degrees of success

“We can get your kids into the Ivy League,”

promise the growing number of education consultants.

Aileen Lai fnds out more.

M

y daughter is a strong student and she’s interested in Harvard or Stanford. Can you help her?” This is one of the most common requests that Gloria Choy gets as director of Dunbar Education Consultants. It’s parents with high expectations like this and an eagerness for “branded schools” that has spurred the trend of education consultancies sprouting up throughout Hong Kong.

While the interest in overseas education is hardly a new concept here, it does seem as if more parents are engaging the services of education consultants to increase the chances of their children securing spots in

prestigious colleges and universities. Most are parents of local students exploring overseas boarding school options or those aiming for selected top colleges and universities, and they’re counting on these “admissions experts” to map out the academic course that will ensure success.

A complex path

In case you’re not up on the trend, the role of an “education consultant” is to listen to the student client, fnd out and understand his or her capabilities and strengths, share the range of options available in different countries with both the student and the family, while setting and managing reasonable and realistic expectations.

Gloria paints a clearer picture: “We start with assessing and refning the student’s academic and extracurricular choices, capitalising on their strengths and interests, then develop an appropriate list of schools based on that, help to plan for standard tests, interviews and campus visits, then guide them through the application process through to completion.” Parents who fnd the process of navigating and planning their children’s education confusing, complex and stressful count on experts like Jennifer Ma and Jennifer Yu, both founders of Arch Academy, who have Ivy League/Oxbridge credentials themselves. To these parents, the pair’s familiarity with the education

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