This is another public service announcement.
So I've been spending the last few days just combing the internet just because I wanted
to see what students are exposed to, what other people are exposed to.
And I honestly personally hate social media.
I hate being on there.
I think most of the stuff on there is just complete garbage and should be deleted from
human history.
But I came across a lot of people who are, I don't know what to call them, influencers,
people who are trying to serve as these online coaches.
Sometimes they have some business associated with it where they'll take on students to
help them with their college applications or with their study skills, tutors, things
like that.
And I have some things I need to get off my chest.
So what I'm about to tell you, this is actually going to be directed at those very influencers,
those people who are claiming to be maybe not experts, but somebody knowledgeable enough
in their area that they are capable of helping students in the way that they claim that they
can in terms of their studying, in terms of getting their GPA up, in terms of helping
them get into some of the elite colleges.
So this is directed towards them.
But I also want everyone else to listen carefully because the stuff I'm about to say should
give you insight into who to believe and who to ignore.
And I am learning that there's a lot of people we need to start ignoring.
And I've been finding that they all share certain similarities in the kind of things
that they are doing that becomes a tall tale sign that they're full of shit.
All right.
So before we begin, let's talk business ethics.
All right.
So this is what it's really about.
I'm about to call these people out.
I don't care if their business goes to hell.
I'm not going to name names, but the things I'm going to say should give you a hint as
to the kind of people that I'm talking about.
Okay.
But I want to be clear on something.
Okay.
I am not.
I am not going to try to assume that you have.
I'm talking to these influencers here.
I'm not going to assume that you have any malicious intent.
Okay.
I think that's unfair.
I don't know you.
I don't know who the hell you are.
I'm going to, in fact, assume the opposite.
I'm going to assume that you genuinely want to help other people, that you are not a bad
person.
At least that's what I'm going to assume.
Okay.
Regardless, regardless, there are some practices that I am seeing that I find personally to
be downright offensive.
It's unethical, irresponsible, and honestly should not exist if I had it my way.
Okay.
So get ready.
I'm going to go ahead and call all of you out and either you need to change your business
practice.
You need to change your approach or in the ways that I'm going to suggest, or I think
you should just go out of business.
It should be one or the other.
Okay.
Again, I think you might be well-meaning and you might be doing your best and you might
have all the best intention, but just because you have the best intention doesn't mean that
you're not doing something that is extremely harmful.
And I'm about to lay out exactly what that is.
Okay.
So some of the statements I'm going to make may or may not apply to you.
If it stings and you feel offended, that might be an indication that you are one of the people
that are doing the things I'm going to say are doing it.
Right.
Okay.
So I'm commenting on your behavior.
I'm not commenting on you as a person.
Okay.
So it's not a personal attack.
Okay.
And it might feel personal because I might be attacking your business, but I'm not saying
that you should be out of business necessarily.
Again, I think we need to change some of these practices and I want to see more of it going
forward.
There are some people who are doing some good things and those people I will always go over
now.
I, as I go through this list, if you don't know if I am talking about you or not, and
you want to have a conversation, feel free to come reach out to me.
Okay.
If you are a parent or a student who is trying to look up information, but don't know exactly
where to start or what to trust.
And so you might have come across some of these people and you're like, Oh, can I trust
what they say?
Just send the link over.
I will take a look.
I will vet it for you.
I will give you the thumbs up or thumbs down.
I have no problem explaining myself and telling you exactly why I'm going to give the thumbs
up or thumbs down.
I'm not going to leave you with an approval or not.
Okay.
I'm going to explain.
I'm going to explain myself because of why here is more important.
Okay.
All right.
So let's get started on this.
I have like a list of several things, not too many, but several things we need to come
talk about in some detail.
All right.
Number one.
Okay.
Please, if you are going to claim that you can help other people, you need to qualify
your experience and your understanding of the actual content that you're presenting.
Okay.
What do I mean by this?
