Gaming the meritocracy (;))

Good piece on the college application consultancy racket:

For the past nine years, Rim, 28, has been working as an “independent education consultant,” helping the one percent navigate the increasingly competitive college-admissions process — the current round of which ends in February. He started by editing college essays from his Yale dorm room for $50 an hour but now charges the parents of his company’s 190 clients — mostly private-school kids, many of them in New York — $120,000 a year to help them create a narrative he believes will appeal to college-admissions officers. That company, Command Education, currently has 41 full-time staffers, most of whom are recent graduates of top-tier colleges and universities. The pitch is crafted to appeal to the wealthy clients Rim courts: a “personalized, white glove” service, through which Command employees do everything from curating students’ extracurriculars to helping them land summer internships, craft essays, and manage their course loads with the single goal of getting them in.

“We are texting students, I think it’s like 15 minutes before their math class, to make sure they are turning in their homework,” says Rim, who in interviews is soft-spoken, polite, and confident, occasionally dropping into the demeanor of a start-up bro. Most clients start with Command in the ninth or tenth grade, but a small percentage begin in middle school.

Business is good. The Independent Educational Consultants Association estimates that up to 25,000 full- and part-time IECs will be working in the U.S. this year, and the market-research firm IBISWorld estimates it to be a $2.9 billion industry — up from $400 million just a decade ago. Most consultants charge in the ballpark of $4,000 to $7,500 for helping students with typical application prep, including making their college list and looking over their essays, but Rim operates in the uppermost echelon. In certain circles in Manhattan and Brooklyn, “everyone is charging six figures,” says a parent who hired Command for her teen. In a recent survey, one-third of Horace Mann high-schoolers copped to working with a private consultant, but multiple parents with kids in city private schools estimate that number to be much higher. Rim says he has a waiting list.

Rim’s promise — that he will give kids a road map to getting into one of their top-choice colleges — is particularly appealing in this moment as the conventional wisdom about who gets into selective colleges and why is changing, setting off confusion and anxiety for those who are used to their privilege giving them a VIP pass. Legacy admissions, which have always favored the rich, are under increased scrutiny; some universities have done away with them altogether. The threshold for a donation that might move the needle has reportedly reached $10 million. Pricey SAT and ACT courses and tutors are also less effective since many schools — even competitive ones — no longer require test scores.

I understand the impulse not to use standardized testing, but the problem is that they’re the least egalitarian admissions criterion except for any other one selective schools might use.

Fundamentally, there’s never going to be any way to stop the wealthy from gaining an advantage in the admissions process — the best remedy is to improve funding for non-elite state schools, HBCUs, etc. Alas, things are likely to head in a more Gordon Gee kind of direction in many cases there too.