It’s not crazy if that’s what’s important to them. No crazier than buying a sports car or other pricier object anyway.
I only have issues with it if the son wasn’t interested and dad made him go there, or if they were to not be able to pay other bills/pay off loans and got public assistance of some sort because of it.
If people have the money, use it however you like based upon what’s important to you (as long as it’s legal and ethical anyway). It’s how our world goes round.
What I buy might not interest you and vice versa, but we both keep the economy going by keeping people employed and businesses open.
I don’t think that those $85,000 are a good use of money for any super wealthy person. They have enough money to ensure that their kid is accepted, no matter hat the kid’s grades happen to be.
For most of them, they would do better spending less to a college consultant who would help them figure out how to use their wealth to get their kid into college without having to depend on their kid actually improving their academics, even if that improvement is being supported by a tutor.
I am still convinced that their “success rate” is based on a mix of only accepting students who are already mostly there - athletes, legacies, development candidates, and underselling everybody else. It is easy to claim that your students got into one of their top 3 choices, if you make sure that one of those top three are likelies or safeties. Families which are willing to pay that much generally are not knowledgeable enough to know what their kid’s safeties happen to be.
Considering that the parents who are hiring these tutors are also likely sending their kids to expensive private high schools with dedicated counselors, it is easy to benefit from the work of those counselors as well.
Bottom line, an $85,000 a year tutor will not get unhooked kids into Ivies at a 96% rate, or even a 46% rate. The majority of kids with a GPA of 4.0, the most rigorous, top test scores, and ECs with awards who have no “hooks” are not getting into an the Ivy of their choice, no matter how well they set up their profile. So no tutor will take a kid who has no hook who is outside of those stats and accomplishments, and get those kids accepted to an Ivy of their choices at any rate close to 96%. Maybe 9.6%.
So the main reason that I don’t really care is that I think that it is, as I wrote above, something of a scam.
If they were looking for a tutor whose main purpose was to help their kid improve in academics, they would not be specifically looking for a tutor who promises to get their kid accepted to an “elite” college. They are not advertising improvement in academics. They are advertising “Ivy Grads will ensure that your kid get into an Ivy League school”.
It seems highly unlikely to me that parents who hire a tutor specifically because that tutor promises to help get their kid into an “elite” college, are focused on their kid’s academics.
Perhaps mainly to the point that the academic credential numbers at least appear plausible – development admissions may not hesitate to admit a big donor’s kid with a 3.7 HS GPA, but a 2.3 HS GPA may given them pause unless the donation were really huge.
A sliding scale of required donation, based on the kid’s GPA…
Reminds me when the huge wave of immigrants from the ex-soviet union were arriving in Israel. They could buy university and professional degrees, because there were people out there with original stamps, letterheads, and unfilled diplomas, who would sell diplomas. Some of these people were the people who were in charge of printing out the real diplomas before the fall of the USSR.
There was a sliding scale for the price - the higher you wanted your GPA to be, the more you paid.
How do you know that $950/hr accomplished much for these kids? These Hamptons’ families obviously can afford to throw lots of money on anything and they probably think money solves all the problems. Most of what they spend on isn’t for test preparation and that SAT-tutoring is an add-on service. That $85k/yr they spend on is for all the other college preparation/admission services. They likely don’t get much return on that $950/hr SAT-tutoring, but they probably don’t care.
If it worked (whether to level of 96% success rate, 46% or even just a statistically significant higher admit percentage), would you have a problem with the $85k tutor?
I don’t see private “elite” colleges as some “promised land”, where all academic wishes are fulfilled, all academics dreams come true, and one is assured success, happiness, a wonderful spouse, and children who are all above average. So the fact that the very wealthy can pay their way in to a certain extent doesn’t bother me all that much.
In fact, I would be pretty amused if $85,000 could ensure entry to an Ivy. It would be great to see how the super wealthy who were paying $2,500,000 to buy their kid a place at Harvard or Yale will respond when they discover that the merely well-to-do were able to buy admission at a fraction of the price.
In fact, somebody with good financial skills could spend enough of their savings on these tutors that they would qualify for great financial aid, and and those $85,000 would be most of the cost of their kid attending Yale or Harvard.
I don’t know if the $2.5 million admit has strings attached or if its an auto admit. $85k admit presumably comes with some effort in additional to the payment of $$$. And how certain is the $2.5 million admit? If its pretty much 100%, a lesser chance at $85k (requiring some effort) may be apples-to-oranges.
The $2.5 million may be dated, since that was the parental donation that preceded the admission of a well known (unelected) political figure to Harvard, even though they weren’t really qualified. It could be more now.
My point is that I don’t actually believe that the tutoring is what is providing the students a 96% acceptance rate to an Ivy.
First, their advertising is cleverly couched in a manner which implies that this is what they are promising. However, what it really says is that there is a 96% rate of being accepted to one of the student’s “top 3 choices”, and that these “include” Ivies. I am pretty sure that they are focusing on students who already are hooked, and are setting up the “top 3” to include at least one likely. So they have Harvard, Yale, and a good college where the kid is a legacy, and will be a full pay student.
I would also not be surprised if the “tutoring” also included advice to the parents as to where the parents should donate…
It would not be surprising if some colleges had donation levels that were enough to be noticed to give applicants a bump similar to legacy, even while much larger donations could result in almost-automatic admission to applicants who do not have very large and obvious defects or liabilities.