Hiring help is not the privilege of only the wealthy, of course. According to the Independent Educational Consultants Assn., 22% of first-year students at private colleges—perhaps as many as 58,000 kids—had worked with some kind of consultant.
The leading coach has run application boot camps in Manhattan and Santa Monica, Calif., which this summer cost $9,500.
She wrote: A Is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting Into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges, and then to build a thriving business that helps people game the system. As she says to parents: "You don't want to pay $180,000 for some piddling school when, by spending a little extra, your kid could get into Yale."
Ivy League schools weren't being truthful about how they reviewed students' applications. "We were forced to misrepresent things," she says. "Parents kept asking if there was an equation we used. There was." Privately, the schools referred to it as the Academic Index, a formula based on test scores and academic standing used to rank applicants.
She selects classes for students, reviews their homework, and prods them to make an impression on teachers. She checks on the students' grades, scores, rankings. She tells parents when to hire tutors and then makes sure the kids do the extra work. She vets their vacation schedules. She plans their summers.
Hernandez rarely speaks with high school counselors. She never calls a college on a student's behalf. And she is especially careful not to leave any fingerprints on the application essays, even as she edits seven, eight, sometimes 10 drafts.
First she writes a 12-to-18 page report for each new student, based on transcripts, test scores, and other accomplishments, that gives the likelihood of their gaining admission to the schools they are interested in. "I have written: 'You have 0% chance of getting into Harvard early decision. Don't apply,'" she says. "People pay for accuracy. I know exactly what it takes to get into Harvard."
as she does with most of her clients, she worked with him by e-mail and over the phone, occasionally in person. She helped him navigate the International Baccalaureate curriculum, advising him to sign up for classes that U.S. colleges would recognize as difficult.
Then she suggested he write his main application essay about something else altogether. "The Habitat for Humanity theme, the tug on your heartstrings, sounded too common," says Andrew. So he tried another topic that would reveal more about his intellectual enthusiasms: how running helped him understand the existentialist philosophy he was reading about. "She gave me specific suggestions about the essay to form one cogent image of who I am," says Andrew.
Crafting that singular, convincing portrait of the student is central to Hernandez' approach. She considers sentimental pursuits a distraction and those done out of obligation misguided.
(Almost all of her clients apply early somewhere because the acceptance rate is higher than during regular admission.)
Today, Hernandez has 80 clients.
The summer program for students was for 15 spaces. In 2006 and 2007, Hernandez and Doe raised the price, first to $8,200 and then to $9,500, and still filled one session in Manhattan and another at the Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica. Next year they may hire others to help edit the essays so they can open the program to more students. They will charge $12,500.
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