Selingo only briefly mentions the best tool going: the Common Data Set. In your favorite search engine, type the name of the university to which you plan to apply and "Common Data Set." The CDS is VERY revealing. In section B, you learn how many students who started at X Univ. actually completed a degree in 4 or 6 years. (Average is 60%). In some colleges, fewer than 1 in 3 students who start there finish there. That is a strong sign of unhappy students! Do not apply there. Section C reveals the percentage of students with certain GPA and SAT/ACT scores, so you can know where you stand with yours. In Section C7, the university lists the criteria it considers important in admissions decisions. Look at the last category: interest. Some, like Berry in Georgia, actually want you to email them every week with updates(!); others (most of the "sellers") already know you're interested; you don't have to prove it. Where it does matter, students should be engaging weekly with the college's social media and website (they log the IP address), emailing the admissions counselor for their region, meeting with them when they visit the school; that person may read your application. This can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection and financial aid or not. Other colleges don't care about community service but value work. You won't know what they want unless you look. This helps you to craft your essay accordingly AND know about the university culture. In C21, see how many applicants are accepted in the Early Action or Early Decision pool. Selingo devotes a great deal of attention to EA and ED. ED is not a good plan for anyone who needs to compare financial packages, because a decision will be due before other decisions are returned. Also keep in mind that ED and EA admit rates will be higher because of the composition of that pool: nearly all of the recruited athletes, full-pay students, and low-income, first-generation students who are part of programs like QuestBridge and Posse. Section G shows the cost to attend. Section H2 provides the number of students who apply and receive need-based aid and what the average amount is. Usually the university "discount rate" is just under 50%. Would you be more likely to buy a car for $5000 or a car that is usually $10,000, discounted to $5000? They know that about you. That's why they give you a SALE! price and make you feel special. Psychology and Marketing 101. Section J lists the number of degrees conferred in each major, so you know how popular your prospective major is. Some universities admit by major; find out which of yours do. Major matters in another way. Use JobSearchIntelligence.com and universities' institutional research reports on student outcomes data (ask for it if you can't find it) to learn starting salaries for specific majors. At this writing, Bio and Chem majors' starting salaries are around $20,000. So much for lucrative STEM fields. Back to athletics. In addition to the quote at the top of this review, there's more. "Because they field dozen of sports with attention paid to making sure each roster is full, selective colleges like Amherst or Harvard find themselves with fewer spots for nonathletes" (155). The fastest growing high school sports for boys: fencing, volleyball and lacrosse; girls: lacrosse, fencing, and rifle. The former Dean of Admissions at Princeton confessed that "no hook was stronger in assisting the prospect of an applicant than athletics" (157). And make no mistake, athletes are mostly white and wealthy, major in econ, poli sci, and history, and rank in the bottom 1/3 of their class. Selingo clarifies another point: people do not understand that the high school matters. Read this article: The Frog Pond Revisited: High School Academic Context, Class. Rank, and Elite College Admission by Thomas J. Espenshade et al. It is difficult for a high school to establish a record with a college. 18% of high schools are responsible for 75% of applications and 80% of admitted students. Selingo doesn't go into the details of how high schools are evaluated beyond stating that officers review the list of students' universities acceptances, but I will. • What's the median SAT [or ACT] score? From personal experience, I can attest to the difference in high schools with a median of 1020 and 1480. • What's the highest math? If it's pre-calculus, that's a world of difference from Multivariable Calculus, Differential Equations, and Theoretical Math. • What % go to a 4 year college? Obviously, a GPA in one high school does not reflect the same rigor as the same GPA in another, and 40% of all American high school students