Perpetual Perpetration
I think I’ve pretty well covered this topic, said all I need or want to say on the subject. Since “What in the hell is wrong with you?!” has never been considered an actual argument, and it’s all I’ve got, I’ll leave it alone. It sucks that if you can’t afford to pay for college outright, you also can’t afford to play the college admissions game. The admissions game, which at one time was a process originally intended for use as an equalizer. So the farmer’s kid from Iowa had as good a chance at getting into college as the kid whose family had a wing added to the college’s library. Getting into college is supposed to be based on brains, character, and potential. Not on how much disposable income your parents have. It would be a better world if Michele Hernandez used her powers for good, not evil. It worked for Al Gore.
I CAN GET YOUR KID INTO AN IVY:
Hernandez may well be the most expensive college coach in America, charging as much as $40,000 to get a student into an elite college. As one of this fast-growing industry’s most visible practitioners, she uses methods that are publicly scorned by rivals but are nonetheless becoming part of the profession’s standard operating procedures. She is a divisive figure in an already controversial field, regularly drawing condemnation from admissions officers who say she is selling advantage to people who least need it.
If the notoriety sometimes bothers her, Hernandez is not about to let on. To her critics, she says: “I’d be an idiot to charge half of what I can. Parents can always hire a lesser person.” That might sound arrogant, but she is clearly proud of turning her one-woman operation, Hernandez College Consulting, into what amounts to a luxury brand. Her clients, mostly people of some means and great ambition, rave about the personal service: the regular phone calls to their kids (you have to go above and beyond); the academic help (read the book Poetic Meter and Poetic Form); the “brand” positioning (classics would be a great angle); the advice about which colleges to consider and where not to bother; the hours she devotes to each application.
Despite being asked to pay fees that are as much as 10 times higher than average, these well-intentioned, well-heeled parents keep calling. And calling. Since she started seven years ago, Hernandez, who is 40, says she has worked with some 150 students, 95% of whom, she claims, were accepted at their first choice of college. She hints that among them have been the progeny of chief executives, financiers, billionaires.
From the beginning, Hernandez pledged all that work would be invisible. Like her peers, she operates in stealth, mindful that if admissions officers find out a student was coached they will regard the application with suspicion. 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. “But I’m not afraid of admissions officers,” she says. “If they could tell, how would I be so successful?”
Admissions officers, of course, have little respect for the work of Hernandez and other consultants. “I believe that most of the funds expended on independent counselors are simply wasted,” Jeffrey Brenzel, the dean of admissions at Yale, wrote in an e-mail. “We do not believe they have much, if any, effect on who we accept.”
Posted by Alexa Harrington
