For all the debate about the value of college in the U.S.—and the Ivy League in particular—the wealthiest families in the U.S. are still intent that their children attend. And as Adam Nguyen can attest, they will pay an awful lot to get them in. A former admissions reader and interviewer at Columbia University’s office of undergraduate admissions, Nguyen now runs Ivy Link, a prep firm that advises high-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth families around the world on elite college admissions, working with their children as early as fifth grade, and sometimes through graduate school.
These families can pay anywhere from $100,000 to $750,000—and sometimes more—for the expertise of Nguyen and the tutors he employs. Specialized services such as SAT or ACT prep come at an additional cost of $50,000 and sometimes as much as $200,000; some families also pay for their tutors to travel with them to and from their second homes and vacation destinations, or for additional tutors in specific subject areas.
“The families we work with are very savvy. They look at things not just in years, but in decades or more,” Nguyen tells Fortune. “So we start advising and working with families and young students early on, [though] not with the same rigor that we would when they get to high school. But we start planting the seeds of success.”
For their money, the families expect results. Most are aiming for admissions in the top 20 schools in the U.S. and internationally: Harvard and Yale, Oxford and Trinity. Non-Ivies in the U.S. like the University of Chicago, MIT, and Stanford are also popular. Depending on their needs, Nguyen may help the students prep for admissions to elite boarding schools or selective private high schools as well.
Tutoring isn’t unique to the ultrawealthy, but Nguyen’s services are more akin to long-term, holistic planning than a few hours of help with math equations each week.
Wealthy families know how hard the undergraduate admissions game is, which is why they employ Nguyen so early in their children’s educational journeys. Working with middle-school-age children, he advises on not just the academics, but the critical extracurriculars. Depending on where their families want admissions, he susses out the best avenues for his students to be competitive, whether that’s playing a team sport, playing an individual sport, playing a musical instrument, writing, and so on. By keeping track of what works at different schools year to year, Nguyen helps “de-risk” the admissions process for families.
Nguyen highlights what he calls “aristocratic sports.” These are activities like equestrian sports, fencing, sailing, squash, etc. With all of the travel and specialized skills they entail, they are expensive to play. And some of the elite colleges actually recruit for these sports—or have wealthy alumni looking for new members for the sailing club, for example—giving the students another leg up.
“There are no kids at Dalton or Trinity, any of the top private schools in New York, that will get recruited by, say, Harvard or Duke to play basketball, right?” he says. “You need to identify a sport that, frankly, most people can’t afford to play and compete in.”
Nguyen says the families who employ him do so because their children need to stand out against the other teens at their high schools. None of these students are subpar academically, but it’s a comparison game—and the wealthiest families work hard to have an advantage over others in their cohort. They are accustomed to paying for expert advisors. (And thankfully have chosen to employ Ivy Link rather than go the bribery-laced Varsity Blues route.)
“These are high-performing students, just like high-performing athletes,” he says. “You would never have athletes go to the Olympics without a coach. Tom Brady has a coach. The students or families you think don’t need help, they pay for these services to boost them even more.”
What does Nguyen make of recent rhetoric, driven by some of the elites themselves, about college generally and an Ivy League degree in particular being potentially overrated, or not necessary in today’s job market?
Places like Harvard and Yale, “they get on calls, and they make sure that these alumni are happy. But what I’ve seen, they always threaten the school, their alma mater,” he says, referring to some alums’ response to controversies including the recent pro-Palestinian campus protests. “But when push comes to shove, if you get an offer from Harvard, it’s very hard to turn that down. They, by and large, are still very keen on the top elite.”
It’s also not just wealthy Americans who are vying for the limited admissions spots each year, Nguyen says. Plenty of international students are happy to take the spots from Americans who no longer see the value. “Competition is really fierce,” he notes.