graduate with an A average in 1998; half do today. That's why we need standardized testing. Unfortunately, Selingo repeats the fallacy that "test results are closely correlated with family income," but we know that is not true. Impoverished Asians, for example, score higher than the top quintiles of other ethnic groups. Standardized testing was found in many studies conducted by UC researchers to help discover minority students they wouldn't have found otherwise. Here's a principal point: Parents need to be parents and say no. Too many times, students' emotional desire to leave the state ("I gotta get out of _____") results in attendance of a lesser ranked university at twice the price, incurring high student loan debt. They can leave the state once they earn the degree; don't give in! Even massive universities like UCLA can offer a small college feel due to discussion groups, but with vast opportunities. In the past five years, most of my students who have elected to attend small colleges and even medium sized universities (4000-7000 undergraduates) with excellent reputations have wound up transferring to larger ones and are delighted with the difference. That's unexpected, but true. Selingo doesn't mention return on investment, which is too extensive a topic to deal with here, but in a nutshell, if the prospective career is not a particularly lucrative one, it is logical to consider only inexpensive options. Regarding elite institutions, "At a top-ranked school, you'll step into a river of valedictorians, calculus geeks, and National Merit Scholars. They'll pull you along, or...wash you out." Selingo writes that parents believe the relationships students form "will give their teenagers entrée into society's highest echelons" (249), but it does not work that way. Please read at least my review of Paying for the Party, but the book is well worth your attention. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Your middle class kid is not going to be going on all expense paid weekend skiing trips in Gstaad with the billionaire's kid. Do you honestly think salaries are higher in some fields for grads from highly selective schools just because they went to that school? Money in money out. Those universities and those elite professional services companies accept most of their students from the highest socioeconomic quintile; the students have connections. They attended the "right" preschools, primary schools, summer camps, boarding schools, etc. [See first quote above]. It's not that students from lowest quintiles will be admitted to the country club set. That's quite rare. Read my review of The Privileged Poor to see how that works out. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Or, if you're up for a scarier scenario, screen the film or re-read Patricia Highsmith's thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley.That's about right. A final note, focus on finding an affordable, financially solvent university where students graduate on time, have access to faculty, advising, and internships, and a suitable major, possibly with a desired concentration. It's surprising that Selingo doesn't address the solvency issue. It is expected that 20% of private colleges will go under in the next few years; there are hundreds that have already closed. See for example the Forbes article "Dawn Of The Dead: For Hundreds Of The Nation’s Private Colleges, It’s Merge Or Perish" to gauge the financial health of a college before COVID. Be assured that their financial situation has only declined. Many had to return the funds paid for room and board when students were sent home, but still had to pay for maintenance and other contracts. In summary, this is an okay book from a higher education journalist. If you want inside information and a usable guide, see https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Co...(less 落地无声 发表于 2021-05-27 11:55
我觉得很多书里讲的我都知道。我把留言贴过来，一点长 Disclosure: I'm a college admissions counselor with 20+ years of experience in boarding and day schools, pro bono work with community based organizations, and private international clientele, based in Greenwich, CT, Carmel, CA, and Palm Beach, FL. My intention here is to critique this book and fill in some critical information Selingo omits for the likely reader, whom I assume to be those interested in the college admissions process. There are a few points from this book I wish everyone would take in: "'Most of the real screening' for selective universities is 'rooted in the home and school environment of children from infancy on,'" --MIT Admissions Director B. Alden Thresher. "Colleges are a business [you have very