Ivy Coach’s Filibuster

Ivy Coach is the subject of a piece today in The Stanford Daily by Stella Pagkas entitled “Elite college counseling: A legal, prohibitively expensive pay-to-win game in admissions.” Naturally, the piece alludes to our steep fees (as well as the fees of one of our competitors). As our loyal readers know, we are unapologetic about our fees here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Heck, in a “Quotation of the Day” for The New York Times, our Managing Director put it this way: “Who can say what is too much in America? If someone wants to pay a fee that you command, they have that right.” They sure do.

You see, reporters love to ask about our fees, which we find a little weird since it’s not exactly breaking news that we charge steep fees. It’s been widely reported over the years by dozens and dozens of major news outlets. Reporting on it again and again doesn’t exactly warrant a Pulitzer Prize. But, hey, not every reporter has the stuff of, say, Woodward and Bernstein. No, no they certainly don’t.

But we’ve decided on a new approach to answering these annoying questions from reporters and we’re excited to test it out. While we’ve tried it out before, we haven’t done it to the extent we intend to in the future. So what are we going to do, you ask? We’re going to say, “Yes, we charge high fees. But we help lots of veterans each year at no charge.” And then we’re going to go on and on and on and on about the pro bono services we offer to veterans. We’re going to talk about how we want to raise awareness that our nation’s veterans can earn admission to our nation’s elite colleges — that these very colleges covet them. And we’re going to go on and on about what veterans can do to optimize their cases for admission to these schools.

Of course, reporters won’t want to hear any of it. They’ll want to end our filibuster just as soon as it begins. But too bad. If they want to ask salacious questions that we’ve answered time and time again, then we’ll use their platform to get out the word to America’s veterans that we want them — and that America’s elite colleges want them. Call us Robin Hood. We’re ok with that. We’re just excited to filibuster. We won’t even need a phone book.