New York Magazine has a delicious cover feature this month about the new and very expensive field of college-application consultants. Command Education, led by Christopher Rim, charges clients $120,000 per year, often beginning when they are freshman in high school. From the piece:
“We are texting students, I think it’s like 15 minutes before their math class, to make sure they are turning in their homework,” says Rim, who in interviews is soft-spoken, polite, and confident, occasionally dropping into the demeanor of a start-up bro. Most clients start with Command in the ninth or tenth grade, but a small percentage begin in middle school.
Business is good. The Independent Educational Consultants Association estimates that up to 25,000 full- and part-time IECs will be working in the U.S. this year, and the market-research firm IBISWorld estimates it to be a $2.9 billion industry — up from $400 million just a decade ago. Most consultants charge in the ballpark of $4,000 to $7,500 for helping students with typical application prep, including making their college list and looking over their essays, but Rim operates in the uppermost echelon. In certain circles in Manhattan and Brooklyn, “everyone is charging six figures,” says a parent who hired Command for her teen. In a recent survey, one-third of Horace Mann high-schoolers copped to working with a private consultant, but multiple parents with kids in city private schools estimate that number to be much higher. Rim says he has a waiting list.
It’s a stunning portrait of waste and decadence. College admissions offices are not made up of Nobel laureates. And yet billions are spent trying to make teenagers look impressive and desirable to these bureaucrats. A friend who shall remain nameless had a friend who engaged the services of a consultant for his son. He wanted to write an essay about his academic interests. She advised him to write one denouncing his grandmother as a racist and vowing to fight racism. He got admitted to his top school.