How good are college consultants?

[LucieTheLakie]

Do athletes disclose they have private coach? Are they judged differently than someone who is a “free range”? I hire an accountant to do my taxes, but I pay the same whether I do it myself or have someone do it for me.

I don’t really find those things analogous, though.

Athletes are recruited for their skill sets, so if a kid can launch a football 50 yards effortlessly and accurately, the fact that he needed to hire a $3,500-a-week “Quarterback Engineer” to help him develop to that point doesn’t change the fact he can throw that football. Similarly, if a gifted writer spends money to improve her skills and then can independently write an inspired essay, more power to her. [Also, the football player no doubt will cite his having attended the Manning Passing Academy (or whatever) and the aspiring writer, likewise, will tout her summer spent at the Sewanee Young Writer’s Conference in their college applications. That’s quite different than submitting a video that suggests that a pass launched by Peyton Manning (that you could sort of imitate at another time) was actually thrown by you.]

But if you’re literally paying someone to come up with the subject of an essay and then to work with you to rewrite it until it displays some kind of “authentic” voice, then you’re utilizing the services of a professional ghostwriter. For the student to present that finished essay without giving proper attribution to the co-writer while pursuing admission into an institution where failing to give proper attribution can result in accusations of plagiarism, well, that’s where I have an issue. (And by not asking for disclosure up front, are adcoms sending a mixed message?)

Similarly, if you take a “service trip” overseas to volunteer for some charity and then make a movie about it, which you also use as a fundraising vehicle for said charity solely to help you get into an elite college because some very shrewd paid consultant suggested it, then the adcom should take that into account when judging whether or not you’re more desirable than the kid who just volunteered to, I dunno, help foks OR the kid who attended the school where it is well-known that “volunteerism” is required and packaged to impress elite colleges.

Deepak mentioned that there was a rehabilitation center for children with neurological disorders in Mumbai and that he would like to volunteer there as a tutor. Since this is not something that would stand out on his college applications because too many applicants are involved in tutoring, we brainstormed some more and came up with the idea that with his love of filmmaking, he would create a documentary for the center. He spent a few months at the center interviewing the staff and the children and when it was completed, he went back home and raised funds for the center by showing his film. His new college applications told his now powerful story.

It is an impressive story, and I’m assuming the funds raised from showing the film really did benefit the rehab center, but all of it, IMHO, was highly staged and motivated mainly by this kid’s desire to get into an Ivy. That doesn’t make him a bad person or his expensive investment in the “Ivy Coach” dishonest, but it does seem like the kind of thing an adcom should inquire about and consider when weighing his credentials against kids who just do good things because they think it’s important and don’t expect to use their good works as a ticket to admission into an elite school.

And what about using a paid consultant’s connections to land that vital research gig that ultimately leads the applicant to the Holy Grail, a Harvard acceptance letter?

**We encouraged Kim to conduct research at a local university. We found a professor who was doing work using nanoparticles to attack ovarian cancer cells and was willing to mentor a high school student. ** Kimberly ended up loving the research and her college admissions essays would reflect her love for scientific discovery. These college admissions essays proved quite powerful. And in the fall of her senior year, Kimberly submitted her research to the Intel Science Talent Search. She would be the only student from her state to be named a semi-finalist . . . Kim was accepted at all the colleges to which she applied and chose to attend Harvard University.

That’s another one that, IMHO, should require some disclosure. If adcoms are going to assume (and factor in) that one kid used his parent’s (obvious) professional connections (e.g., Dad is an M.D. at CHOP and the kid lands a position in the lab of a CHOP researcher), they should also be aware that “Kim” above paid someone to make those connections on her behalf. Again, I find nothing particularly untoward in either case except allowing it to appear that the student did this all on her own without any help.

The first case in that Ivy Coach example is one that seems like a very prudent investment to me, helping a student target the RIGHT schools, given his personal and academic profile.