Harvard Pipe Dreams: Why you're a target of the soulless selling of the Ivy League dream
Some "education consultants" know that parents are an easy target for selling the Ivy League dream, and I think that really sucks.
Usually I want to write about all of the study tips that worked for me when I was studying so your teen can use them for themselves.
But sometimes an education-related topic catches my eye and has me ranting to my husband and friends about it.
One such topic has been perplexing me lately, and I thought it was worth sharing my rant with you: “Education Consultants” who prey on the unconditional love parents have for their children, and try to sell them — at great cost — the chance to enter the Ivy League, Oxbridge, or other ‘top’ prestigious universities.
I hope you enjoy my rant.
A 3.41% chance
I see ads for these types of ‘consultants’ all the time online. “Get accepted into a top university…”, “students are 5x more likely to get into X with our help…”
Shockingly *cough*, on one particular website that I won’t name (I am small, they are big), I cannot find any mention at all of how much their services cost.
A naive and desperate teen might think oh yay that’s nice they’re going to help me out of the goodness of their hearts, but I don’t think that’s likely given the hundreds-of-millions valuation the company boasts.
Stuff here in New Zealand reports that the fees for one consultant’s admission programmes range from NZD$10,000-$25,000 (roughly USD$6,000-$15,000). Wowza.
But it’s not just the seemingly exorbitant (extortionate?) fees these consultants charge that bugs me, it’s the nature of what’s being sold.
The marketing of these companies must have parents and teens believing they’ve found their golden ticket to the world of a Capella groups and bizarre mascots.
Because life’s not worth living unless you’re an alumnus of the Ivy League, right?
Let’s have a reality check.
As the Harvard Crimson itself noted in a recent article, Harvard admitted just 3.41% of applicants to its class of 2027.
Out of 56,937 applications, 1,942 students will be heading off to the almost 400 years old College in September.
Last year the admissions rate was 3.19%.
What about across the Atlantic? Well, in 2021 Oxford University’s admissions rate was a relatively whopping 14%.
Now, scuse the blunt calculation, but if there are 400,000 Harvard alumni in the world, that’s 0.005% out of the global population of 8 billion. That’s 1 out of every 20,000 people!!!
And yet, Hollywood, the media, and grifting consultants would have you think that graduating from the Ivy League or other ‘top’ university is the difference between a life of unbounded ‘success’ and one of infinite misery stocking supermarket shelves your whole life.
Well I think that’s absolute bollocks.
University ≠ success
First of all, clearly, the chances of anyone getting into an Ivy League or similar level college/university are… shall we say… slim.
Second of all, and more to my point, the peddling of the complete myth that the prosperity of a young person’s future hinges on not just whether they get into university, but a top university, is actually harmful.
It cultivates this idea that unless you have a degree from a prestigious university, you’re going to be a loser.
It ignores reality — the reality that a tonne of high school teens don’t even go on to higher education!
In the UK the higher education entry rate among 18 year olds was 38.2% in 2021 and 37.5% in 2022.
The Education Data Initiative reports that in the US, 62.7% of high school grads go on to some kind of higher education study.
In New Zealand, the proportion of teens in year 13 (our last year at high school) who gain ‘University Entrance’ hovers around 50% — and that’s 50% of teens who make it to year 13; many will have already left school before they’re 18. (If you’re interested all of NZQA’s stats can be found here.)
Reducing the concept of success down to the narrow idea that university = success and anything else = failure is just ridiculous.
Are the rest of us that don’t go to a ‘top’ university a bunch of miserable losers? I don’t think so!
I am not saying that going to university is a stupid idea, or that there is no point in your teen wanting to go to university. I would be in a weird line of work if that were the case.
But I’m pissed off at this continuing idea that university — particularly a ‘top’ university — is the be all and end all.
If you’re reading this, chances are your teen isn’t first in line to be dux or valedictorian.
But I for one, really don’t think anyone should be upset about that.
Nor do I think that your teen faces an inevitably bleak future if they don’t get into the Ivy League or Oxbridge.
In fact they have every chance of a fantastic future without university featuring at all!
We may actually be coming down the other side of the wave of obsession with university.
Preposterously high student debt, low graduate wages and a sense among Gen Z that perhaps there is more to life than working an unfulfilling job for a global conglomerate might be contributing to a societal shift away from university being thought of as the only commendable post-high school pathway.
I hope that is the case.
I think university can and does open doors. I can’t see any alternative for making doctors, accountants, lawyers or engineers, but I would love to see a shift back to work-place learning for many other professions and careers.
What about getting good grades?
And none of this rant is to say that grades aren’t important.
I of course think they are important, albeit to some students more than others.
If your teen is dead set on getting into a university/college, then short of immediate and drastic changes to the way education systems work, they will need to reach a certain level of grade-based achievement.
And regardless of your teen’s ambitions (or lack of) post-school, I think they deserve to get the grades they are actually capable of.
They deserve to at least be armed with the study skills they need to learn effectively and sit exams.
Because if we’re honest, who can say what they’ll end up doing? Who knows where life will take them.
Maybe they’ll go to college or university, maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll take up a trade, or learn on the job.
The world is a diverse pageant and it’s insulting to market to parents that the only path to success is through the gates of the Ivy League. That’s simply not how the real world works.
Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed this rant and are looking to help your teen learn how to study and get the grades they are actually capable of, then come on in and subscribe, as a free or paying member.
I’d also love for you to join the convo on Facebook and Twitter. I’m not a huge social media user (understatement) but it does make for an easy way to communicate and share resources :)
You can also get in touch with me directly on Messenger or email me clare@cramlab.org — even though I have poured out pretty much all I know about studying here and over at cramlab.org, I love helping out one on one and would be happy to give your teen some personalised advice.
Clare
