Poor K. Cohen - Her prodigy is another Blair Hornstine

Parents Forum
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<p>While I realize the name of her service is Ivy Wise…otherwise, I don’t find it odd that some clients got into or are attending some schools that are not the “cream of the crop” top schools. Why? Because ideally, any candidate could use assistance in selecting and applying to college. In fact, this past year and even a cilent I just started with, several have VERY LOW stats, but their families are still seeking guidance in the college selection and admissions process. If anything, I have to “guide” them to realistically realize that no, Yale and Brown should not be on their lists (trust me if you saw the stats, it is nothing like the “what are my chances” you read here where other students say, “no way”…I’m saying there is NO WAY ever no how in a million years …I just don’t say that to them but gently explain why and they are free to still apply but I hopefully guide them to a more realistic list…). So, EVERY student would benefit from assistance and guidance in this process. And if a family wishes to use a paid counselor, that doesn’t mean the paid counselor is only “worth it” if he/she can get the student into an Ivy. We can’t get the students in anyway. We can guide them to the appropriate choices and then help them go through the process and do so effectively. But they are either qualified or they are not. We can’t change that. We can help them go about it effectively, talk about how to present themselves on paper, and so forth but we can’t create who they are.</p>

<p>So, a family who can afford it and desires it, may hire a counselor. Just like many come here for advice and support, some seek an ongoing one on one counselor with expertise to help with the process…not so much to get them into a better school than they could have gotten into on their own. So, no I don’t find the list above unusual in that respect. However, she does seem to “market” herself as a counselor (a high priced one) aimed at Ivy league or similar schools. So, yes, I’m not sure why someone might need that high priced service to get into the kinds of schools that they may have been able to attain without the service IF getting into a top school is the objective of the service. But overall, a counselor can’t get a kid in. We work with who they are, we don’t create who they are. Maybe she can but I can’t and don’t attempt to. I actually have some students whose parents can afford counseling and private SAT tutors and private high school and much more but the students have very low stats. In some ways, they need the counseling even more because their college wish list is NOT realistic at all. I see the counselor as helping with the process but not someone who can create or make someone into someone they are not…nor that the counselor can get the student into an Ivy if the student wouldn’t be normally qualified if not working with the counselor.</p>

<p>Susan</p>

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<p>Do you remember the look at the library of Mrs. X who is described (in the Nanny Diaries) as a bundle of neuroses wrapped up in Prada, and who sees her four-year-old son as little more than another status symbol in a fabulous Park Avenue apartment? </p>

<p>Most of Your Four-Year-Old
How to Package Your Child
The Preschool Interview Make it or Break it
Navigating Preschool Admissions … </p>

<p>And everything else you could possibly imagine in this genre to fill up four bookshelves right up through: </p>

<p>City Kids Need Trees
The Benefits of a Boarding School Education
The SATs-Setting the Scene for the Rest of Your Child’s Life</p>

<p>Mrs. Cohen exists because she does have willing and easily manipulated clients.</p>

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<p>Here we go!</p>

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<p>Xiggi, when I read the Nanny Diaries, my eyes were opened very wide to a world that I just did not realize existed (the whole priming of the preschoolers for nursery school admissions, etc.). My life in the mountains is very far removed from that scene. Alas, my college aged children likely rub shoulders with (and are even good friends with) their peers at their selective colleges who have been through all that but in the end, they all landed where they are now anyway despite very different “approaches”, fancy that.</p>

125

<p>You may remember the article “Phonics in Utero” I’ve previously posted:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=82914&highlight=Utero[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=82914&highlight=Utero&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Xiggi, my feeling is that both Blair and Kaavya are talented young women who are capable of reaching a high level of achievement all on their own and likely would not have been in the predicament they are in now if they had not had “handlers” trying to mold them into something to “get ahead.”</p>

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<p>Soozievt, that is true, but we will never know how to separate absolute fabrication from real accomplishments. For instance when the good Judge -the Honorable Louis- was busy collecting the prom dresses or organizing lofty foreign travel to “fix” cleft palates, his daughter was plagiarizing President Clinton’s Thanksgiving speech. The same daughter who was to ill to attend high school but was able to survive a grueling extra-curricular schedule activities and compile a record good enough to win national scholarships. </p>

<p>The talent -if there is really any- is overshadowed by the depth and arrogance of the organized fraud. All Blair and Louis had to do was to keep a low profile. However, that was not good enough: they needed the adulation of the entire town and could not stand to share the silly title of valedictorian with someone else. </p>

<p>All KV had to do was to be honest. And that appeared to represent an insurmontable mountain because it meant she had to be … herself for once.</p>

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<p>This is tangential from the original discussion, but…</p>

