The college consulting industry is a tax on anxiety.
I recently found my name and image being used without my consent to promote a "research bootcamp." This fellowship charges families $5,000 for "mentorship" on how to win science fairs.
It is deplorable. These businesses print money by exploiting the terror families feel about the broken admissions system. They sell false certainty to people navigating a blind maze.
For the last ten years, admissions to schools like MIT and Stanford have been increasingly competitive but remained opaque by design. Colleges keep the criteria vague to preserve their ability to curate a class. This vagueness creates a vacuum, and "consultants" rush in to fill it.
They are often people who failed to secure high-leverage careers themselves, now monetizing the desperation of parents who just want to help their children. They promise a formula for acceptance that does not exist.
I am not a consultant. I don't want your money. But I am an MIT student, my sister is an MIT grad, and I have played this game at the highest level.
Spoiler alert: There is a formula. But it isn't what they are selling you.
The Blueprint
First, accept that a 1570+ SAT and straight A's are table stakes. That just buys you a ticket to the lottery. To actually win, you need to understand the two variables that matter: The Winner and The Niche.
1. Be a Winner (The Objective Variable)
Admissions officers need to justify your acceptance to a committee. The easiest way to do that is with objective, national-level validation.
Let's use USACO (Computer Science Olympiad) as an example.
- Top 20 in the nation (Finalist): You are almost certainly getting into MIT.
- Top 200 in the nation (Platinum): You are likely getting rejected.
I saw this happen every year at my high school. Being "good" is not enough. Being "great" is not enough. You need to be a national winner. This applies to everything: Science Fairs (ISEF/JSHS), Math Olympiads (USAMO), or Debate.
In my case, I won 1st place in my category at JSHS and published work in a respected journal. Without these objective stamps of approval, they simply don't take you seriously.
If you don't have a "Winner" badge, get one. Pick a competition and grind until you win. It is hard, but it is simple.
2. Be Unique (The Subjective Variable)
This is where most people fail. They look like every other "high-achieving student" in their demographic.
If you are an Asian male from the Bay Area interested in CS, you are competing against 1,000 clones of yourself. MIT will take 20. To be one of the 20, you must be structurally different from the other 980.
You need a Niche.
The best framework for this is CS + X. Take your technical skill (CS) and apply it to a completely unrelated humanities field (X).
I picked Climate. I didn't start as an expert. I just showed up. I volunteered, I hacked, I organized. Over two years, I built a mountain of evidence that I was "The Climate Kid who codes."
- Bad: "I built a To-Do list app." (Generic)
- Good: "I built a waste-tracking platform for my city, lobbied the town council to adopt it, and scaled it to 50 schools." (CS + Activism + Impact).
Your goal is to create a profile that feels inevitable. When an admissions officer reads your file, they shouldn't see "another smart kid." They should see "The kid who is going to solve [X] problem whether we admit him or not."
The Meta
The specific "X" changes every year. Climate + CS was fresh three years ago; now it might be saturated. CS + Linguistics is popular now.
To find the current meta:
- Find 20 recently admitted MIT/Stanford students on LinkedIn.
- DM them. Ask for 10 minutes.
- Reverse engineer their niche. What was their X?
The Mindset
College admissions mirrors startups. You have to be contrarian and you have to be right.
You need 5 bullet points on your resume that make it impossible for them to say no. You need to demonstrate that you are a scarce resource.
This process is brutal. I missed parties. I worked 20-hour weekends. I spent my summers grinding while my friends traveled. I was fueled by anxiety. But I made a deal with myself: even if I didn't get in, the work would have made me a better operator.
The next time a consultant asks for $5,000, ask them to show you their blueprint. If it isn't better than this, tell them to get a real job.
Good luck.