Little did I know that when I wrote $10k Challenge: Become a College Advisor I was on to something big. How big? VERY big. Check out this piece from Business Week titled I Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy. A few, select pieces of information to show how lucrative this field can be:
- Michele Hernandez boasts that 95% of her teenage clients are accepted by their first-choice school. Her price: As much as $40,000 a student.
- Hernandez says she earned almost $1 million last year.
- Hernandez received a $450,000 advance from Warner Books.
- Today, Hernandez has 80 clients.
- Hernandez and Mimi Doe announced their first application boot camp. It was a $7,800, four-day summer program for students about to enter their senior year. Doe and Hernandez promised they would leave with completed applications and a strategy for where to seek admission. All 15 spaces for the New York seminar, held at the luxury Kitano hotel, were snapped up in weeks. In the summers of 2006 and 2007, Hernandez and Doe raised the price, first to $8,200 and then to $9,500, and still filled one session in Manhattan and another at the Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica. Next year they may hire others to help edit the essays so they can open the program to more students. They will charge $12,500.
- Hernandez and Doe have created a virtual boot camp ($2,999). They have put together a 60-page book, Set Yourself Apart: The Ultimate Guide to Top High School Summer Programs ($189). They have a partnership with two SAT tutors who on Hernandez' Web site offer five hours of help over the phone ($1,600). And Hernandez and Doe are hoping to link up with a travel consultant, someone who could plan family trips to visit colleges.
Holy cow -- this thing's a gold mine!!!
Ok, so she's clearly at the top of the heap here so in some respect comparing her to any of us and saying we can earn a bundle is like saying I should earn boatloads of money since I'm in business and many business executives earn millions. Plus, she has experience, connections, name-recognition, and a head start on the rest of us. So we shouldn't expect to make what she does.
That said, I think this field is just forming and there's plenty of room for a variety of advisors with different backgrounds filling different niches. For example, guidance counselors, business people, teachers/professors, and so on could all be good college advisors and probably earn a decent side income. In addition, people could specialize -- maybe having/developing an expertise in something like SEC schools, universities on the West Coast, engineering schools, or Christian colleges. These people wouldn't need to charge $40,000 to develop a nice, side business/income. Even if you "only" earn $100 an hour, you'd still be doing well. Even half that would be good. And it seems like there are more and more people willing to pay to get Junior into the right college.
What do you think -- is there a business here or am I off my rocker?
Wow I've never even thought of that! Pretty cool idea, I guess if you can actually be good at it, you can do well. I can't believe that lady is making millions doing it! Very cool.
Posted by: BuildAndSucceed | October 30, 2007 at 08:24 PM
Wow I've never even thought of that! Pretty cool idea, I guess if you can actually be good at it, you can do well. I can't believe that lady is making millions doing it! Very cool.
Posted by: BuildAndSucceed | October 30, 2007 at 08:24 PM
LOL. If you your goal is to make only $100 per hour, you can get a side gig as a clown. I am a professional clown (click on my name) and my fees are $100-300 per hour. I am not kidding about the fees. Well, come to think of it, not everyone can be a clown... But if you can, you can make that much.
Posted by: irina | October 30, 2007 at 09:33 PM
I had heard of this and while I'm not 100% with it ethically/morally it should be a real growth industry and am actually surprised after hearing about it that more people aren't in this line of work or freelancing. I think once a proven formula is set up and a solid business plan is in place that this would be an excellent franchise oppurtunity in most metro areas. I don't see it supporting dozens or hundreds of people full time in those areas but believe it could employ dozens of experts and well-connected people in the admissions process on a part-time basis.
I recently finished reading Brazen Careerist and learned a lot from it and appreciated the real-world advice. One of the unexpected things I took away from it was that made me recognize that there is still a huge gap and probably large future demand for advisors of all types for everything from executives to middle managers to entry level employess. From corporate advisors to appearance/image advisors to career advisors to consultants for getting hired at specific companies I feel there is a huge gap that can't and won't be filled by bloggers, magazine articles or generalized business books. I think an advisor or consultant business filled with these experts would make for a great business oppurtunity and could be combined or operate separately from a college consultant business.