If you've only read about 200 college essays and you claim to be somebody who could help
with college essays, okay, then be transparent and let people know that your qualifications
are limited to the 200 college essays that you've seen and read and reviewed.
And if you haven't been on the college admissions committee at all of these universities or
any one of these elite colleges, okay, if you haven't participated regularly year after
year, if you've just done it once, okay, qualify your experience and understanding
by acknowledging and admitting that that is the limit of your experience.
Okay.
Trying to be vague about it is really misleading.
It's shady shit.
All right.
So I need more transparency if you've only had experience that is limited to a certain
scope to a certain college, to a certain set of experiences, you need to be very, very
transparent about it instead of leaving it vague in your description about how you've
helped so many students.
Okay.
Got it?
Oh, transparency, please.
Okay.
At least have some honesty, some decency to be able to give that to the people that are
listening to you.
Number two.
Always be open and direct about your limitations.
All right.
Let's be honest.
Most of the people that I've seen giving advice, you're full of shit.
And I know you're full of shit because I'm pretty confident given your age and given
your experience, at least what you provided, you're recently graduated from college or
some of you are actually even still in college.
Okay.
And you are not actually, you know, part of the decision making process.
You have limited access to this information.
You are making a lot of assumptions about what did or didn't work, what it is that did,
you know, that made a difference in a student's application, what made a difference in students
studying and getting a good grade.
Okay.
You do not have all of the expertise on a lot of these areas.
You need to actually be explicit and acknowledge it.
Okay.
Ideally, you don't speak on it at all if you don't have any sort of, you know, expertise
in that area.
But at least in the least, in the least, please acknowledge your limitations.
I will acknowledge it'll be humbling.
It's humbling for me too.
Right.
I often try to qualify the things I'll say like, look, this is based off of my experiences
and I will give you the specifics of the limitations of those experiences.
Okay.
I have not been on the admission committee for all of these, you know, elite colleges,
but I also, I've been pretty transparent about it.
I could also care less whether you get into one of these elite colleges.
I think that whole system is a bunch of bullshit for my own reasons.
Okay.
So please at least acknowledge your limitations.
All right.
I get that it might not be good marketing, but it is honest business practice.
And the truth of the matter is that I think people should appreciate you for your honesty.
And you know, these limitations might disappear as time goes on.
Right.
And I think you have, you know, shared like, look, I've started getting into these conversations
with admissions officers.
I've been getting into conversations with, or studying up on, you know, the research
behind, you know, learning.
You know, if you have those experiences, you've developed a greater understanding through
those experiences.
Great.
You've expanded what you know and what you can speak on.
Okay.
But at the moment that you're speaking, you should at least acknowledge some of these
limitations because people will give you more authority than you probably deserve if you
just leave it vague.
Okay.
All right.
Number three, please.
And this is a big one.
Please do not flaunt credentials that have no goddamn thing to do with what you're speaking
on.
Okay.
One of the biggest things I've seen that I find wholly appalling as a practice.
Okay.
Again, not attacking you.
Just in case you're getting defensive, I'm not attacking you.
I'm telling you, this is not okay.
Okay.
I'm a friend here trying to tell you, look, if you want to live a good life and you want
to live the right way.
Right.
I mean, I'm an ethics professor.
This is all I do all day.
Okay.
This is all I think about.
So I'm telling you, right, for your sake, at least think about what you're doing.
Try to change up some of the ways that you approach it.
Okay.
But please do not flaunt credentials that have nothing to do with it.
And I'm specifically speaking to all of you who are flaunting your goddamn Ivy League
credentials.
Okay.
Let me say a little bit more about why.
Okay.
Just because your ass got into an Ivy League school doesn't mean that you actually know
exactly what it is that they're looking for across the board with the range of different
students that are applying to any of these universities.
You don't know.
You just don't know.
Like I said, unless you're inside that room making these decisions, you don't know shit.
Okay.
Your Harvard degree has nothing to do with your understanding of how Harvard decides
who to accept and who not to.
Okay.