little control over] and admissions is its chief revenue source,"--Dean of Admissions, Tulane It's incontestable that athletes receive systematic preferential treatment in admissions. "Nearly 8 million kids played high school sports in 2019. But only 495,000 of them ended up competing in college, and many fewer--just 150,000 or about 2% received scholarships, according to the NCAA" (150). Most of those scholarships are less than the value of "a very used car." Parents realize too late "the return on their investment in sports was no better than the discount tuition coupons colleges hand out to nearly everyone, whether they're athletes or not" (151). _________________ Selingo is the former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and has been journalist specializing in higher education for two decades. Hence, this book is a journalistic take on admissions, not a guide. Families who want to understand the process and procedure of college admissions are far better served by the truly superlative 2019 book by the Director of Admissions of Georgia Tech and a high school college admissions counselor, https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Co.... Experienced counselors who keep up with the field will not find much here they didn't already know, but families are likely to learn some new information. Selingo recounts a bit of the history of the elements essential to understanding the institutional procedures relating to enrollment management, marketing tactics, rankings, equity, and affirmative action. It astonishes me how many families not only do not understand that the marketing materials in the mailbox are not offers of admission, but argue with me about it, "No! They want her!" No, they want her to apply, but she hasn't got a chance there with ordinary activities, a mediocre GPA and SAT score. Selingo features three students, two of whom are "drivers," highly motivated information seekers regarding the admissions process, and one of whom is a "passenger," "along for the ride" (52). He also embeds himself in three university admissions offices (UW, Emory, Davidson) all "sellers," with brand names that tend to attract full-pay students, rather than "buyers," who don't, but we learn surprisingly few details because the process is truly "a cryptic recipe wrapped in what is supposed to look like a mathematical formula" (140), with similarities and differences in each university's process. Application readers rate applicants on different scales in certain categories: • Emory: 1-5; curriculum, extracurricular activities, recommendations, intellectual curiosity • Davidson: 1-10; grades, rigor of classes, academic caliber of high school, recommendations, written materials from applicant, and personal characteristics • UW: 1-9; academics, personal, overall Those personal characteristics scores are the way that affirmative action can come in, first generation college attendee, socioeconomic profile, hardships, as the handbook for readers states: "overcoming a significant educational disadvantage, tenacity, insight, originality, concern for others, or coming from a high school that has sent few students to UW" (100). Some truisms: • It is not the student who needs to be well-rounded, but the incoming class. • Quirkiness or unusual hobbies, like bee-keeping, Bharatnatyam style dance, or starting a botany club all serve applicants well. They make for a more interesting class. • The process is necessarily opaque and intuitive. If the crew team needs a coxswain or the band an oboist, the student who meets the institutional need will be admitted, other elements being equal. • GPA will be recalculated according to a university's own formula. Some, like Emory and UC, do not count 9th grade. "Spiky grades" with ups and downs are a distinctive negative. • Admissions/enrollment management increasingly resembles Moneyball, with sophisticated algorithms indicating "who was most interested in the school, who would enroll if accepted, and even how much financial aid it would take to attract them" (122). • The average college accepts 6/10 applicants; only 46 accept fewer than 20%. • If admissions officers are skeptical of some claim, they are more likely to defer admission (wait list). • There are no hard and fast rules. Nuance, finessing, and institutional needs you have no way of knowing are crucial parts of the process. 落地无声 发表于 2021-05-27 11:54
