Dive Brief:
- With some top colleges becoming more selective than ever, the market for admissions help is significant, and a new course series from The Ivy Dean aims to prepare students to distinguish themselves in the admissions process.
- For The Huffington Post, The Ivy Dean writes that its course helps students through each step of the application process, offering insights, tools, and guides along the way and leaving them with a completed application at the end of the series.
- The college admissions counseling firm pitches the course as a way to expand access to expert advice for college admissions, giving students the opportunity to participate online from wherever they are.
Dive Insight:
The selectivity of the college admissions process has gotten so extreme it prompted satire from The New York Times this spring. Harvard’s acceptance rate dipped to 5.2% for the class of 2020, and Yale admitted only 6.27% of applicants, according to admissions numbers from Business Insider about the Ivy League.
The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success is also trying to open up the college admissions process to people who cannot afford such expensive coaching as The Ivy Dean provides — the cheapest level of its online admissions course is $499. Its new application will encourage students to start thinking about college sooner and give them a chance to sell themselves through a portfolio they curate throughout high school. Of course, high school counselors already expect students with more resources to demand a leg up in this process, too.