Getting Into College the Old Fashioned Way: With Money

Businessweek (in a story spotted via Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution) profiles ThinkTank Learning, a college-admission consultancy founded by Steven Ma, and largely catering to ambitious Asian immigrants like Ma, and their offspring — kids who'd like to go to elite schools, and can afford to have Ma's firm help them navigate the path to getting in. It's a statistics driven system, and backed by a money-back guarantee, so long as the applicant meets certain requirements: ThinkTank will refund their tens of thousands of dollars in fees if they don't make it into the sort of school that the ThinkTank algorithms say they will. Basically, they've reverse engineered the admissions policies at schools, particularly elite schools like MIT, Stanford, and the Ivies, and done so well enough to know which factors in a student's portfolio can be tweaked to increase their odds of getting into the big-name schools. A slice: [Ma's] proprietary algorithm assigns varying weights to different parameters, derived from his analysis of the successes and failures of thousands of students he's coached over the years. Ma's algorithm, for example, predicts that a U.S.-born high school senior with a 3.8 GPA, an SAT score of 2,000 (out of 2,400), moderate leadership credentials, and 800 hours of extracurricular activities, has a 20.4 percent chance of admission to New York University and a 28.1 percent shot at the University of Southern California. Those odds determine the fee ThinkTank charges that student for its guaranteed consulting package: $25,931 to apply to NYU and $18,826 for USC.

Comments

Not worth it

[plopez]

Universities are pretty much McUniversities these days. Arguing whether MIT is better than a state engineering school is like arguing whether Applebee's is better then Burger King. The food all comes frozen in a box, is cooked up by grill monkeys, and served by service droids. Having a degree from a state school hasn't hurt me as I am close to making upper management wages at a prestigious McCompany. And don't kid yourself, there are only McCompanies and McJobs left these days.

Re:Not worth it

[mick88]

At first I wanted to write off your post as just typical, cynical slashdotterism. But I re-read it and - well, I realize that you are probably right, particularly in the IT field (it could be argued that if you want to work in academia, school names _do_ matter).

Reading your post carefully, I see you aren't saying that "college is worthless, blah blah blah" but rather that the differences between the universities for undergrad ain't what they used to be. As another commenter here noted (paraphrasing) information has been liberated by the Internet so University isn't the only way to attain subject matter knowledge anymore, closing the gaps between schools.

However, I continue to believe that if a person goes through 4+ years of accredited university experience, learns how to follow directions, learns how to deal with smart people & foolish people, and discovers that they have a passion for something (be it computer science or otherwise) is a person better prepared to be effective in the working world than otherwise. And if that's university's main benefit, then dammit I guess I have to agree that it matters less where you do it.

Grad school is probably a different story but for undergrad & the kind of jobs you will be getting with an undergrad degree - I think you got it right.

Smart People

[Etherwalk]

Would you rather be surrounded by smart people or by normal people?

Better schools give you smarter peer groups, and you learn from and with smarter peer groups.

Re:Smart People

[plopez]

I did fine. With far less debt. Besides, you are surrounded by "normal" people, if there is such a thing. If you surround yourself with abnormal people you never learn to deal with the rest of the world. Which amounts to a bad education.

Re:Smart People

[AthanasiusKircher]

I did fine.

Good for you! Want a gold star?

Anecdote is not data. Graduates from many prestigious schools in general have better outcomes. Highly motivated people can generally get ahead anywhere -- if you're such a highly motivated person, then it's not surprising that you did well in life, regardless of where you got your degree, or whether you even had a college degree AT ALL.

With far less debt.

Well, you might have a point if you were talking about some random expensive second-rate private college. But the schools brought up in the summary like the Ivies and your chosen example of MIT have incredibly generous financial aid packages that are generally entirely need-based. Some facts from MIT's financial aid info:

-- 72% of undergraduates receive either a need-based or merit-based scholarship.

-- 41% of undergraduates have student loan debt at graduation, and the average debt at graduation is $17,900. The median debt for all undergraduate financial aid recipients who graduated in 2013 was $10,948.

