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The New College Gurus
By Kristen Bellstrom, September 2006
On Jane Shropshire's cattle farm outside Lexington, Ky., a
herd of happy Black Angus cows lazes in the summer sun,
fattening on the state's famous bluegrass. Meanwhile, inside
Shropshire's office, a converted outbuilding once used for
storing breeding records and vet bills, something else is
being fattened up: Kal Littrell's resume.
 Littrell is meeting with Shropshire to
draw up a road map that will take him from her farm to the
college of his dreams. For nearly an hour and a half, she
combs through his course load, grades and standardized test
scores. She peppers him with questions on everything from his
favorite teacher to the summer camps he's attended. Finally,
she hands him a copy of the Common Application, the form he'll
use to pitch himself to schools and the document that will
ultimately decide his collegiate fate. As Shropshire begins to
walk him through it page by page, the boy's glance drifts
toward the window, and he fidgets with the Livestrong-style
bracelet on his skinny wrist. If Littrell seems distracted,
it's more than typical teenage ennui. After all, he just
finished ninth grade - and won't set foot on his college
campus until 2009.
Even so, Shropshire had plenty of suggestions for how he
can get going. Some are predictable ("Start looking for ways
to stand out.How can you be more of a leader on the soccer
team?"), while others come as a surprise. Start a journal?
Sure. Details can make or break an application, says
Shropshire, so he'll be glad to have it when essay time rolls
around. Littrell's not just a jock; he's a drama fan, too. So
why stop at acting? Schools like to see kids take their
passions to the next level: "Can you get involved in other
aspects - production or directing?" And who would have guessed
that his years as a knot-tying , tent-pitching Scout might be
a deciding factor? Believe it, says Shropshire. When she was
an admissions officer at Tufts and Washington University in
St. Louis, committees swooned over kids who made Eagle.
Sitting nearby, Littrell's parents hang on every word - even
father Ken, who'd originally thought Kal was too young for
college planning. And now? "It's never too early to start the
process," he says.
This fall nearly 2 million American students will start the
annual ritual of college-application season - only this year a
surprising number will have a new edge: the hired coach. In a
field already crowded with private tutors, test-prep classes
and a library's worth of how-to books, "independent college
consultants" say they can get Junior a bunk in the dorm of his
dreams - mostly be adding a personalized touch to the
application process. Coaches like Shropshire critique essays,
draft professional looking resumes and even help develop
eye-popping extracurriculars in an effort to make a kid's
application leap out of the pile. And some consultants aim
only at the very top tier of colleges. Subtly named outfits
like IvyWise and IvySuccess tout sky-high acceptance rates,
24/7 service and Ivy league pedigrees that they say five them
the inside scoop in wooing elite gatekeepers. They'll do
anything from videotaping students' mock interviews to flying
an SAT tutor to Hong Kong - provided students pay a fee that
rivals the price of a luxury sedan.
As recently as a decade ago, admissions consultants focused
mostly on applicants to prep school. But today's new breed has
zeroed in on the much bigger and fast-growing ranks of kids
looking for a leg up in the college competition. With
selectivity at top schools at an all-time high, admissions
anxiety has skyrocketed, and so had this profession: There are
now about 3,000 consultants in the country, a threefold
increase since 2001. And specialists have positioned
themselves to meet every conceivable need. Your son's a center
forward on the soccer team? There's an athletic specialist
ready to find him a scholarship to a Division 3 school.
Daughter's a physics whiz, but not much of a wordsmith? You'll
want an essay adviser. And it's not just the privileged few
signing up: The Independent Educational Consultants
Association claims that in the fall of 2004, 22 percent of
incoming students at four-year private colleges had used an
educational consultant.
Kids applying to college today face a perfect storm of
admissions demographics. For the past decade the number of
high school graduates has steadily risen; at the same time
grants, loans and scholarships have made higher education
accessible for more families. But the number of desks at the
top-tier schools has stayed relatively flat, leaving more kids
battling for the same coveted spots. The colliding trends were
evident in admissions rate this spring: Yale turned down or
waitlisted a record 91 percent of applicants; Stanford, an
all-time high of 89 percent. And the applicant glut has only
been aggravated by the popularity of the Common Application
(now accepted be 299 schools, including Harvard and
Princeton), which lets students apply to multiple schools
using just one form. The percentage of kids applying to six or
more schools has risen to over 25 percent, with an ambitious
few submitting a carpal tunnel-inducing 20 apps or more.
The eight-person team at Long Island-based IvySuccess boast
of their experience in management consulting, which may
explain why they advocate 'strategic positioning" (consultant
speak for playing up your strengths) and "reverse-engineered
perspective" (translation: We worked in admissions, so we know
what schools want). The team's techniques include briefing
students on the tastes and quirks of regional admissions
officers who are likely to review their applications.
Harvard's guy is an opera buff? Play up your stagehand gig in
the school production of Carmen. For students who opt for the
Complete Strategy package, IvySuccess will take calls at 2
a.m. or fly hand-selected tutors to work with foreign clients
in their home countries. The team even urged one New Jersey
student to switch high schools so her class rank would
improve; she's at MIT now. "Our job is to get kids into
'reach' schools," says founding partner Robert Shaw.
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