When I took on this task years ago, it was challenging to figure out the itinerary for a 12-day trip that included nine private liberal arts colleges in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.
I wanted to include all the colleges my daughter was interested in while finding the most efficient route.
Complicating the trip was my daughter’s desire to schedule an admission interview at each liberal arts college that we were to visit and chat with the varsity soccer coach.
I also had to line up hotels along the way. That might seem like the most straightforward task, but the night we flew to Massachusetts to start the tour, the hotel I had booked had changed hands and put up new signage the week before. As we drove around looking for the hotel in a strange city, we were perplexed why we couldn’t find it, and that was the easy part compared to convincing the new chain that it should accept our reservation.
Let’s fast forward to 2025.
IvyWise, an ultra-fancy college admission firm, offers families a way to eliminate the hassles of an East Coast college tour. Those who register for IvyWise’s college tour can expect deluxe transportation, fancy meals, five-star lodging and “tailored admissions insight” from one or more IvyWise admission counselors, who had previously served as an admission director at one of the visited schools.
If you’re wondering what this will cost, you clearly can’t afford it. The “curated luxury service” for one student and parent will cost $300,000.
The four-day inaugural tour—and don’t worry, more are planned if you don’t catch the first one—will launch in October aboard a private Gulfstream G650 and include stops at elite universities such as Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Princeton and Yale.
The lucky passengers, who will be staying at hotels like the Four Seasons, will be picked up on private tarmacs and whisked away in chauffeured luxury cars.
“Touring campuses under expert guidance empowers families to make confident, informed choices,” said Christine Chu, an IvyWise counselor and former assistant director of admissions at Yale and Georgetown Universities, in a press release.
“The unrivaled access students will get to admissions counselors is what truly sets this experience apart. They’re not just touring campuses — they’re gaining a strategic edge in the admissions process with personalized insights at every stop. This kind of access is ideal when the goal is admission to the most selective institutions.”
It’s always been easy to make fun of ultra-rich families who willingly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for admission counseling at white-glove outfits like IvyWise. But now you can pay that kind of money for a four-day trip.
In the press release, IvyWise states that students along for this luxury ride will gain a “strategic edge in admissions.” Of course, people with that kind of disposable money enjoy an edge, whether or not they fly around to campuses in their private jet.
The elite schools that passengers holding those $300,000 tickets will visit are the very ones that favor rich prospects. These institutions educate a high percentage of the ultra-wealthy, regardless of what their marketing departments’ messaging suggests. At Ivy League universities, one in six students comes from the top one percent of income.
Economists at Harvard, of all places, generated a big splash in 2023 when it released an exhaustive study that examined whether the extremely rich students being accepted into these institutions had more impressive academic profiles than the teenagers who fly economy.
The conclusion was – big surprise! – the system is rigged. The nation’s wealthiest students enjoy a huge admission advantage.
When comparing applicants with the identical standardized test scores and academic profiles, applicants with household incomes in the top one percent of income enjoyed a 34% greater chance of getting accepted and those in the top one-tenth of one percent were more than twice as likely to gain admission.
You can do nothing about the rigged system, but you can spend much less time creating a college-tour itinerary for free.
To do this, use your favorite personal AI assistant, whether it’s Google Gemini, Chat GPT or something else.
Share some basic information such as trip dates, colleges to visit and what kind of hotel you’d like to stay in, from budget to chain to luxury. It will even look for places with free parking and complimentary breakfasts if that’s your thing. And it will suggest food stops.
Best part of this? It’s free.