我觉得很多书里讲的我都知道。我把留言贴过来，一点长 Disclosure: I'm a college admissions counselor with 20+ years of experience in boarding and day schools, pro bono work with community based organizations, and private international clientele, based in Greenwich, CT, Carmel, CA, and Palm Beach, FL. My intention here is to critique this book and fill in some critical information Selingo omits for the likely reader, whom I assume to be those interested in the college admissions process. There are a few points from this book I wish everyone would take in: "'Most of the real screening' for selective universities is 'rooted in the home and school environment of children from infancy on,'" --MIT Admissions Director B. Alden Thresher. "Colleges are a business [you have very little control over] and admissions is its chief revenue source,"--Dean of Admissions, Tulane It's incontestable that athletes receive systematic preferential treatment in admissions. "Nearly 8 million kids played high school sports in 2019. But only 495,000 of them ended up competing in college, and many fewer--just 150,000 or about 2% received scholarships, according to the NCAA" (150). Most of those scholarships are less than the value of "a very used car." Parents realize too late "the return on their investment in sports was no better than the discount tuition coupons colleges hand out to nearly everyone, whether they're athletes or not" (151). _________________ Selingo is the former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and has been journalist specializing in higher education for two decades. Hence, this book is a journalistic take on admissions, not a guide. Families who want to understand the process and procedure of college admissions are far better served by the truly superlative 2019 book by the Director of Admissions of Georgia Tech and a high school college admissions counselor, https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Co.... Experienced counselors who keep up with the field will not find much here they didn't already know, but families are likely to learn some new information. Selingo recounts a bit of the history of the elements essential to understanding the institutional procedures relating to enrollment management, marketing tactics, rankings, equity, and affirmative action. It astonishes me how many families not only do not understand that the marketing materials in the mailbox are not offers of admission, but argue with me about it, "No! They want her!" No, they want her to apply, but she hasn't got a chance there with ordinary activities, a mediocre GPA and SAT score. Selingo features three students, two of whom are "drivers," highly motivated information seekers regarding the admissions process, and one of whom is a "passenger," "along for the ride" (52). He also embeds himself in three university admissions offices (UW, Emory, Davidson) all "sellers," with brand names that tend to attract full-pay students, rather than "buyers," who don't, but we learn surprisingly few details because the process is truly "a cryptic recipe wrapped in what is supposed to look like a mathematical formula" (140), with similarities and differences in each university's process. Application readers rate applicants on different scales in certain categories: • Emory: 1-5; curriculum, extracurricular activities, recommendations, intellectual curiosity • Davidson: 1-10; grades, rigor of classes, academic caliber of high school, recommendations, written materials from applicant, and personal characteristics • UW: 1-9; academics, personal, overall Those personal characteristics scores are the way that affirmative action can come in, first generation college attendee, socioeconomic profile, hardships, as the handbook for readers states: "overcoming a significant educational disadvantage, tenacity, insight, originality, concern for others, or coming from a high school that has sent few students to UW" (100). Some truisms: • It is not the student who needs to be well-rounded, but the incoming class. • Quirkiness or unusual hobbies, like bee-keeping, Bharatnatyam style dance, or starting a botany club all serve applicants well. They make for a more interesting class. • The process is necessarily opaque and intuitive. If the crew team needs a coxswain or the band an oboist, the student who meets the institutional need will be admitted, other elements being equal. • GPA will be recalculated according to a university's own formula. Some, like Emory and UC, do not count 9th grade. "Spiky grades" with ups and downs are a distinctive negative. • Admissions/enrollment management increasingly resembles Moneyball, with sophisticated algorithms indicating "who was most interested in the school, who would enroll if accepted, and even how much financial aid it would take to attract them" (122). • The average college accepts 6/10 applicants; only 46 accept fewer than 20%. • If admissions officers are skeptical of some claim, they are more likely to defer admission (wait list). • There are no hard and fast rules. Nuance, finessing, and institutional needs you have no way of knowing are crucial parts of the process. 落地无声 发表于 2021-05-27 11:54
