<p>I thought this article might be of particular interest to international applicants:</p>
<p>Students</a> abroad work hard to get into old boarding schools - International Herald Tribune</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing!</p>
<p>I see the article is a year old. I wonder if anything has changed?</p>
<p>I was mildly surprised that the final paragraph discouraged parents from using educational consultants when the point of the article was that too many well qualified kids from countries like South Korea were chasing the same prize. It seems like a good educational consultant could have steered some families to schools less well known than Hotchkiss, for example, if they are really determined to have their South Korean kids study in the US.</p>
<p>Some of the educational consultants in South Korea would do anything to get their clients into top boarding schools.
I'm a Korean too, and one thing that really ****es me off is that some of these educational consultants literally WRITE the essays for applicants; they do everything BUT take care of the financial aid. I applied twice, last year and this year, no educational consultants, and parents with very limited English. The one thing I couldn't do last year was financial aid- as a result, I was accepted with no FA. Some of my friends who used educational consultants were rejected from all of their schools- not only did they get rejected, they lost a couple of thousand dollars as well.</p>
<p>"It seems like a good educational consultant could have steered some families to schools less well known than Hotchkiss, for example, if they are really determined to have their South Korean kids study in the US."
Most educational consultants want their clients at top boarding schools, so that when they advertise the next year, they can say "we got this many people into Andover last year, you should definitely hire from our team."</p>
<p>There was a mob of them in front of our SSAT testing center, waving packets of last minute vocabulary packets, #2 pencils with their phone numbers, etc.</p>
<p>Not all of them are bad, but it really does get annoying when they cheat. And it gives such a bad impression of Korean people; some of my interviewers actually asked me if I use an educational consultant or go to extra study classes in Seoul. I truly think they are a waste of money, and its not like they truly care about you getting into a school, they just love your money.</p>
<p>Okay I'm done :)</p>
<p>I hope you told your interviewer a softened version of this. It would make a difference if I were evaluating your candidacy, (too bad I'm not!). But I imagine they can tell. The word that comes to my mind when you describe the process you've seen with the ed consultants is "manufactured." You, clearly, are not of this ilk. I hope the interviewers appreciate that. I cannot imagine the pressure that you're under. I wish you the very best of luck. </p>
<p>It sounds like you are trying to make your own way and that is an advantage that no amount of test-prep or hired guns can give you. Even if M10 doesn't bring you the news you want, I am confident that you will do well wherever you are. </p>
<p>I am lighting a candle for all of you Korean applicants. It seems like you face incredible pressure on many fronts.</p>
<p>It sounds like in the future, when China becomes the world's greatest superpower (debatable), either a great percentage of the students at the world's top schools will all be Chinese, or all people in the world will be trying to get into Chinese schools.</p>
<p>Jeff Spicoli at a Chinese school? I don't buy that.</p>
<p>What about South Korean students using US Educational Consultants? </p>
<p>Aspirant94, I was very interested in what you had to say about these South Korean ed. consultants. That is certainly not what I thought of when I heard the term educational consultant. I was thinking of those NYC & Boston firms.</p>
<p>The overall educational consultant thing, in my humble opinion, is overrated. The application represents the applicant, not the guy sitting at the desks doing it for his job.</p>
<p>Kind of presumptuous (but proven right) this kid got this consultant to DO his application for a prestigious summer program. He got a handwritten letter (Everyone else got a generic) telling him to DO his application next time.</p>
<p>I didn't explain this process to my interviewers, I just told them that I didn't hire an educational consultant. I did not want to scare them off with an impassioned speech! :)
Thanks neatoburrito, I really hope March 10th brings good news for everyone!</p>
<p>SPS is very aware of this, I think. When I had my interview, one of the first things they asked me was if I took extra classes (we call them hagwons) after school to study better for classes, ie. get better grades. The thing about most of these hagwons is that if enough people from your school attend, they have a history of all the activities and tests and textbooks your school uses (and it's not like the curriculum changes year to year for the same class) so in some ways, it's cheating.</p>
<p>My interviewer asked me right off the bat, a little over five minutes after we started the interview. And I'm guessing other schools are aware as well.</p>
<p>btw. Ed consultants are FEARFUL of having their students sent to lesser known boarding schools. Anything less than the TSAO (in some groups of students, loomis, hill, and maybe taft aren't really that great of an achievement), groton, milton, and maybe middlesex, is subpar.</p>