| Minnesota Public Radio (Midmorning) |
The hyper-competitive world of college admissions
Competitive and stressful are the two words most students and parents use to describe the college application process. But does it always have to be that way?
Guests
Michele Hernandez: Author of "Acing the College Application." She's president, Hernandez College Consulting LLC.
Listen to the story |
| Business Week Magazine Cover Story (October 22nd, 2007 ) |
I Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy
As one of this fast-growing industry's most visible practitioners, she uses methods that are publicly scorned by rivals but are nonetheless becoming part of the profession's standard operating procedures...her clients... rave about the personal service: the regular phone calls to their kids... the academic help... the "brand" positioning... the advice about which colleges to consider and where not to bother; the hours she devotes to each application... Hernandez speaks twice as fast as most people, reads as if it were a competitive sport, and is forceful, opinionated and stubborn...Parents value her confidence; kids, mostly, appreciate her enthusiasm." Visit BusinessWeek.com |
| National Public Radio - Here and Now (October 29th, 2007) |
Michele featured on National Public Radio 10/29/07 on Here and Now Listen to the story
|
| CBS News Sunday Morning |
The Tuition (& Admissions) Blues
At the top end of the scale in college coaching, Michele
Hernandez says her objective is simple: to get kids into
the school they want.
"Every year, 90 to 100 percent get into their top college
choice," she said. "Last year, I had seven out
of seven kids get into Dartmouth, three out of four got into
brown, three out of three got in to Princeton. I spend 50
to 100 hours per each student before they apply, doing applications
with them."
Hernandez has admissions experience at Dartmouth. She's
written a best-selling book. And she has a success record
she boasts about on her Website. Hernandez charges $40,000
for her services and starts working with kids in eighth grade.
The only thing that could go wrong, she says, is college
admissions officers finding out that an applicant is using
her; but that, she says, has never happened.
"I'm pretty good at hiding my tracks," she said.
View Article and Video |
| London Times Educational Supplement |
$36K for one little word: yes
...the admissions process in the US is becoming more
cut-throat. Michele Hernandez knows this more than most.
The American admissions consultant runs "college
application boot camps" and boasts and acceptance
rate among clients of 90-100 per cent eight years running
at institutions at which only 8 to 15 percent of applicants
are accepted. Hernandez touts the "inside knowledge" she
gained from four years as an assistant admissions director
at Ivy League Dartmouth College...Clients can count on
discretion. "I work behind the scenes so that no
one except you and your family will be aware that anyone
assisted you in the application process"...but demand
outstrips supply. She says she had to turn down scores
of students last month. |
| Time |
| So how do private consultants fit into all this? As
many as 1 in 5 applicants to private four-year colleges
get some kind of independent coaching, which can range
in price from $469 for Kaplan's three-hour consultation
by webcam to $36,000 for four years of hand holding offered
by superconsultant Michele Hernandez... "Some of
them are very helpful and are helping students learn
how to tell us about themselves," says Lee Stetson,
dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania...
View Article |
| BusinessWeek |
| Dr. Hernandez featured in "What
Price College Admission?". View Article |
| The New York Times |
| Dr. Hernandez featured in "The
Electronic Lowdown on Colleges". View Article |
| Hartford Courant |
| Dr. Hernandez featured in story about
educational consultants. View Article |
| The Oregonian |
| The Oregonian's "Monday Profile" on
Michele Hernandez. |
| USA Weekend |
Dr. Hernandez featured as a go-to consultant in the
article Pointers for the college-bound. View
Article
|
| Bloomberg Markets Magazine |
Halfway into the first meeting with college consultant
Michele Hernandez, tax attorney David Selznick walked
out of the living room of his home in Somers, New York.