“The average college accepts 6/10 applicants; only 46 accept fewer than 20%.” 这本书值得一读，尤其是有升学焦虑的。 IEC既然有市场，我想是有原因的。我只是目前不太能理解。 升学角度：耳熟能详的那几所学校是供小于求的，但是IEC不能保证能进（说能保证的反而是骗子）。而大多数不是耳熟能详的学校录取率都很高（60% 以上），其实也是很好的学校。这是大多数美国学校的情况，他们要靠发奖学金来吸引学生。这样的话，又何需IEC呢？另一方面真正优秀的孩子能进top学校的，确实也不需要IEC。这就是为什么有个层主说那些孩子的父母即使用了IEC也不推荐或”欲言又止“吧，估计因为性价比不够好。 教育角度：如果有外加value，比如增加soft skill（隔壁楼的IEC说这是她最喜欢的一部分），那其实就是孩子的成长，本应该是学校，家长和孩子一起经历的。现在加入第三方，适用的情况应该是父母没精力管，或者交流不畅，又不差钱，就把教育和成长外包，找人监督。但是前几年估计也就是一年见个几次。钱替代不了父母操心吧。还是个性价比问题，如果不差钱的话雇一个也无所谓。 IEC最有可能有用的是中等的孩子包装一下进了供小于求的牛校。但是如果孩子本身不适合，进了牛校对他们长期真的有好处吗？ 一般认为IEC最硬核的部分是essay。毕竟这个是要英文功底的。父母和孩子可以自己做功课列大学单子，但是英文水平一下子提高不了。如果大学取消essay，很多IEC都作用有限。这也是为什么“Who gets in and why” 的作者Selingo建议essay应该是个限制时间的考试，当堂写，而不是现在这样谁有钱谁就雇人润色。
Selingo only briefly mentions the best tool going: the Common Data Set. In your favorite search engine, type the name of the university to which you plan to apply and "Common Data Set." The CDS is VERY revealing. In section B, you learn how many students who started at X Univ. actually completed a degree in 4 or 6 years. (Average is 60%). In some colleges, fewer than 1 in 3 students who start there finish there. That is a strong sign of unhappy students! Do not apply there. Section C reveals the percentage of students with certain GPA and SAT/ACT scores, so you can know where you stand with yours. In Section C7, the university lists the criteria it considers important in admissions decisions. Look at the last category: interest. Some, like Berry in Georgia, actually want you to email them every week with updates(!); others (most of the "sellers") already know you're interested; you don't have to prove it. Where it does matter, students should be engaging weekly with the college's social media and website (they log the IP address), emailing the admissions counselor for their region, meeting with them when they visit the school; that person may read your application. This can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection and financial aid or not. Other colleges don't care about community service but value work. You won't know what they want unless you look. This helps you to craft your essay accordingly AND know about the university culture. In C21, see how many applicants are accepted in the Early Action or Early Decision pool. Selingo devotes a great deal of attention to EA and ED. ED is not a good plan for anyone who needs to compare financial packages, because a decision will be due before other decisions are returned. Also keep in mind that ED and EA admit rates will be higher because of the composition of that pool: nearly all of the recruited athletes, full-pay students, and low-income, first-generation students who are part of programs like QuestBridge and Posse. Section G shows the cost to attend. Section H2 provides the number of students who apply and receive need-based aid and what the average amount is. Usually the university "discount rate" is just under 50%. Would you be more likely to buy a car for $5000 or a car that is usually $10,000, discounted to $5000? They know that about you. That's why they give you a SALE! price and make you feel special. Psychology and Marketing 101. Section J lists the number of degrees conferred in each major, so you know how popular your prospective major is. Some universities admit by major; find out which of yours do. Major matters in another way. Use JobSearchIntelligence.com and universities' institutional research reports on student outcomes data (ask for it if you can't find it) to learn starting salaries for specific majors. At this writing, Bio and Chem majors' starting salaries are around $20,000. So much for lucrative STEM fields. Back to athletics. In addition to the quote at the top of this review, there's more. "Because they field dozen of sports with attention paid to making sure each roster is full, selective colleges like Amherst or Harvard find themselves with fewer spots for nonathletes" (155). The fastest growing high school sports for boys: fencing, volleyball and lacrosse; girls: lacrosse, fencing, and rifle. The former Dean of Admissions at Princeton confessed that "no hook was stronger in assisting the prospect of an applicant than athletics" (157). And make no mistake, athletes are mostly white and wealthy, major in econ, poli sci, and history, and rank in the bottom 1/3 of their class. Selingo clarifies another point: people do not understand that the high school matters. Read this article: The Frog Pond Revisited: High School Academic Context, Class. Rank, and Elite College Admission by Thomas J. Espenshade et al. It is difficult for a high school to establish a record with a college. 