I guess if you have the money…
Seems like those families can also afford development-level donations to give their kids extra boosts.
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Wonder if he does housework while tutoring?
@twoinanddone asked:
That costs another $85,000 if you want it included in the services!
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As you say - these families are wealthy enough to buy their kid a place is an “elite” college. So when the tutor decides which colleges are “appropriate”, the parents can drop a few million dollar donation, and, viola, kiddo is accepted to one of the top 3 schools, the one to which the parents donated.
Of course, there is also the fact that many of these super-wealthy parents are legacies or are of the rich and powerful.
If indeed there were people who you could pay $85,000, and they would get your kid into an “elite” college, people wouldn’t have been paying Rick Singer $250,000.
Problem is, paying the tutor is not going to get the student good grades, or good SATs. For that, you have to pay the prep school (now that’s a scandal we haven’t heard about yet), and someone at the testing site. Paying the “tutor” still involves junior having to actually learn and perform, at some level.
Far easier to just pay the college off with a big donation. That was the only mistake that the Varsity Blues families made - they just didn’t bribe the legal way, by paying the school off directly.
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I know. I thought that at the time - for the parents spending 100s of thousands why not just “donate” that $$ to the school directly.
I’ve seen a lot of Ivy League graduates recently use their degree to “help” (in exchange for significant monetary contributions) high schoolers get into whatever university is du jour. Good for them, they’re making a buck, but I fail to see how Yale or whatever other top university can claim they educate world leaders with this type of publicity. There are plenty of world leaders that graduate from these institutions and, I get it, it’s a numbers game but the optics are a little off.
Edited to add: my son’s history teacher in high school is a recent Stanford grad and he is amazing! Inspiring and educating gaggles of teenagers on a daily basis and it makes me a little sad/angry that he probably makes about half per year of what the 85k tutor makes per student. I hope he sticks with it because he is not a ray of sunshine but a supernova in my kid’s life.
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Article says they charge $950/hour for ACT/SAT prep. And average parent buys 40 hours of time.
There are parents on this site who say they learned the rules of the game and helped get their kids into top schools. This article talks about parents who are paying someone to do essentially the same thing.
I find this whole thing really depressing. As if wealthy kids don’t already have every other advantage known to man . . . If you have $250k to spend on boat maintenance why does your kid even need an Ivy League education? Every time someone talks about the SAT as a great equalizer I’ll think about people who spend $950 per hour for personalized tutoring - nothing more fair than that, right? As for this Yale grad who has been able to monetize his experience, good for him, I guess. Nothing says future leader more than a job grooming the pampered offspring of multi-millionaires.
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Money brings with it advantages. Providing advantages to your kids is often a big motivator for parents. Where should lines be drawn? $xxx for private schools or $yyy for boarding schools is ok but $85k for tutors isn’t?
We often see parents here talking about skipping fancy cars/luxury vacations and saving up to be full pay parents. Maybe we will see the same thing with $85k tutors. Maybe it will be discount tutors charging $25k or $50k for some.
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I’m well aware of the advantages that come with $$ and accept that it is what it is (and my kids have certainly benefited from a fair amount of privilege themselves). People have every right to purchase whatever advantage they want for their kids. This just seems so over the top and really demolishes whatever illusion there might be that some kind of equal playing field exists - it is clear that there isn’t one.
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I agree there isn’t a level playing field. Don’t think there ever was. But there probably are people who look at the advantages that your kids had and think that provides evidence of a lack of a playing field. Very relative.
And I think there is a tendency (not pointing to you directly on this) that people will find advantages they provided for their kids to be valid/appropriate and those beyond what they could or did provide as being over the top.
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Absolutely - it is little more than a soft scam. You take on students who are already top contenders, because they are from wealthy families with connections, and are likely hooked one way or another. You then claim credit when the kid is accepted to an “elite” college.
None of those $85,000 a year tutors would be able to have a 96% success rate in getting kids who are not from super-wealthy families into those colleges.
They “only” had an extra $250,000-$400,000. To get your kid in “legitimately” requires donations in the $2,000,000 range.
They are feeding off of the fallacy that, just because a person graduated from an Ivy, means that they know how to be accepted to an Ivy. Unless a person has worked for admissions to a bunch of Ivy league colleges, they really don’t know enough about admissions to help anybody. That is yet another reason that I know that it’s a scam. The knowledge the claim to be able to share is NOT the knowledge that they acquired a an undergraduate student at Yale, Harvard, etc.
As I wrote, there is absolutely no evidence that these super expensive tutors actually do this.
They are simply taking kids who are already privileged enough to be accepted to an “elite” college because of their parents wealth and connections, and, at most, telling these kids how to to mass up badly enough to not get accepted.
As for college consulting, this is interesting, though old:
Of course all privilege is relative. My kids live in a pleasant town with good public schools where they don’t need to contend with violence, hunger or poverty. That’s their first advantage. The second is that we can afford to pay for college. I’m well aware that because of these two factors they are starting out in life ahead of the game. I don’t begrudge the ultra wealthy their $85k per year college counselors, personal coaches etc. so much as I am bewildered by it all. Apparently there is no bridge too far when it comes to getting junior into the “right” (i.e. prestigious) college – although I question why it is even necessary.
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Thats a very different issue. First you said the $85k tutors are evidence the playing field isn’t level. But that is very relative. Now you say you don’t understand why they are doing it. Whatever level of time, money or effort someone spends with respect to their kids and college, there is someone out there who is saying its over the top and wonders why it was necessary.
Again, I think there is a tendency to view what you did as not being over the top and going beyond that as being over the top.
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The playing field is not & never has been level. I was frankly shocked at the whole Rick Singer scandal. I couldn’t believe public funds were used to prosecute the parents (as well as to house them in cushy jails for the short time some were there). What a waste. Let the rich folks waste their money. I say this as someone who worked in higher education (never at a school where people could buy their way in), and as someone who has mentored students who were educationally disadvantaged. There will always be people who get stuff because of their circumstances … but fortunately, one doesn’t have to go to an “elite” school to have a happy life. And stopping the well connected from possibly taking the spot of someone less connected won’t level the playing field of life. I say ignore the ones who game the system and focus on helping everyone else reach their potential. They don’t need to go to an ivy to do that.
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Well, I guess that collegeconfidential is worth a lot, because the information and assistance we got from the threads on here really did help my public school kid to compile a successful application. And we didn’t have to spend a penny on tutoring or coaching.
Thank you, CC community!
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Or its worth nothing because most parents do fine with college applications never having hear of this site. Value is in the eyes of the beholder.
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Yes!
Not on the scale described, but my co-worker spent ~$20K in college prep so that he can now spend $80K per year to send his son to a very popular (non-ivy, not HYPSM) school.
It is just crazy what parents are willing to do to get their kids into popular schools.