He says his head was pounding after he'd listened for
more than an hour as Hernandez dissected his son Ben's
high school transcript and college admission test scores,
nixed his summer camp plans and described how playing
up Ben's strengths could land him a spot in an Ivy League
college. "I was sweating, it was so draining,"
Selznick, 47, says. "We got four hours of information
in an hour." Advice from Hernandez paid off for
the Selznicks when Ben, now 18, got admitted to Dartmouth
last December. "At first I thought I could do this
by myself," says Ben, who graduated in June from
Somers High School in Westchester County. "If it
wasn't for Michele, I probably wouldn't even have looked
at Dartmouth."
|
| Sunday New York Times |
Michele Hernandez sent a shock wave through college
admissions offices across the country a few months ago
Unlike most counselors, Ms. Hernandez deals exclusively
with Ivy-bound clients. She was assistant director of
admissions at Dartmouth from 1992-1997 and used that
experienced to write a book, A is for Admission.
"Ironically you want to look unpackaged and raw
— someone like me can be behind the scenes and
make someone look raw without over-packaging them."
|
| USA Today Cover Story |
As college admissions deans deliver their final batch
of thick or thin envelopes this month to high school
seniors, admissions counselors are gearing up for what
is perhaps their most unpleasant task each year: the
"Why R" calls from parents. "Why R as
in, why was my child rejected?" says Michele Hernandez,
a college counselor who dreaded those calls when she
worked in admissions at Dartmouth College.
|
| Newsweek |
This is the time of year when tens of thousands of the
nation's top high-school seniors labor over applications
to Ivy League and other elite colleges. But just who are
these all-powerful gatekeepers? According to Michele Hernandez,
author of A is for Admission, they are not necessarily
the best and the brightest themselves.
|
| Atlantic Monthly |
The Great College Hustle (Cover Story): Students who
are up for this kind of rigor should consider doing several
things: First, they should buy a single very useful guidebook:
A is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting
Into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges, in a
roundabout way Hernandez teaches upper-middle-class kids
a lesson that refined mothers used to inculcate from the
cradle onward: If you've got it, don't flaunt it.
|
| Wall Street Journal |
"You can't erase four years of C's and D's in high
school just like that," says Michele Hernandez in
her new book. Ms. Hernandez suggests that fifth year programs
and sabbaticals work best for two categories of students:
late bloomers with solid academic records who show signs
of a real intellectual awakening; and Ivy League recruited
athletes in need of brush up work.
|
| New York Post |
First of all, Ms. Hernandez points out that committee
members at elite colleges are seldom of high intellectual
caliber. While some bright people, such as faculty wives
for example, may serve on admissions committees for a
few years, those who make it a career "are not scholars
or intellectuals."
|
| Yale Alumni Magazine |
New Directions in Admissions (Cover Story): The very
difficulty of getting into a good college is making potential
students more knowledgeable about the admissions maze
and how to negotiate it. "Students now have to be
better detectives," says admissions consultant Michele
Hernandez, a former Dartmouth admissions officer and author
of a how-to-guide for students called A is for Admission.
"They have access to a lot more information, and
they're making much finer distinctions among colleges."
|
| Education Week |
"The ironic thing is that colleges don't want to
see a package that is over edited. They want to see raw
talent. In the most selective colleges, packaging doesn't
help," says Michele Hernandez.
|
| Smart Money |
Michele Hernandez puts it even more succinctly, "That
essay ís not going to surprise me unless the child
dies on the trip."
|
| Chronicle of Higher Education |
Michele Hernandez says colleges regularly play with
numbers — for example, counting Asian Americans
students among minorities in a way that does not provide
black and Hispanic students with a realistic sense of
the total. "It's important," she says, "for
students to visit campuses, see the racial makeup of the
student body for themselves, and ask for numbers confirming
their observations."
|
| Baltimore Sun |
On using a college consultant: "It makes the difference
between not having a chance and having a chance,"
said Michele Hernandez, a former Dartmouth College admissions
officer who works with students from as early as the 7th
grade.
|
| The New York Post |
"The book tries to debunk the myths," said
Michele Hernandez. "It tries to explain the process,
exactly what goes on and how it works. The book is about
everything that happens — the good, bad and the
ugly."
|
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