The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard – WSJ
Seven children flew into New York in late July to meet with the college counselor they believed would get them into Harvard University or another top-flight U.S. college. Two traveled from Switzerland, two from Australia, one from the United Kingdom.
The youngest was 11.
They were there to meet Jamie Beaton, a 29-year-old Rhodes scholar from New Zealand with a reputation as the man who has cracked the code on elite college admissions and who is Wall Street s favored partner to mine the rich vein of parental anxiety embedded in the college process.
Beaton s message to the kids distilled: Optimize childhood by starting to build skills and interests years before high school. Strategically choose areas where you can excel if you aren t going to be a top performer in an activity, drop it and move to something else. And find ways to be unique, whether through entrepreneurship, scholarship or well-placed PR.
A great education transformed my life, said the chief executive and co-founder of Crimson Education. It can change yours too.
The kids took note of every word. He s like the Steve Jobs of college counseling, said one of the attendees, a Japanese high-school student.
Private equity is also paying attention. Crimson, launched in 2013, is now valued at $554 million after several funding rounds, according to PitchBook. Investors include venture capital giants Tiger Management and related firm Tiger Global Management, plus Icehouse Ventures, former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Verlinvest, a Brussels-based fund created by the founding families of Anheuser-Busch.
This year, Beaton s clients made up nearly 2% of students admitted to the undergraduate class of 2028 at several elite schools including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his clients, 24 earned admission to Yale, 34 to Stanford and 48 to Cornell. The acceptance letters were certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a list of students admitted was provided by Beaton to The Wall Street Journal.
Clients pay Beaton s firm from $30,000 and $200,000 for a four- to six-year program that includes tutoring in academics and test-taking, and advice on how to gather stellar teacher recommendations and how to execute extracurricular projects. Those can range from writing a book, to publishing an academic research paper or starting a podcast.
via www.wsj.com
Golly. “Optimize childhood.” Spend 30 grand a year for advice from this joker (whose mentees comprised 2 percent of admits to various super selective schools.) It is a caution.