Buying your way to the top

“Get your child into the Ivy of her choice!” screams an ad for ThinkTank Learning, a thriving consulting service for imminent high school graduates. The price tag: only $600,000—that is, before the price of tuition, board, and room.

Bloomberg Businessweek investigated ThinkTank Learning and found that nearly 10.000 students between sixth grade and high school graduation utilize its services. ThinkTank Learning provides a variety of college consulting packages that guarantee your child gets into the top school of your choice, or your money back. The founder, Steven Ma, was a former hedge fund analyst and claims to use similar trader tactics to play the market of college admissions. He uses several variables including grades, scores, involvements and immigration status to determine the odds of an acceptance and sets the price accordingly.

While perusing by strip-malls in San Francisco and finding the ThinkTank centers scattered throughout, it is hard to believe that this business generates upwards of $18 million per year. Steven Ma has capitalized on a desperately lucrative market. Why are people willing to pay so much to score that Ivy League title? What does this mean for the future of liberal arts education, and more so, the students that occupy these gothic halls?

The demand for organizations like ThinkTank Learning is no surprise. With the insecurities surrounding the admissions process, and the increasing inaccessibility of top tier educations ThinkTank Learning seems like The Great Escape. That is if you have $600,000 to spare. High school has become solely a means to get into the best college, and colleges are becoming resume races towards the best job. What about all that goes on in between? We have previously discussed the dangers of instrumentalizing college degrees solely as a means to career advancement, and now we argue that that instrumentalizing the high school degree is equally as problematic.

A 15-year-old starting high school seeking this service, for example, believes she is buying her ticket to the Ivy League school of her dreams—or her parent’s dreams. Her life is tailored for her at that point: extracurriculars, interests, SAT scores. She is driven by her quest for title validation, perhaps with no genuine interest in the challenges and intellectual growth that a liberal arts education provides. This is harmful for the student, and detracts from her authentic growth and personal interests in high school. If you grow only in so you can fit into a pre-determined box, this is not the kind of growth Universities should aspire to accept. The current admissions system, and these existing services are forcing kids to be what they are not, and perpetuating the sad reality that you can buy your spot into higher ranks.