College consultants in demand
By Liz Willen
Bloomberg News Service
Halfway into the first meeting with college consultant Michele Hernandez, tax attorney David Selznick walked out of the living room of his home in Somers, N.Y.
He said his head was pounding after he'd listened for more than an hour as Hernandez dissected his son Ben's high school transcript and college admission test scores, nixed his summer camp plans and described how playing up Ben's strengths could land him a spot in an Ivy League college.
"I was sweating, it was so draining," Selznick, 47, said. "We got four hours of information in an hour."
Expertise not exactly cheap
Afterward, Selznick and his wife, Helene, agreed to spend $16,500 over the next two years to hire Hernandez, a graduate of Dartmouth College and former assistant dean of admission at the school. She promised to guide Ben, an A student with Ivy League aspirations and a passion for drumming, through the intricate puzzle of getting into a top school.
"It's a lot of money; it's obscene," Selznick said. "But I had come to the conclusion that I was willing to invest in my son's future."
Thousands of parents across the nation and around the world who want to get their child into the most selective colleges are making similar decisions. They're responding to a demographic reality: a baby boom echo that peaked at 4.1 million births in 1990 and that has fueled record numbers of college applicants.
At Harvard University, 3,100 high school valedictorians were among the record 20,986 applicants vying for 2,056 spots in the freshman class entering in September. Brown University admitted 2,393 students from its record 15,157 applicants, while Princeton sent thick envelopes of acceptance to 1,570 students from an all-time-high applicant pool of 15,725.
One result has been boom times for consultants like Hernandez, many of them former college admission officers or high school guidance counselors who charge as much as $2,500 for a single consultation and more than $30,000 for a two-year package.
About 6 percent of U.S. students are seeing private consultants — a number that has doubled in five years, estimated Mark Sklarow, director of the Fairfax, Va.-based Independent Educational Consultants Association, a nonprofit international professional group representing about 400 full-time educational advisers. That's twice as many as there were five years ago.
A growth industry
From 1,300 to 1,500 college consultants are practicing full-time in the United States, with several thousand more moonlighting on the side, estimated Sklarow, who receives 25 to 30 membership applications a week from prospective consultants.
Consultants offer a personalized approach to the admission process, functioning as part finishing school and part matchmaker as they get to know students and suggest colleges to match students' interests and abilities.
Top grades, legacy connections, athletic prowess and family donations can't guarantee admission, said veteran consultant Phyllis Steinbrecher, 69, who began her practice in the closet of a friend's office in Westport, Conn., in 1977. She and her two partners now see more than 300 students a year.
"The new normal is hysteria about getting in," Steinbrecher said. "A big part of this job is getting the expectations in line with the reality."
College Coach LLC, a privately held college-preparatory service based in Newton, Mass., has capitalized on admission fever by marketing college consulting as a corporate benefit.
Clients include American International Group Inc., the nation's largest underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance, and the New York Stock Exchange.
College Coach charges employers $10,000-$350,000 for packages that include workshops, seminars, on-site college counseling and a help desk that employees can contact for advice on topics ranging from financial aid to admission.
During a recent seminar at New York-based AIG, College Coach counselors handed out charts detailing a $41,000 price tag for a year at a private college.
Lloyd Peterson, a former senior admissions officer at Yale who's now College Coach's vice president of education, said that families who seek private consultants initially are more obsessed with getting their children into the most-prestigious schools than they are about financing their children's education.
Admissions officers worry that consultants push students too far, adding that they're careful to judge an application on its own merits.
William Fitzsimmons, dean of admission at Harvard, said his staff is always on the lookout for applicants who seem overhyped or overly packaged by consultants.
Fewer guidance counselors
Budget cuts that have devastated public high school guidance departments have helped boost consultants' business, said Fitzsimmons.
He described visits to high schools with ratios as high as 1,000 students to one overburdened counselor; the national average ratio in public high schools has been about 500 to one for the past decade, said David Hawkins, director of public policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
"It's a national disgrace and disaster," Fitzsimmons said.
Beverly Lenny, head of guidance services at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, said guidance counselors can do the same work as private consultants without the big price tag.
"A lot of this is really just a high-pressured sales pitch the consultants are trying to rationalize," said Lenny. "Very bright, motivated kids don't need consultants."
Private consultant Katherine Cohen, 36, founder of Manhattan-based IvyWise LLC, counters that guidance counselors have time constraints and other demands that she and her fellow professionals do not.
