grades and scores paint a very incomplete picture of an applicant. Also a somewhat boring one.</p>

36

<p>"One easy thing they could do is raise their qualifications in terms of grades and test scores. "</p>

<p>The large majority of the applicants to the most competitive colleges already have grades and scores that probably put them in the top 2 percent of the college. Any grade/score differences between them are negligable. Harvard basically could fill up half of its class with students who, for instance, got 800 scores on any part of the SAT. It also could fill up its class with valedictorians. </p>

<p>However, if places like HPYS made their selections like that, they wouldn't be HPYS.</p>

<p>As for the folks who are trying to game the system through pricey counselors, I do wonder if they really do game the system or if the counselors take money from students who'd have gotten into HPYS without the counselors' help.</p>

37

<p>Let's not fool ourselves that "objective" criteria cannot be gamed.
Grades can be gamed, and are all the time. Check out discussions about whether to take a course that is weighted vs. one that is more interesting but unweighted. Check out discussions about doing or not doing some stupid project and its impact on grades. Check out the grading practices of this teacher vs. that teacher.
Test scores can be prepped to the tune of $$$.
In any given year, a few thousand valedictorians apply to Harvard--more than could be accommodated if Harvard chose to fill its incoming class only with valedictorians (and see the thread "Mom, our sal is not very smart" for a reason not to do so).</p>

38

<p>
[quote]
Let's not fool ourselves that "objective" criteria cannot be gamed.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I agree that grades and test-scores can be gamed to a certain extent. However, the emphasis on extracurriculars, diversity, etc, seems to open the door to a whole new level of gaming.</p>

<p>JMHO.</p>

39

<p>How? ten characters</p>

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<p>See the linked articles for some examples.</p>