18% of high schools are responsible for 75% of applications and 80% of admitted students. Selingo doesn't go into the details of how high schools are evaluated beyond stating that officers review the list of students' universities acceptances, but I will. • What's the median SAT [or ACT] score? From personal experience, I can attest to the difference in high schools with a median of 1020 and 1480. • What's the highest math? If it's pre-calculus, that's a world of difference from Multivariable Calculus, Differential Equations, and Theoretical Math. • What % go to a 4 year college? Obviously, a GPA in one high school does not reflect the same rigor as the same GPA in another, and 40% of all American high school students graduate with an A average in 1998; half do today. That's why we need standardized testing. Unfortunately, Selingo repeats the fallacy that "test results are closely correlated with family income," but we know that is not true. Impoverished Asians, for example, score higher than the top quintiles of other ethnic groups. Standardized testing was found in many studies conducted by UC researchers to help discover minority students they wouldn't have found otherwise. Here's a principal point: Parents need to be parents and say no. Too many times, students' emotional desire to leave the state ("I gotta get out of _____") results in attendance of a lesser ranked university at twice the price, incurring high student loan debt. They can leave the state once they earn the degree; don't give in! Even massive universities like UCLA can offer a small college feel due to discussion groups, but with vast opportunities. In the past five years, most of my students who have elected to attend small colleges and even medium sized universities (4000-7000 undergraduates) with excellent reputations have wound up transferring to larger ones and are delighted with the difference. That's unexpected, but true. Selingo doesn't mention return on investment, which is too extensive a topic to deal with here, but in a nutshell, if the prospective career is not a particularly lucrative one, it is logical to consider only inexpensive options. Regarding elite institutions, "At a top-ranked school, you'll step into a river of valedictorians, calculus geeks, and National Merit Scholars. They'll pull you along, or...wash you out." Selingo writes that parents believe the relationships students form "will give their teenagers entrée into society's highest echelons" (249), but it does not work that way. Please read at least my review of Paying for the Party, but the book is well worth your attention. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Your middle class kid is not going to be going on all expense paid weekend skiing trips in Gstaad with the billionaire's kid. Do you honestly think salaries are higher in some fields for grads from highly selective schools just because they went to that school? Money in money out. Those universities and those elite professional services companies accept most of their students from the highest socioeconomic quintile; the students have connections. They attended the "right" preschools, primary schools, summer camps, boarding schools, etc. [See first quote above]. It's not that students from lowest quintiles will be admitted to the country club set. That's quite rare. Read my review of The Privileged Poor to see how that works out. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Or, if you're up for a scarier scenario, screen the film or re-read Patricia Highsmith's thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley.That's about right. A final note, focus on finding an affordable, financially solvent university where students graduate on time, have access to faculty, advising, and internships, and a suitable major, possibly with a desired concentration. It's surprising that Selingo doesn't address the solvency issue. It is expected that 20% of private colleges will go under in the next few years; there are hundreds that have already closed. See for example the Forbes article "Dawn Of The Dead: For Hundreds Of The Nation’s Private Colleges, It’s Merge Or Perish" to gauge the financial health of a college before COVID. Be assured that their financial situation has only declined. Many had to return the funds paid for room and board when students were sent home, but still had to pay for maintenance and other contracts. In summary, this is an okay book from a higher education journalist. If you want inside information and a usable guide, see https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Co...(less 落地无声 发表于 2021-05-27 11:55