I personally see a need for advisors on how to get hired at various companies as well. There are fewer and fewer great companies to work for and in many markets the competition for them is insane! I am currently struggling with this at the moment due to the field I am in. I am seeking to relocate closer to home and one of the few large companies that does similar work is notoriously difficult to get hired on at and from talking to people that worked there or worked with them it is very much a "good 'ol boy" place where as much or more importance is placed on who you know than your education and background. They rarely hire experienced professionals and focus more on new college grads or people who know someone. I have looked online for tips and tricks to get my foot in the door but they were generic and of little use to me. I would gladly pay for an advisor who had a history with the company and coaching people to get hired by them. Their experience would be very valuable to me as well as knowing a lot about the corporate environment there. I have actually looked for one! At the same time I would be more than willing to coach or advise others part-time when it came to my field or the companies I have worked for. I think that a lot of people would want to do the same thing part-time even if it only meant that they did it a few times a year.
Posted by: xshanex | October 31, 2007 at 01:16 AM
I think the whole concept of this is plain NUTS. It's capitalism at its worst.
Posted by: mysticaltyger | October 31, 2007 at 02:09 AM
The concept isn't nuts -- the people who are overspending on these kinds of things are. It's nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with people being lazy enough to pay someone else to do something they could do themselves. Let's face it, a college application isn't rocket science.
Posted by: Robert | October 31, 2007 at 03:02 AM
Irina --
If you can make $100 to $300 an hour and work for 40 hours a week, that's pretty good. Even at 20 hours a week, $200 per hour is over $200k per year.
Posted by: FMF | October 31, 2007 at 07:56 AM
Just be careful the kids you counsel aren't plagiarists as it happened to Katherine Cohen founder of IvyWise.
"College admissions officers say such advice makes sense only for students at high schools that lack adequate guidance counseling. Some applicants "end up with a whiff of packaging that undercuts their candidacy," says Bruce Poch, Pomona College's dean of admissions. Many officials also worry that students are learning to put success above everything else. They point to Cohen client and Harvard University student Kaavya Viswanathan, who admitted plagiarizing portions of her novel about a high school student's obsessive pursuit of Harvard. Cohen had introduced Viswanathan to a literary agent. "I have a fear that this [sort of counseling] is undermining people's sincerity," says Tom Parker, dean of admissions at Amherst College."
The full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_25/b3989109.htm
Posted by: Me | October 31, 2007 at 10:56 AM
This is unbelievable!!!
I graduated from a SEC school with an Engineering Degree and I think I paid $20,000, all 6 years I was there!
I found all you need in the South is decent grades, in high school, and a good ACT/SAT score.
Of course, it's getting harder.
I was accepted with above average grades and a mediocre ACT score.
How many of these people would have gotten into their college of choice, anyway?
Aren't we only talking about 25 people that paid the $40,000? That doesn't seem like a lot of people to me!
Posted by: BradM | October 31, 2007 at 12:43 PM
FMF -- Yes, That is how much a professional clown can make, up to $200,000 and more. I don't make that much though because I don't work that much, but I can if I want to. Only, in between my clown gigs I take care of my sick husband who has an advanced case of RSD (very bad thing to have, by the way, no cure for that, try very hard not to get it).
I can tell you, being a clown is the best job I ever had. (Even though I am educated as a medical doctor and I worked in PR and high-tech. It is not like I can't get a 9-5 job. I just don't want to.) I like being a clown. I am free to work any time I want, free not to work if I don't want to work today. I make enough money to support myself, my NON-working husband, save into my high-return savings account, save in my two IRAs, save into my self-employed 401(k), read all day blogs like this if I want to (LOL), stand on my head and do anything else people do when they are free most of the time....
Posted by: irina | October 31, 2007 at 12:45 PM
"It's nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with people being lazy enough to pay someone else to do something they could do themselves. Let's face it, a college application isn't rocket science."
the lady in the article is getting people into Ivy league schools which requires a lot more than just good grades and test scores. Honors classes, community service and being a member of organizations are also very important. The average acceptance rate at Ivy league schools is averages around 12% with the following breakdown
Brown - 13.8%
Columbia - 9.6%
Harvard - 9.3%
UPenn - 17.7%
Cornell - 24.7%
Dartmouth - 15.4%
Yale - 8.6%
Princeton - 10.2%
Most of the people applying all have high SAT/ACT scores and top GPA's but with those kind of numbers the college essay, admissions letter, and statement of purpose are one of the few ways to stand out. A counselor would help make sure that the package is well-rounded, well-written, and generally coach the student in setting themselves apart from the thousands of other kids with the same grades and scores
Posted by: xshanex | November 01, 2007 at 01:05 AM
Interesting thread. I have been hearing about this concept for quite some time, and have wondered about how widespread these types of practices there are. Seems as if there are well-established companies that do this type of thing even on a global level. Pretty amazing:
Professional College Consulting of America: http://www.pccofa.com
Posted by: Anonymous | February 06, 2008 at 11:16 AM