I Can Get You Into Ivy League
source: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_43/b4055063.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_43/b4055063.htm?campa...
Michele Hernandez boasts that 95% of her teenage clients are accepted by their first-choice school. Her price: As much as $40,000 a studentAs I listened to my 8th period English teacher drone on for the third time about how Finny, a character in A Separate Peace, was indeed the main character although he was not the narrator, it finally dawned on me that this was not the exciting world of high school that I had hoped for.
This is how Andrew Garza began an essay in his application to Haverford College. It was a 1,200-word piece that established him as an intellectually curious young man. It was crafted to appeal specifically to the admissions officers at the small liberal arts school. And it was the idea of his high-priced college admissions coach, Michele A. Hernandez. Garza attended a private school in Switzerland, and that worried Hernandez: She thought he might appear to be a privileged teenager without much substance. So she advised him to write about why he had left his public high school in suburban New Jersey. "We had to make it seem like he didn't want to be around so many rich kids. We spun a whole story about him taking the initiative to leave in order to broaden his experience," Hernandez says. "It was his initiative. But he wouldn't have written about it."
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jennatar
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Gross, gross, gross. This is like when a grown-up helps you with your science fair project, but seedier and scarier.
My mom is pretty elderly. She was a high school guidance counselor (she has a lot of experience, 40-50 years, and she's really great at her job!) in a smalltown Texas public school, back when I attended there--which is awkward on its own, frankly. During the application process, I insisted on having no help, but she still took it really, really hard when she couldn't "get me in" to my top pick. She felt a lot of guilt over it, and she was sad, although the fact that I was sort of sad about it, too, really didn't help anything.
So I went somewhere else for undergrad. And soon after we graduated from college, a friend of mine--a fellow writing major from Northwestern--took on a job preparing essays for high school seniors, I gather for a similar "name-brand" consulting firm. He was sort of wry and jaunty when he described it, he called it something like "ghost-writing application essays for spoiled rich kids."
And I was totally stunned, just like, "You don't really write them, do you?" At best, I remembered my mom mentioning such a thing *existed,* that the landscape was more competitive than ever. The consulting company itself seemed classist--but when you're nothing more than the paid ghost writer, simultaneously the brains behind the operation AND the hired help, ugh, what IS that, even?
edit: I hope this link works; it's all the comments, so far, pertaining to this article at Business Week. It might not link properly, I don't know. But the responses are every bit as interesting as the actual article. A lot of people reply to claims of "it isn't fair" with "you're just jealous." I wonder where the line between the two sentiments is really drawn.
- 5 years ago
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jennatar
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