IECA Restrains Trade

Ivy Coach is a proud American business.

Over the last quarter of a century, Ivy Coach has helped so many students earn admission to the colleges of their dreams. It has been reported that we charge a high fee for our expertise — and our track record. We find it amusing when some publications and news outlets make fun of our high fees, fees they’re actually significantly underreporting. But they can make fun of us all they’d like. We can take it. In fact, we invite it. We’re nothing if not self-aware. Much of the criticism aimed at us stems from other private college counselors whose fees are significantly less. Of course, if they could command our fees, they would. And for kicks, we even tested this theory out — to see if it was all just a bunch of hypocrisy. In the name of scientific experimentation, we emailed a college counselor who quite vocally derided our fees, inquiring if he had interest in working for Ivy Coach. Unsurprisingly, he did. We didn’t hire him, in spite of his enthusiasm.

The Unscrupulous IECA’s Attempts to Restrain Our Trade

For some time, we were members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, an organization whose membership we don’t believe is worth the paper it’s written on. Ivy Coach is a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), a much more prestigious trade group. We’re not sure why we were members for so many years of the IECA. It was one of those invoices in the mail that we figured we’d just routinely pay along with the electric bill. But the electric bill payment kept the lights on. Literally. The IECA payment, well, that did nothing for us.

We’ve been quite open about how we believe the hypocritical IECA to be unscrupulous (read Parts I, II, and III of our exposé on the organization). But when the IECA threatened to kick us out of their organization when they learned of our fees, that’s when we raised our voices. Perhaps the IECA thought we lived in the former Soviet Union. They were mistaken. We proudly live in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. It’s a nation built on the bedrock of capitalism. We have every right to charge what we so wish. If someone doesn’t want to work with us because of our fees, they have that right. In fact, most potential clients are scared away by our fees, which we absolutely appreciate. We are surely not for everyone. But any attempt by the IECA to restrain our trade is, we wholeheartedly believe, a violation of federal antitrust law. We suspect the IECA regretted their actions since it brought their attempt to restrain trade into the public light.

Our Occasional Multi-Million Dollar Money-Back Guarantee

The IECA also chastised us for offering — on a case by case basis — a money-back guarantee from time to time to clients. That’s right. On a case by case basis, if a parent is willing to pay us millions of dollars in order to guarantee their child’s admission (or their full money back), we may very well accept. Of course, we don’t offer this option to any prospective client and our fee for this option varies depending on the year (inflation!). We have to feel confident that the student — with our assistance — will have a reasonable shot of earning admission to their reach school.

If a student has a ‘D’ average and they want to go go Harvard, we’re unlikely to offer them this option. But for a student with a few ‘B’s’ who dreams of Harvard, well, we might very well consider it. Maybe just maybe by helping them submit an outstanding application, we can help them surmount the ‘B’s’. We have the utmost confidence in our work. And if we are willing to work for free if we don’t achieve our objective, that is our right (we’ve never had to work for free under this option!). Who is the IECA to tell us that we cannot work for free if we so wish? That too, we believe, is a restraint of trade in violation of America’s free markets.

Our fees are high. We get it. Laugh at us. Poke fun at us. Mock us. But don’t get us started on all the hypocrisy. And do not mistake the free-market principles on which our nation — the leader of the free world — was founded.