The Disgusting Industry of College Consulting
Today I learned my name, image (an poorly generated AI photo), and achievements were being used without my knowledge or consent to promote a "research bootcap". This supposed fellowship charges ~5k for 1:1 mentoring on qualifying / winning at ISEF, JSHS, and other science fair competitions.
It is so deplorable that buisnesses like these paid "research fellowships" or "college consultants" are allowed to exist and print money, based purely on the insane axiety and fear families have over the broken college admissions system.
In the last 10-20 years, college admissions to top schools (MIT/Stanford/Harvard, etc..) have become insanely competitive, but the definition of a successful application has intentionally remained vague so colleges can selectively apply their own biases.
As a result, basically every high schooler feels like they are navigating a blind maze, chained to this seemingly impossible goal of getting into a top school, but no idea what steps are needed to get there.
Families feel forced to shell out thousands of dollars to these slimey, snakey lowlife "mentors" because they feel so helpless and lost in the college admissions process. Spending money is the only way they feel some sense of control, that they are doing something to help their child. These mentors are predatory, often turning to starting college consulting buisnesses because they failed at getting a real job. Plus, when there is opportunity to make so much money, it becomes hard to resist. But we as a society should loathe and shame these types of low integrity people who make a living off of predatory practices.
These hardworking familes are being sold a lie, a false promise of an acceptance to an MIT / Stanford, which is never guaranteed, and most times don't even offer concrete / actionable advice.
Something needs to be done to fix this broken system, and that starts with proper education on how college admissions works and what success looks like.
Why am I qualified to speak on this topic?
I'm not, and thats the whole point. No one is. So you should never pay for someones advice.
But I would wager my background stacks up equal or better than any of these supposed "college admissions experts".
My sister got into MIT in 2017, and graduated with a degree + masters in 4 years.
After she got in, I remember thinking "shes set now, but what about me?". There was no way I could follow up on this miracle.
It felt like something completely out of my control, an impossible task and inevitable failure that would hang over my head (obviously now I realize its never that deep).
My experience represents an extreme end of the spectrum, an insane, core motivation to get into a top school, particularly MIT. And I did, which I now attend.
And between me and my sister, we've picked up some valuable lessons on how admissions actually works. Spoiler alert: there are formulas and it is a game.
Blueprint for Thinking About Admissions
I'm writing this blueprint to establish a standard that you should evaluate any "college admissions expert" against. If they aren't providing more information / value than this blueprint, they don't deserve your money.
First, accept that all A's and 1570+ SAT is table stakes before your application even gets read. Now the important stuff:
College admissions is a game of narratives. What makes you special?
You are judged and compared against your peers based on your geographic location / school, race, and family income.
Lets say you are an Asian male from the Bay Area interested in computer science. MIT literally gets ~1000 applications every year fitting this exact profile, and will take about 20.
What makes these 20 people special? They all fit into two categories, either they are insanely unique, or they are ruthless winners, or both. Your ideal goal is demonstrating each to a high degree.
Lets start by defining a winner.
Lets use USACO as an example, a national computer science olympiad. If you "win the rat race" and manage to qualify as a USACO finalist (top 20 in the nation), you will probably be admitted into MIT. This holds for all the other olympiads as well.
But anything lower, you aren't a true winner. Every year, all the USACO platinum medalists (top 200 in the nation) from my high school got rejected from MIT.
Being a winner roughly means having awards in national level competitions, whether it be academic olympiads, science fairs, getting published in a respected journal, or even debate tournaments. In my case, I won 1st place (in my category) at JSHS, a respected national science fair competiion, and also got published in a respected journal.
Obviously this is hard, but because there are so many competitions, I can assure you that if you just keep trying at a wide variety of them, you will eventually win one.
Without these awards, they don't take you seriously.
Ok this is clear, I need to participate in some respected competition and win. This is a hard task, but at least I know what to do. What about uniqueness?
I want you to think about your current extra curricular activities. Do you have anything that a college admissions officer hasn't read a million times before?
You need to identify the traditional sterotype / bucket that you fit into, based on your race and gender, and find a way to differentiate yourself as much as possible.
Using the example from above, you have to be the furthest thing away from a Bay Area tech bro to feel compelling.
The way to do this is by picking a humanities niche and becoming an expert in it. Your activities become a mix of your real interests (ex: CS) and your niche. (I call this CS + X)
I picked climate. I have no particular affilations with climate in the beginning, I just participated in anything and everything I could, such as clubs, volunteering, hackathons, etc.. Over time (2 years), I had accumulated a ton of climate related work and impact, both in actvisim and education.
You want to pick and double down on your niche by the end of sophomore year, dropping the irrelevant activites. You need to present a cohesive and deep story of execellence within your niche.
I wouldn't suggest doing climate + CS now, because I think it has become saturated and thus non unique. Another example I've seen is CS + Linguistics. The meta is always changing.
To find the current meta, I want you to DM 20 MIT / Stanford recently addmitted students on Linkedin, get on a 10 minute call with them, and try to identify their niche. They did CS + what?
These will be your humanitarian activities, which need to be just as strong as your academic ones. You need to demonstrate clear and measureable impact on the city, state, and national levels.
Some easy examples: I was on my cities climate committee, where we literally voted and moved the city to adopt clean energy.
In general, your goal is all your activities within your niche are unique and non accessible to everyone. They aren't club positions, rather they have come out of opportunities that you created yourself. You went outside of the system to find them.
One of the most creative EC's I ever heard of was a art student walking through his city, finding fliers of local buisnesses, and redesigning their graphics and ads for free. These are the activites that create memorable essays, not that trip you took with 20 of your friends to build houses in Mexico.
CS + X is valuable because you can start developing applications to scale your impact easily. I built a app helping schools track their waste, and scaled it to 50 schools nationwide. This is where I got both my state / national impact. Impact is the differentiator, impact is unique.
Reflections
When its all said and done, you need to have at least 5 bullet points that warrant an admission to the college. You demonstrate that you will be a valuable addition to their college campus and community, and you align with their colleges broad interests (why you can't write about your love for Fortnite). It should be impossible for them to say no. Then, and only then, if you get lucky, they will take you.
Because college admissions are so fickle, I often questioned whether any of the sacrifices I was making were worth it. I poured my life into the grind, skipping events, working 20+ hours on the weekend, doing multiple internships in parallel during the summer (thank god for covid / zoom), all while taking few to no vacations or days off.
And eventually I had to come to the realization that even if I didn't get in, I wouldn't have any regrets. The work wouldn't have been a waste. Because I really did give it my best shot. I accepted my anxiety, used it as fuel and motivation, but remained detached from the outcome.
You need to adopt this mindset, and don't get distracted along the way. Pick your niche, and stick to it, no matter what your peers are doing.
College admissions mirrors startups in many ways, where in the end, you have to be contrarian and you have to be a winner.
The next time you see a college consultant, send them this blog, and make them justify why they are worth your money. 99% chance they won't be able to do it.
Good luck!