Similarly, just because you read a bunch of students essays and you learned about where
they did get in and didn't get in, it doesn't mean that you know exactly why they got in
or didn't get in.
You don't know what of the many factors in their application was a thing that actually
stood out.
Now, I will say this.
The more experience you get, the more likely you'll be able to identify certain trends,
certain things in like, for example, the writing sample, right.
The personal statement in the extracurriculars, right.
You could break down patterns and things that make acceptance more or less likely.
Okay.
But again, these are going to be guesswork, educated guesses for sure.
And you could acknowledge that.
You could say, look, I don't know.
I haven't been in these rooms, but I do know from my own research and going into detail
about all of the evidence that we do have that we at least see that there are certain
kinds of correlations, right.
That's perfectly fine.
Okay.
But your god damn Ivy League degree has nothing to do with it.
Okay.
Another one that I've seen a lot of, okay.
Just because you went got into an Ivy League or just because you studied really well and
got a 4.0 GPA does not mean you know what sort of study techniques work just as on principle,
right.
Like as a matter of fact, right.
As an empirical truth.
Okay.
You just don't know unless you actually studied cognitive psychology or the science of learning
neuroscience, like unless you study these areas and actually dove into the details of
all the I mean, there's decades of research on this.
Unless you've actually dove into all of that, you should not be speaking on it.
And I'm going to be very clear.
So exactly why.
Okay.
Just because you got good grades doesn't mean that you utilize ideal, optimal learning techniques.
Moreover, just because you got good grades doesn't mean you actually know why you got
good grades.
You're making a certain kinds of assumptions about why you got the grades you did.
Maybe you got good grades because you went on read my professor and found the easiest
professor and went with them.
Maybe you got good grades because you just work very good at following directions.
Okay.
Doesn't mean you're a good learner.
Doesn't mean that it'll actually transfer over to students in different circumstances.
Okay.
And more importantly, I don't see how you're getting good grades has anything to do with
your understanding what it takes to study well and learn well.
Right.
It has nothing to do with it.
Okay.
I get that people make this sort of connection, but that is a terrible connection.
That is not a reasonable connection to make.
These two things are not related in any significant way.
And so I need you to stop promoting this idea that somehow you just because of your success
in these areas, that somehow you have the answer to these questions.
Okay.
That's a lie.
Now, you might believe it, but I'm going to tell you right now, if you believe it, I question
your ability to think critically.
Again, not attacking you as a person, but I'm telling you, you might want to work on
your critical thinking skills because that is not the right sort of conclusion to draw
based on the fact that you did well.
Okay.
You need to know why you need to know why somebody got into college, a college with
their application.
You need to know why it is that they got the grade that they did or the reason they did
so well on the test.
Okay.
And the why part requires an understanding of the deeper psychology of the neuroscience
of the cognitive psychology of learning that you unless you actually have credentials there,
you don't know shit.
Okay.
You don't know shit.
You have a bunch of assumptions based off of your personal experience that is not grounded
in anything other than just that, your personal experience.
And it is very irresponsible for you to try to present it in any other light.
Okay.
Finally, last thing, please, please stop promoting your own students' success.
Okay.
What I mean by this is, okay, so suppose you helped out a bunch of students with their
college essays and they got into some of these really competitive colleges, okay.
Stop flaunting their success as if you're fucking responsible for this shit.
All right.
I always stress this to my own students.
I always tell them, look, I can help you the best I can to try to make sure that your application
from a lot of different angles, right, look the best that they could possibly look.
But at the end of the day, 99% of the work was done by you, the student.
It has to do with the totality of your application, has to do with the totality of the work that
you put in.
You could be grateful that I helped, but I want you to be grateful to the right degree.
I am not your fucking savior.
I am not the one who got you in.
And I try to dispel that lie because I think it's really, really dangerous because the
way I think of it is this.
We already have a lot of anxious students and parents that are desperate for answers
because the college admission process could be really, really confusing.
Or they're struggling with their grades and they don't know why they're struggling so
much with their grades.