<p>What if being yourself isn’t good enough?</p>

<p>There isn’t much appreciation for the run-of-the-mill kid, not to mention the consequences of disappointing parents who are high achieving and expect the same of their offspring.</p>

<p>P.S. Just want to emphasize that this is a tangential topic – I am in complete agreement with Xiggi’s views on AV’s behavior.</p>

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<p>From what I can tell, these girls had/have plenty going for them without having had to take any of these actions. Like Xiggi says, they really could just be themselves and likely have been very viable candidates to get into very selective colleges, like many other high achieving young people who are not packaged, created, pushed, or have any strings pulled for them.</p>

130

<p>I wonder just how many applicants to the Ivies inflate their accomplishments to appear to be more than run-of-the-mill. I am reading Cohen’s book “Rock Hard Apps” and in order to improve one client’s resume, she has him include travel time when adding up his volunteer hours which are kind of paltry. While I guess that is not really lying, it would never have occurred to me to tell my child to do that. And, for us, living in a rural area, the drive time is often longer than the actual volunteer time. So, is it ethical to include the drive time?</p>

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<p>I think the packaging is for the parents, not the kids. The parents feel that, as “good parents”, they have done “everything they can”, money be darned, to give their kids the “best opportunities” and to “secure a better life” (and to give the parents more prestige - much better than a $200k diamond around the wifey’s neck.) Given the likely college costs in any case ($200k plus or minus), $29k is a real bargain.</p>

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<p>I am somewhat familiar with the school KV attended; it is a powerhouse. Some of its recent graduates have achieved international recognition and are now at top schools. Perhaps KV felt she needed the packaging to stand out from among the cohort of her fellow students all aspiring to be admitted to the same schools. </p>

<p>That said, Ivywise’s packaging is really over the top!</p>

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<p>I don’t know about ethical, but D and I belong to a national charity organization that’s been around for 50 years at least, and they prohibit counting drive-time as part of our service hours (which we tally up at the end of the year for an annual organization report).</p>

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<p>Vango, I also live in a rural area. Both my children (now in college) were VERY involved in extracurricular pursuits and here, that means a LOT of travel time. I put between 100-200 miles per day on my car and my husband did as well to get them to everything. My kids NEVER thought to or would put down travel time to activities on their college apps/resumes. They had plenty of significant activities and times allotted to them without embellishing. The travel time came up in one essay my older D wrote about herself because of her description of the many sides of her life (she was/is someone who is well rounded and was heavily engaged in more than one area) and there was a line in an essay where she transformed herself from ski racer to all state musician in the 90 mile transverse of the state and then into a dancer 50 miles to her next thing, etc. It happened to come up in context. Also anyone interviewing her as an alum in VT, would know that to do the stuff they did, involved a great deal of travel time daily. But list it? Hours? Never. Nothing they did was embellished. Nothing they did was chosen to “get into college” (other than trying their best at academics). They still each ended up at one of their first choices (reaches and highly selective) and were admitted to the majority of schools on their list (each had six admits, one waitlist, one denial). I advise prospective students and guide them as they put together their activity resume and I am strict about it only listing the hours they really did the activity and sometimes if I notice an embellishment, I have them change it. </p>

<p>A strong candidate doesn’t need to embellish. There are no guarantees of getting into a top school, but integrity is still worth something. A person’s record should be able to stand on its own if presented effectively, but honestly.</p>

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<p>“From what I can tell, these girls had/have plenty going for them without having had to take any of these actions. Like Xiggi says, they really could just be themselves and likely have been very viable candidates to get into very selective colleges, like many other high achieving young people who are not packaged, created, pushed, or have any strings pulled for them.”</p>

<p>Soozie, that is NOT what I am saying! Not at all! </p>

<p>It is when they had to be who they TRULY are that they FAILED. Without Louis making a mockery of the ADA rules at his D’s public school and being able to rule over his little fiefdom of hired guns, Blair may have been very far from being the valedictorian. How much of “what she had going for her” was her own work? She was never seen at the food or prom dresses collections, or had records for most her lofty activities. Louis and Blair KNEW that the system is based on honor. </p>

<p>When she was sitting at her computer, Blair did not hesitate to plagiarize the first thing she could grab. Why was it so hard to write a little heartwarming Thanksgiving story for a local newspaper in what would be her … own voice? </p>

<p>Why was it so hard for KV to write the contracted for pages? It was not about writing a novel, but having to go to the novel process of writing her own words, probably for the first time. The only difference is that, just as in Blair’s case, she did not expect to be caught after fooling everyone for so long. </p>

