Getting Into Harvard Has Gotten More Competitive In The Last Two Decades

For a 29 year-old, Jamie Beaton is a man of many hats: a Rhodes scholar, a graduate with six degrees from elite colleges, and a millionaire entrepreneur of a college consulting company that is attracting attention from eager parents and investors alike. 

A great article in The Wall Street Journal outlines how Beaton’s clientele pays his company tens of thousands of dollars, or even as much as $200,000, for a program that can offer everything from tutoring for exams to advice for getting stellar teacher recommendations. All with one goal in mind: get kids into elite schools. And, so far, it’s working, with clients of “Crimson Education” accounting for nearly 2% of the students accepted to the undergraduate class of 2028 at elite schools like Harvard, Brown, and Columbia.

Crimson is part of the college consulting market that’s now estimated to be worth ~$2.9 billion as competition for top-tier universities has intensified, according to market research firm IBISWorld. Indeed, admissions rates for top universities like Harvard have plummeted since 2006, falling from around 10% for the class of 2008 to 3.6% for the most recent 2028 batch.

See the full article here.