And they look to people who can give them guidance, to the tutors, to the coaches, to
these influencers and say like, and they're looking for help.
They're in a position of vulnerability.
You in flaunting your student's success is you're taking advantage of that vulnerability.
And I find it to be appalling behavior.
I need you to stop that shit because the truth of the matter is that the student put the
work in, the student deserves what the student gets.
You merely help them along the way.
You were definitely somebody that they could express gratitude towards.
And sometimes it gets to our head.
They are so grateful.
They just effuse you with praise.
Sometimes they want to give you a bunch of gifts and shit.
That's all well and good that they feel that way.
But you need to be the one, given that they're the one in the vulnerable position in this
case, right, you need to be the one to be honest with them and tell them like, hey,
you did most of the work.
Please express gratitude to the right degree.
Which means you're not fucking responsible for a student get into a very competitive
college.
You're not.
You're just not.
You played a part in it, but you're not responsible.
And when you flaunt their success as your own success, I find that to be an extremely
misleading way of presenting what has actually happened in the transaction.
I find it to be just an outright lie.
Sounds like something scammers would do.
And this is part of the reason that I'm so worked up over it, is I find it to be a terrible
practice.
By the way, everything I'm saying here, this is not just for the online community.
I have worked in the private sector, like those after school academies, those academies
that run over the summers and winters helping students with their SATs and all this.
And I've worked with those students and worked with the administrators in these places.
And I'm calling all of you out as well.
Because I know that you engage in this kind of practice as well.
I've been a part of it.
I'm ashamed to have been a part of it.
I'm telling all of you right now, this is an absolute lie that you're telling people.
You could try to sugarcoat it however, which way you want to.
You're just saying like, hey, I'm just trying to make my business thrive.
It's a very competitive business.
You know what?
We need more informed consumers.
And I will be the one to at least be one of the many voices to try to call this shit out
so that we have more informed consumers when they're looking for this kind of help.
But some of you need to be reprimanded because this shit is not acceptable.
Stop using the student success as your own.
You can be proud of the students.
You can be proud of them.
You can say to the right degree just how much help you provided them.
But please, let's be honest.
Most of the work is done by the student.
They're the ones who deserve the credit.
By the way, one additional point on this, just because I know that it happens at these
like SAT academies and places where the academies, they try to flaunt that their students got
into XYZ college or these college consultant places where they flaunt that, oh, they got
students into the most elite, you know, competitive colleges.
Any place who does that, I look at them with a side eye.
OK, and there's a reason for it.
I know that one of the business practices that happen in this arena is that there are
administrators, right there when they're like looking at these applications from students
trying to get into these academies to try to seek help, they will do their best to make
sure they get the top students, the students who are already top notch.
And the reason they do this is that they already know that the students have a good likelihood
to get into a competitive college.
They already have a high likelihood to get a perfect score on the SATs and they want
to take credit for it.
So they want those students to go to their particular academy, even though they know
that they themselves are not going to be the reason necessarily that they get into these
top universities.
OK, it is a practice that does occur.
I'm not going to say exactly where, but it does occur in a lot of places.
I've taught at a lot of these institutions.
OK, it happens and it's shady business practice.
That shit needs to fucking stop.
OK, so this goes out to all the people who are actually serving as influence.
But I'm also, again, talking to all of you students and to the parents, I'm trying to
give you the information to make the best decisions.
All right.
Do not do not rely on the dumb fucking credentials that have nothing to do with what they're
actually able to provide as a service, what they actually have insight on, what they have
expertise in.
I'm going to tell you this from my experience, there are very few people in this industry
that actually know what the fuck they're talking about.
Very, very fucking few majority of them are just preying on your anxiety.
Now they might not be intending to.
They might be in their own mind.
They might be looking to help students the best they can.
OK, again, I'm not going to speak on their intention.
They might have the best of intentions, but their actual behavior, the practices they
engage in, that shit is appalling.
So fucking stop.