<p>There is no pretty picture hiding behind the masks.</p>

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<p>Soozie, I want to be clear that I see no parallels with the accounts of your daughter’s activities and the stories of Blair and Kaavya. For every known cheat, there must be thousands upon thousands of hard working kids who are simply themselves. </p>

<p>Your daughter is a multi-sport athlete -among other things. The worst that could have happened to her was to be put on a pair of skis and asked to compete after faking a high school career in the sport. The joke would have been on her, wouldn’t it? The reality is that the coaches knew whom they were getting as an aspiring freshman. Same thing for tennis and soccer. </p>

<p>In this case, the cheating students were presented a challenge and they failed.</p>

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<p>Xig, then I misunderstood you, am sorry. </p>

<p>I think these are bright girls. I’m saying that they likely could have gone far without the pulling of strings (ie., special status at school to be exempt from PE, pushing the rules on the val status, helping to secure publisher, etc.) or without someone trying to create or mold them into something. They were strong students. If Kaavya was a gifted writer, like many other students, normally she’d not have been in this position of someone pushing to get her a publisher (didn’t seem ready for this level! and it involved undue pressure) and would have done things more akin to other strong student/writers her age. I just think that these girls didn’t need someone finagling the rules about val and their resumes and community service and pulling strings to get published, etc. I think they could have used their smarts on their own like other kids do and have gone far just the same. I think all this pressure and gaming this or that, went so far as to work AGAINST them in the end. If they had followed a more “normal” path, I think they had talents and smarts to have gone far. I think there was packaging and molding and gaming and other things going on to “get ahead” and lots of it came from adults. It was a fast train that became a wreck and was totally unnecessary and was fed by “stategizing” in such a way that in the end, has backfired. Strip all that away and let them grow up and achieve on their own and apply to college like anyone else and I bet they would have made out OK. Whether they would have gotten into Harvard, I don’t know. Trouble is, Harvard didn’t have to be the goal in the first place.</p>

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<p>“Trouble is, Harvard didn’t have to be the goal in the first place.”</p>

<p>soozievt that is indeed the key point of this whole discussion!</p>

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<p>Xiggi, sorry I did not see your post #136 when I just posted and I was replying to the previous post of yours. </p>

<p>I wasn’t drawing parallels with my oldest child. I was saying that kids can get into selective schools with no gaming, no strategizing, no private HS, no paid packager, no embellishment on the resume, no choosing to do things to get into college…and in fact, can do some things that Ms. Cohen steers students away from…ie., summer teen travel programs, camps, pursuing a common activity (clarinet, tennis, etc.). </p>

<p>I was giving both my kids as examples but think they are examples that are common ones even here on CC. Kids DO get into these same schools that Ms. Cohen is guiding her clients into and haven’t done what she is doing with them. </p>

<p>Also, in the case of my older D, just for the record, she was NOT a recruited athlete. So, when colleges viewed her activity/award resume, they still were weighing the same things they do with anyone’s ECs…significant commitment over time and in depth, leadership, achievement, passion, etc. To be clear, while you mentioned that my D played three varsity sports, that only represented half of her resume. In fact, she was accomplished in several areas of the performing arts. She also was accomplished in student government and had held jobs, and so forth. The issues at hand apply to her or anyone else. There was no embellishment. The things she did in HS were out of passion for the activities and not to get into college. Her activities were not unique at all. She started each endeavor as a young child and never gave it up. She planned to continue most of these endeavors in college. Her recs spoke to all these areas. Same with my other kid. There was no need to package anything. They are who they are. Each had extensive resumes because they are just very active people with deep passions. </p>

<p>By the way, my D had no contact with the tennis or soccer coaches at Brown. I believe admissions evaluated her, no coaches. The ski coach was unwilling to even TALK to my D until such time as she was admitted. She refused contact unless she was admitted first. Weird, yes, but the truth. She is no longer working at Brown. So, my D’s record was like any other applicant and had to stand on its own merits. Somehow, I am trying to say, kids like her, or my other D, and like many here on CC still manage to get in. No packaging. No gaming. No choosing activities to be unique, no molding/sculpting. No string pulling. No networking. Unknown HS. No GC familiar with elite admissions or specialized admissions as my second D underwent. I’m saying that Blair and Kaavya sound like bright girls with talent who could have made it on their own. If they had, perhaps this mess would be averted. It backfired.</p>

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<p>Was KV 17 when she signed the $500,000 contract (and is it legal?) </p>

<p>K Cohen exists because there are people with an excess of cash. I posted this in response to another thread recently, but at some point if what is required for acceptance/success/fill in the blank is that you pretend to be someone else, it’s not possible (for long) and certainly not worth it, as these girls found out. I wonder if anyone has ever succeeded in doing this with a high school aged boy?</p>