Who Needs Harvard?

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So how do the 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. Although consultants are easy to caricature for sanding down and varnishing a nice, raw kid, admissions officers insist that they can see past the polishing to the real human being beneath. How useful counselors are may depend as much on the attitude of the client as the approach of the counselor. "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, in a rare defense of the breed. "I don't think it's fair to say they're all negative."

For better or worse, working with a consultant forces students to decide who they are as they shape their self-portraits and what sacrifices they are willing to make in the course of their college search. Emma Robson, 17, a junior in Westport, Conn., found herself wrestling with a consultant who tried to spike her favorite activity of the entire year, her seven weeks at a summer camp on Moose Pond in Maine, where she and a bunch of girls she has known since she was 10 sing campfire songs and canoe and make lanyards. Many of her classmates will be spending their summers racking up achievements, while Robson will be collecting and recollecting, in a very old-fashioned way, memories. "Camp is very dear to me," she says, and she's prepared to give up whatever edge a more intense summer might give her. "It's a time I get to recharge from a pretty stressful school year. If I spent the summer taking extra classes, I would just be worn down by the time school starts."

If parents see college admission as the culmination of years of investment--the homework showdowns and soccer shuttles--it's not hard to find kids like Robson who see it as their deliverance. "I don't really want to continue all this hypercompetitiveness," says Greg Smith, 18, a senior in Charlotte, N.C., who cringes as he notes how, when history projects were announced at his high school, there was a literal footrace to the library to be the first to get the key books. He won a Morehead scholarship to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a full ride offered to the very top students. It was not only the money but also the feel of the place that drew him. "The Ivy Leagues just seemed like a very intense four years where I'd get more of the same that I've been through here," he says. "There's such a seek-and-destroy mentality." Others seek out schools like Sarah Lawrence, which has no required courses and few exams but rather research papers and essays. Or Hampshire, where students focus on projects instead of courses and receive detailed evaluations rather than grades.