Now, for an on topic personal experience. In the mid 1980's I was in the University of Chicago's evening MBA program. Most evening students were early in their careers, working for big corporations. The MBA day program was for full time students mostly fresh from undergraduate programs. In that time it was believed that the U of C admissions were exclusively based on grades and GMAT scores. When almost ½ my accounting class failed the midterm, the prof read the names and scores of the day students who took the same test: Asian name after Asian name with a score in the 90’s. I had to miss two of my evening classes and was able to make them up in the day classes. All the students were Asian males but one. When I entered the classroom the students were quietly chatting… and not in English. They didn’t just outscore our evening class – they did it in a second language! If the grade and GMAT policy were operative, this meant a huge difference in the applicant pool of the older evening students (by about 10 years) and the younger day students. When I told another evening student about this, he said that U of C business school was changing its admission criteria because if this continued U of C alums would no longer have the CEO positions at Sears, Cargill, Caterpillar and the other big mid-western companies. Selingo has many quotes of admissions officers talking about "shaping a class". or "admitting a class and not an individual". Over the years, the U of C Business School (now Booth School of Business) alum magazine reflects an admissions change (or a less likely change in the profile of high scoring students). If my colleague had it right, these "new" alums may not be what the admissions staff had in mind. The glossy alum magazine has only a few stories about alums leading giant companies or advising international bankers. The new, policy seems to have yielded a diverse cadre of entrepreneurs with interesting careers in the environment, media, sports, health care – areas that were not much represented the 1980’s classes. (less)
“The average college accepts 6/10 applicants; only 46 accept fewer than 20%.” 这本书值得一读，尤其是有升学焦虑的。 IEC既然有市场，我想是有原因的。我只是目前不太能理解。 升学角度：耳熟能详的那几所学校是供小于求的，但是IEC不能保证能进（说能保证的反而是骗子）。而大多数不是耳熟能详的学校录取率都很高（60% 以上），其实也是很好的学校。这是大多数美国学校的情况，他们要靠发奖学金来吸引学生。这样的话，又何需IEC呢？另一方面真正优秀的孩子能进top学校的，确实也不需要IEC。这就是为什么有个层主说那些孩子的父母即使用了IEC也不推荐或”欲言又止“吧，估计因为性价比不够好。 教育角度：如果有外加value，比如增加soft skill（隔壁楼的IEC说这是她最喜欢的一部分），那其实就是孩子的成长，本应该是学校，家长和孩子一起经历的。现在加入第三方，适用的情况应该是父母没精力管，或者交流不畅，又不差钱，就把教育和成长外包，找人监督。但是前几年估计也就是一年见个几次。钱替代不了父母操心吧。还是个性价比问题，如果不差钱的话雇一个也无所谓。 IEC最有可能有用的是中等的孩子包装一下进了供小于求的牛校。但是如果孩子本身不适合，进了牛校对他们长期真的有好处吗？ 一般认为IEC最硬核的部分是essay。毕竟这个是要英文功底的。父母和孩子可以自己做功课列大学单子，但是英文水平一下子提高不了。如果大学取消essay，很多IEC都作用有限。这也是为什么“Who gets in and why” 的作者Selingo建议essay应该是个限制时间的考试，当堂写，而不是现在这样谁有钱谁就雇人润色。
一年，朋友推荐的，我还没付钱，问的我有点心虚，我再去确认一下。🤪
mark admission book
我也知道一个，后来申请休学了一年。休学的时候在州立逛补课！
请问700人一届？ 那不是学校有2800人？ 哪里的公校有这么多学生？
能问一下是哪家吗？
一般都是找当地的吗？你们怎么找到的？什么时候开始找的？我也想找人帮助改论文，父母使不上劲，也懒。花点钱省心省力。改论文的话中国人不行吧？！
难怪周围好几个人辞职开课外班，做升学顾问，华人这个钱真是好赚。。
呵，我还听过更便宜的，我侄子帮他低一级的学弟修改essay，然后两人一起去吃了顿buffet。最后学弟录了某大藤
纽约市就有、我高中就是有差不多3千多学生
这个本来就牛吧，估计不菲钱都能省了
感谢分享！
谢谢分享。
想入群，能邀请一下吗？
管用吗？是学校的counselor干私活？
大德州
估计后面申请大学费用会要一大笔
最好的顾问还是不一样的，有些以前就是招生办的，有很多信息
没经验的义工人家也欢迎去打杂，但是造房子这种事肯定要请专业人士掌控的，至于专业人士是义工还是收点费用或者报销一点车旅，就看请人的难度了。 别说建房子，就我们在本地做义工帮人修理房子，每个团队也是有几个有经验的带头的固定班底，先关键职位有保障，才去看客人的需要，然后队长再来拉其他人，队长自己倒未必是技术骨干。新人不会让你干重要的事情的，比如刷刷底漆，铺地毯时打打下手帮忙拉拉拽拽。。。楼梯防滑条钉钉子。。。
您好！请加我进高中升大学群。刚给你发了短消息。太感谢啦！
用了顾问，但是没有进理想学校的，岂不是亏死了。文学城上今年就用一个，用了顾问的学校都没有进，后来发觉不对劲，自己申请了几所，才有大学读了。
多么，我们这里好几个学校都是，有一所比700还多。
太赞了，mark
这个🉐️找顾问退款吧，误人子弟了呀
如果家长不懂也没时间研究，孩子也不是特靠谱的，我觉得请一个有帮助。毕竟申请大学是孩子一生中重要的大事，花点钱值得。
这个讨论好，孩子也很快要上高中了，很想了解。
求拉进群， 谢谢
几万应该是正常的价格。 而且我觉得这不是研不研究的问题。很多招生办的内部消息，普通人上了一辈子学可能都不知道。
我之前看到有那种顾问已经从小学就开始抓了 说是进中学就要开始那种interview进好学校准备了。
小马过河
进不去啊
8年级的暑假就算到高中里了，所以8-9年级找一个顾问给规划比较好。
Me too
难道又要转行
升学机购网上有排名吗？还是大家都找local的？
你这么说确实没错
但是给晚期癌症病人推销保健品的也都是这么说的，但我觉得那些人挺缺德的，从癌症病人和家属的身上捞钱，就是利用大家这种怕后悔的心里
还有就是各种传教的，告诉你如果没有xx，那你也没什么损失，如果真的有xx，万一你不信（某教或者某主）那你就要下地狱焚烧，所以不一定有用，但是至少你信可以以防万一
所以我觉得，不能用这种逻辑来指导行为
mark 多谢
任何决定还是家长和孩子自己做出的，最后的结果也是家长和孩子承担的
不能因为花了钱就觉得万事大吉了
有这个心理的家长不适合顾问
这个比房产经纪还挣钱
貌似没成还不会怪你 只为输的服气
是啊。 想起国内的那个谁的怎么上哈佛那本书，是不是当年读过这本书的人孩子要上大学了？
他原来做什么的？5毛吗？如果是的话，我不惊讶他的后知后觉了
我想问一下这个修改作文，如果家里有个文笔好的是不是也可以？我老公的工作就是写作有关（和法律相关），不知道能不能帮孩子修改。
我周围一堆牛娃上了名校的，其中也不少找了升学顾问。但是感觉聊起顾问来都是不太满意，欲言又止，没什么可推荐的。
哈弗全方位是我听说过最坑的
“The average college accepts 6/10 applicants; only 46 accept fewer than 20%.”
