Yes, they start with great raw material. But from friends who have used such services, I’ve observed a noticeably higher rate of success compared with other similarly situated students from the high-performing and magnet schools in our area.
I’m happy to discuss further over PM, but I’ll leave it at that here since it’s not directly related to the topic of this thread.
My nieces used one of the well known premium services. It was pretty obvious to me that they steered them to low reach/high match and match schools. Nothing wrong with that but these services that advertise high success rates seem to imply they have the “secret sauce” to get your kid into a next bracket school.
And several of the uber $$$$$$$$ consulting companies only accpt clients they feel pretty confident are more likely to get into top tier schools.
And honestly that is a big part of what our private HS’s college counselors did in the end–help make sure kids were not all applying to the same few reachy-reaches, but had carefully selected an individualized list of those other sorts of colleges. And there were also things like help with essays, reviewing activities lists, and generally managing applications.
And there is indeed nothing wrong with that, and I am under no illusion we got it for “free”. It was bundled into tuition, and I am sure if you did the math it cost us something in the four figures. And if a family that can afford such counseling isn’t getting it from their school, then I see no problem paying for it.
Where I get more skeptical is going well into the five figures, or sometimes six figures reportedly. Helping with thoughtful lists and well-written applications should not be that expensive, and I am not at all sure that whatever else they do is where they actually make a difference.
Preying on people who have more dollars than sense, unless they are providing surrogates who take tests, write really good essays or are ghost researching and writing published works.
When I was applying for jobs as a Speech Pathologist, at one particular school district, they wanted to hear my conversational Spanish skills. (I am a native speaker and I was required, in high school, to take a language other than Spanish, so I took French).
The human resources department, apparently didn’t look at my transcript, whereby in graduate school, I was required to complete a bilingual certification through the State of California which included extra Spanish coursework in reading, writing, speaking and interpreting.
The person interviewing me had such poor professional Spanish skills, that I couldn’t understand her half English and half Spanish so-called “skills”. They had to bring in a native-speaking interpreter to finish my interview. I told the interpreter, in Spanish, that I had received a bilingual/bicultural certificate from the State. This was embarrassing for, not only the interpreter, but also the district. Needless to say, I did not accept their offer.
I think it’s interesting when people tell me that they can speak Spanish in interviews or emergency situations, and I give them the benefit of the doubt and they can’t answer basic identity questions. (What do you like to do? How long have you lived there?)
ETA: I don’t have any sign of an accent according to friends and neighbors.
Congrats to you on maintaining fluency!
There have been a couple of instances where I’ve done alumni interviews for my college where the applicant has claimed proficiency and I’ve asked a very easy follow-up question in that language. Deer in the headlights.
I learned that trick from having it done to me on my admissions interviews. Fortunately, I am indeed fluent in the language.
Pretending to have language proficiency when you don’t has to got to be one of the worst risk/reward tradeoffs for exaggerating accomplishments. I can’t imagine it’s a huge boost to admissions, and as you guys point out it is so easy to determine whether or not it’s true.
Yes. And maybe Yale and these other uber-selective schools need to start being impressed not by applications that are over the top – but by those that aren’t.
would like to read the full article but it’s paywalled
Just plug in your email and it opens. It’s worth it.
From that report “Later that night, while Lynn was in the shower, Bashker says she sneaked back into Lynn’s room and looked through her purse, where she found the ID Lynn had used to fly across the country to Yale a month earlier. The ID listed a California address and the same name she’d seen on the luggage tag. This time, Bashker decided to show it to her college dean.“
How the suitemate can sneak in and look for stuff?
I am just impressed she finally took a shower!! Maybe that’s why she didn’t shower- so her stuff was never unattended!
Cannot imagine to be in a environment to guard your stuff constantly. The behavior from the other Yale stuitemate is also beyond imagination.
If you are a fake, you guard your stuff.
The additional information in the linked article was helpful. It sounds like my earlier “possible sequence of events” was in the ballpark. “Katherina Lynn” was indeed a made up name. The student known as Katherina was not from North Dakota. She was a Chinese student from the Bay Area. The roommate quoted in the earlier news story was indeed the person who complained to admins about “Katherina” lying on application, after which the complaints escalated to getting Dean involved and removal from campus. “Katherina” claims the roommate was suspicious about her not being from ND, frequently asking where she was from. “Katherina” claims the key red flag presented to admin was an ID the roommate obtained by searching her purse while she was in the shower, which listed a California address and a different name. This led to more detailed vetting, revealing the fabricated transcript, LORs, and other application components.