For a school that estimates its ANNUAL tuition and fees now come to over $60,000/year (with 4-year cost in the $250,000 range), coming out with just over $10,000 in debt is pretty darn miniscule, I'd say. And that's less than the cost of ONE YEAR of college at many state universities these days. (Lest you think that these numbers are skewed because everyone comes from rich families, note also that at least 1/3 of MIT graduates come from familes with annual incomes of less than $75,000.)

So, sorry -- if you actually get into and graduate from MIT, chances are your debt levels are going to be at the levels of many state university graduates, perhaps lower.

(Note that MIT and the Ivies can do this because they have big endowments. Your argument would be better targeted at lesser private universities that change $50+k/year and don't have the resources to give such generous aid.)

Besides, you are surrounded by "normal" people, if there is such a thing. If you surround yourself with abnormal people you never learn to deal with the rest of the world. Which amounts to a bad education.

Meh. You have a point, I suppose. But there are many, many years and daily opportunities to learn to socialize with people who aren't as smart as you ("normal" people). Even if you go to a place like MIT, you can easily find plenty of opportunities to deal with "normal" people while you're there -- go outside your down, volunteer, join some non-university social groups, become active in local politics or non-profit organizations... whatever. Build up your resume AND learn to deal with "normal" people, all while going to a top-tier school -- what a concept!

However, there are far fewer opportunities to surround yourself with incredibly smart people to get a high-quality education. Not to mention that it's useful to get this training while you're young and your brain is still more malleable. And unless you end up at some really top-tier company, chances are you're not going to be challenged intellectually by those around you.

Sure, it's definitely possible for a well-motivated student to get a great education elsewhere and to do great things in life. But if you have the opportunity to attend a top school with decent financial aid rules, there are few downsides to it, contrary to your implications.

Re:Smart People

[ShanghaiBill]

anecdote IS data. Gather enough anecdotes and you can start to do statistics on them.

There are already plenty of statistics available for college fees, scholarships, and salary outcomes. This one anecdote is meaningless. Attending a top university generally does NOT result in more debt, but is correlated with significantly higher salaries.

Re:Impact of foreigners on the education of Americ

[Anonymous Coward]

"He's told me horror stories about group work he's been forced into, where there will be maybe two American-raised students forced to work with several foreigners. In one case he said that he and an American woman had to work with Chinese, Somali and Arab students on a project. "

SHOCK HORROR!!!

You racist fuck. Make your kid do some fucking group work with people that are different to him and get the hell on with things.

In case you're thick as pig shit, let me rephrase your words in a non-racist way, just so you get the point:

"My son has had to work with other students in his group work who are neither as bright, nor as motivated as he is."

Welcome to group work sunshine, we've all had to do it, and we all continue to do it throughout our professional lives. Kick your son in the fucking arse and tell him to get on with things.

It's not what it is

[DiamondGeezer]

...a college-admission consultancy founded by Steven Ma, and largely catering to ambitious Asian immigrants like Ma, and their offspring

but its not racism. Racism is only practiced by white people.

Re:It's not what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not racism. Why would it be?

It's a private business that makes its service open to everyone, but most people who take advantage of it are Asian immigrants. The horror.

Re:Parent of University Frosh Twins: "Thank You"

[rsilvergun]

Or we could, you know, just restore the massive State and Federal funding that was cut 15-20 years ago that was the _actual_ reason tuition was as cheap as it was.... You know, all those tax cuts we keep voting for have a cost, right?

Not the old-fashioned way

[David Jao]

The approach mentioned here may get you into college, and it may cost money, but it is not old-fashioned. The old-fashioned way to get into colleges with money goes something like this: "My dad is a trustee at Princeton, so I knew I would get in." If you have 2 million dollars to spend, endowing a faculty chair at a university is a much better bet than paying for high-priced consulting services.

Re:Impact of foreigners on the education of Americ

[russryan]

Nice. You learned the fundamentals of being a good manager, which are sadly lost on many who are given the position.