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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you guarantee my son\u2019s admission to Harvard?\u201d For 35 years, our answer at Ivy Coach<\/a>, a leading college consulting firm, has always been the same: \u201cNo.\u201d Then we usually add, for good measure, \u201cNobody can guarantee your son\u2019s admission to Harvard. And if someone tells you they can, run, run fast, and run for the hills.\u201d<\/p>\n It tends to put some useful distance between us and prospective clients we probably don\u2019t want becoming clients anyway. In our business, the G-word is a major red flag.<\/p>\n But over the last few years, we\u2019ve noticed something strange. More parents are coming to us expecting guarantees. And increasingly, their expectations bear little relationship to reality. We used to joke that somewhere out there was a parent of a C<\/em> student searching for the college consultant who could get their child into Harvard (and not even via the secretive Z-List<\/a>!). It\u2019s not<\/em> a joke anymore.<\/p>\n We hear from more and more families whose children simply aren\u2019t remotely in the academic ballpark for the schools they\u2019re targeting, yet they still ask some version of, \u201cCan you guarantee it?\u201d No.<\/em> The C<\/em> student is still not getting into Harvard. Although, for the record, we once helped a student with D<\/em>s earn admission to Stanford as a transfer. But that was hardly a normal admissions case. <\/p>\n He had been deeply depressed at West Point under the military\u2019s then-existing \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d policy, and his grades suffered badly as a result. Stanford\u2019s decision to admit him sent a rather unmistakable message about what it thought of the circumstances and that discriminatory policy. So, yes, sometimes even the D<\/em> student gets into Stanford. Just don\u2019t build a business model around it.<\/p>\n Of course, where there are extraordinary exceptions, there will always be people looking for a way to manufacture one. You might think the 2019 Varsity Blues scandal<\/a> would have permanently disabused people of the notion that college admissions consultants possess some secret lever they can pull. William \u201cRick\u201d Singer\u2019s operation involved bribing coaches and facilitating cheating on standardized tests. But apparently, yesterday\u2019s scandal has become today\u2019s ancient history.<\/p>\n So why do expectations of some prospective clients, parents navigating the highly selective college admissions process, seem to be getting more unreasonable? Maybe it reflects something larger happening in American culture. We\u2019ve become more distrustful and more adversarial. Pew Research Center found that 84% of Americans believe political debate has become less respectful<\/a>, while social trust has declined considerably over the decades. Perhaps some of that mentality has seeped into business relationships, too. \u201cI\u2019m paying you, therefore I expect the outcome I want.\u201d<\/p>\n But expertise just doesn\u2019t work that way. You can hire the world\u2019s best oncologist. The doctor can\u2019t guarantee a cure. You can hire the world\u2019s best financial advisor. The advisor can\u2019t guarantee the S&P 500 will skyrocket tomorrow. And no ethical college admissions consultant can guarantee a student\u2019s admission to Harvard.<\/p>\n What expertise can<\/em> do is improve decision-making and maximize the likelihood of a favorable outcome. Every year at Ivy Coach, we tally the families who work with us but choose to ignore our advice on perhaps the single most consequential strategic decision in the process, which is where the student applies Early Action or Early Decision.<\/p>\n When families ignore this critical advice, we\u2019re still of course happy to help them craft the strongest applications possible. But we tell them they\u2019ll be excluded from our statistics because they chose not to follow the strategy they hired us to provide. We disclose these exclusions alongside our admissions results so there\u2019s no ambiguity about who is, and isn\u2019t, included in our track record. For years, we could count these families on one hand in any given year. Now we\u2019re getting closer to needing three hands.<\/p>\n Maybe that doesn\u2019t sound dramatic. But the trend matters because it illustrates something every entrepreneur eventually learns. Some clients don\u2019t actually want expertise. Instead, they want validation. They\u2019ve already decided what the answer should be. Their child with C<\/em> grades deserves admission to the most selective universities in the world, and they\u2019re hiring you simply to confirm it.<\/p>\n The trouble is that the most valuable thing an expert can sometimes tell a client is precisely what the client doesn\u2019t want to hear. And, occasionally, the expert will be wrong. Recently, we worked with a largely B<\/em> student who had their sights set on MIT. We repeatedly told the family that we did not believe the student would be admitted. MIT admitted the student. We were thrilled.<\/p>\n Every now and then, Ivy Coach\u2019s crystal ball is wrong. We\u2019re not usually<\/em> wrong, but when we are, we\u2019re delighted when our own work helps prove us wrong. And therein lies the difference between expertise and a guarantee. A guarantee tells clients what they want to hear. Expertise tells them what they need to hear, even when what they need to hear is that Harvard still has a big problem with C<\/em>s.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cCan you guarantee my son\u2019s admission to Harvard?\u201d For 35 years, our answer at Ivy Coach<\/a>, a leading college consulting firm, has always been the same: \u201cNo.\u201d Then we usually add, for good measure, \u201cNobody can guarantee your son\u2019s admission to Harvard. And if someone tells you they can, run, run fast, and run for the hills.\u201d<\/p>\n It tends to put some useful distance between us and prospective clients we probably don\u2019t want becoming clients anyway. In our business, the G-word is a major red flag.<\/p>\n But over the last few years, we\u2019ve noticed something strange. More parents are coming to us expecting guarantees. And increasingly, their expectations bear little relationship to reality. We used to joke that somewhere out there was a parent of a C<\/em> student searching for the college consultant who could get their child into Harvard (and not even via the secretive Z-List<\/a>!). It\u2019s not<\/em> a joke anymore.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nThe G-word is coming up more often<\/h2>\n
Paying for expertise doesn\u2019t mean buying an outcome<\/h2>\n
Some clients want validation, not expertise<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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The G-word is coming up more often<\/h2>\n