这本书值得一读，尤其是有升学焦虑的。
IEC既然有市场，我想是有原因的。我只是目前不太能理解。
升学角度：耳熟能详的那几所学校是供小于求的，但是IEC不能保证能进（说能保证的反而是骗子）。而大多数不是耳熟能详的学校录取率都很高（60% 以上），其实也是很好的学校。这是大多数美国学校的情况，他们要靠发奖学金来吸引学生。这样的话，又何需IEC呢？另一方面真正优秀的孩子能进top学校的，确实也不需要IEC。这就是为什么有个层主说那些孩子的父母即使用了IEC也不推荐或”欲言又止“吧，估计因为性价比不够好。
教育角度：如果有外加value，比如增加soft skill（隔壁楼的IEC说这是她最喜欢的一部分），那其实就是孩子的成长，本应该是学校，家长和孩子一起经历的。现在加入第三方，适用的情况应该是父母没精力管，或者交流不畅，又不差钱，就把教育和成长外包，找人监督。但是前几年估计也就是一年见个几次。钱替代不了父母操心吧。还是个性价比问题，如果不差钱的话雇一个也无所谓。
IEC最有可能有用的是中等的孩子包装一下进了供小于求的牛校。但是如果孩子本身不适合，进了牛校对他们长期真的有好处吗？
一般认为IEC最硬核的部分是essay。毕竟这个是要英文功底的。父母和孩子可以自己做功课列大学单子，但是英文水平一下子提高不了。如果大学取消essay，很多IEC都作用有限。这也是为什么“Who gets in and why” 的作者Selingo建议essay应该是个限制时间的考试，当堂写，而不是现在这样谁有钱谁就雇人润色。
这个有意思。没事干的时候可以看看。我看了两个C7，发现差别好大。你们可以猜猜是两个什么学校。
谢谢分享，这个价钱算是合理的，可以私信一下是哪家吗？谢谢
推荐Christine，她原本在南加，但现在公司在北加了,不过现在都有zoom,问题不大。你可以电话或email咨询一下。网站有她联系电话。 https://www.newivyacademy.com/college-counselors
第一个是州大，第二个是藤校？
怎么通过学校找的呀？学校有list？
瞎猜，mit harvard
第一个， cal， mit， cmu 第二个。。。。
第二个感觉是哈佛(想想也不对，因为那些XX应该都在第一列very important），第一个不可能是MIT 这些，因为不会不考虑talent/ability
就我这几个月听的前40名的大学（不包括（hpysmbc）的各种webinar，没有一个说文案不是非常重要的，成绩和拿最难的课也是非常重要的。
谢谢分享，可以私信一下是哪家吗？谢谢
正确！到底是牛蛙家长！
哎，那看来还是要相信直觉：）
第二个就是哈佛。
那就是凡是considered 都要当作important来对待。我从这个帖子才知道可以看CDS。
Now, for an on topic personal experience. In the mid 1980's I was in the University of Chicago's evening MBA program. Most evening students were early in their careers, working for big corporations. The MBA day program was for full time students mostly fresh from undergraduate programs. In that time it was believed that the U of C admissions were exclusively based on grades and GMAT scores.
When almost ½ my accounting class failed the midterm, the prof read the names and scores of the day students who took the same test: Asian name after Asian name with a score in the 90’s. I had to miss two of my evening classes and was able to make them up in the day classes. All the students were Asian males but one. When I entered the classroom the students were quietly chatting… and not in English. They didn’t just outscore our evening class – they did it in a second language! If the grade and GMAT policy were operative, this meant a huge difference in the applicant pool of the older evening students (by about 10 years) and the younger day students.
When I told another evening student about this, he said that U of C business school was changing its admission criteria because if this continued U of C alums would no longer have the CEO positions at Sears, Cargill, Caterpillar and the other big mid-western companies.
Selingo has many quotes of admissions officers talking about "shaping a class". or "admitting a class and not an individual". Over the years, the U of C Business School (now Booth School of Business) alum magazine reflects an admissions change (or a less likely change in the profile of high scoring students). If my colleague had it right, these "new" alums may not be what the admissions staff had in mind. The glossy alum magazine has only a few stories about alums leading giant companies or advising international bankers. The new, policy seems to have yielded a diverse cadre of entrepreneurs with interesting careers in the environment, media, sports, health care – areas that were not much represented the 1980’s classes. (less)
我也看了些college admission的书，关于用不用顾问，基本是两大类要考虑，一是啥都不了解的，二是没时间去折腾的。 这就好比finanial counselor，或者cpa，自己能做吗？能，你家情况简单自己鼓捣下也行，但如果你家情况复杂自己摸不着头脑，请个人花的钱比省下的钱少，当然请了。我们不少人国内过来的，不习惯这些。讽刺美国大学搞成了business也没必要，应为它就是当business来run的。知道有些national labs都是专业的公司在operate吗而不是dox吗？这是这边的模式，要习惯。
这就跟买地皮盖房一样，讲起来都是外包给公司干，但你敢当甩手掌柜吗？一定得盯着的，不会100%省心
真是赚钱的business， 9年级就开始，广大的市场。怪不得广告越来越多。毕业生的家长们纷纷入行。
升学这件事，顾问面对的是好多个孩子，孩子在他们眼里就是个项目，一个谋生的工作项目。对每个孩子的重视肯定比不上亲爹妈。当然了交给顾问爹妈省心，但结果未必如意。
真的是。。。
的确
学习
为什么呢？这么巧