I Can Get Your Kid Into an Ivy

Hernandez had been out of college for four years when she returned to her alma mater, Dartmouth, as an assistant director of admissions in 1993. It was a job of convenience (she had married a professor there, Jorge Hernandez) and one for which she was eminently qualified but temperamentally unsuited.

Hernandez speaks twice as fast as most people, reads as if it were a competitive sport, and is forceful, opinionated, and stubborn. These traits were not always appreciated by her colleagues. At one point, the dean of admissions, Karl Furstenberg, reprimanded her for not being more deliberate in her evaluations. Hernandez had been a valedictorian of her high school in Armonk, N.Y., graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college, earned a master's degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, and was exasperated by the criticism. She still is. "I thought he should bow in my direction for working so hard."

Hernandez began keeping a journal, chronicling what she regarded as the essential workings of the selection process. It wasn't revenge or ambition, she says, that motivated her to turn her notes into a book, though later she would be accused of both. It was indignation: She believed Ivy League schools weren't being truthful about how they reviewed students' applications. "We were forced to misrepresent things," she says. "Parents kept asking if there was an equation we used. There was." Privately, the schools referred to it as the Academic Index, a formula based on test scores and academic standing used to rank applicants. "It was the secret everyone in admissions knew," Hernandez recalls. "But we couldn't tell parents that. It bothered me."

The promise of the first inside account of what seemed to be an unpredictable process, along with expert advice about how students can distinguish themselves in their applications, was irresistible to publishers. After a bidding war, Hernandez received a $450,000 advance from Warner Books. One condition of her contract was that she tell no one about the book, not even at Dartmouth where she was still employed. "I felt bad for Karl because I knew the book would get a lot of attention, and it would look bad for him," says Hernandez. "But I was very complimentary toward Dartmouth."

While she was working on the book, her husband was denied tenure, an event that has come to confuse the circumstances of her eventual departure from Dartmouth in May, 1997. Five months later, A Is for Admission was published. "This book is not aimed at guaranteeing admission to an Ivy League school," she wrote in the introduction. "However, it will teach you how to maximize your chances and show you how to present yourself in the best possible light." At the time, Furstenberg told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the book was a betrayal of trust: "It offers only a glib, superficial look at college admissions. It plays into some of the paranoia and anxiety that surround this process, and in that sense is a disservice." (Neither he nor anyone at Dartmouth would comment for this story.)

The book was a success and became Hernandez' most effective advertisement when she went into college consulting full-time in 2000. It gave her name recognition -- so much so that even after her divorce in 2001 from Jorge she continued to use his surname. And it helped establish her bona fides among parents, many of whom are inclined, as she is, to regard admission to the top schools as a high-stakes game that should be played using any advantage.

Those well-meaning, chronically striving parents were comfortable hiring expensive experts. Their eager-to-please kids were accustomed to being hovered over. The conditions were ideal for Hernandez. Already, a few high-priced, high-impact counselors had begun to assert themselves, not oblivious to the disapproval of educators but unconcerned all the same. Among them was Katherine Cohen, an Ivy League graduate once employed part-time by Yale to read applications, who had founded IvyWise in 1998. When Hernandez first heard about her, Cohen was asking $28,995 for her two-year platinum package. "I realized she was making a living doing this," Hernandez says. "I increased my price after that."

She would soon have a few more credentials that could help attract clients. She wrote two other books: The Middle School Years: Achieving the Best Education for Your Child, Grades 5-8 and Acing the College Application: How to Maximize Your Chances for Admission to the College of Your Choice. And she earned a quickie doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University in Florida, where she had moved in 1998. About that degree she is candid: "It's kind of crappy compared to my other ones. But I figured it would be good to have. I am a doctor. It gives me some credibility."

Families pay Hernandez as much as they do because she promises not just substitute parenting but parenting in the extreme. She selects classes for students, reviews their homework, and prods them to make an impression on teachers. She checks on the students' grades, scores, rankings. She tells parents when to hire tutors and then makes sure the kids do the extra work. She vets their vacation schedules. She plans their summers. And through it all, she is always available to contend with the college angst that can consume whole families. Parents value her confidence; kids, mostly, appreciate her enthusiasm.

From the beginning, Hernandez pledged all that work would be invisible. Like her peers, she operates in stealth, mindful that if admissions officers find out a student was coached they will regard the application with suspicion. Hernandez rarely speaks with high school counselors. She never calls a college on a student's behalf. And she is especially careful not to leave any fingerprints on the application essays, even as she edits seven, eight, sometimes 10 drafts. "But I'm not afraid of admissions officers," she says. "If they could tell, how would I be so successful?"

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4