international education campusreview. com. au
The road to the Ivy League
A New Zealand-born Harvard wunderkind is helping Australian students get into the top universities overseas.
Jamie Beaton interviewed by Loren Smith
Aside from the usual requirements of academic scores, essays and references, what does it take to get into Harvard, Stanford or MIT? New Zealander Jamie Beaton knows. Following Year 12, he got into 25 prestigious universities. Off the back of this, he co-founded a multimillion-dollar consulting service, Crimson Education, showing others how to do the same.
The 22-year-old Harvard and soon-to-be Stanford graduate recently told Campus Review all about it. He also shared his views on the respective impacts of Donald Trump and Brexit on international higher education, and what he believes the future holds for the increasingly competitive sector.
CR: Why are people interested in gaining admission to Ivy League universities or other top institutions? JB: I think the main reason is many of these universities offer very competitive job opportunities and career progression, as well as amazing alumni networks and academic programs.
So we’ re seeing a real interest in Australian students trying to find the most competitive global programs for whatever their interests are.
The second thing is that, in the US particularly, there is a liberal arts degree structure, which means that in the first year – and really throughout the duration – there’ s a lot of room to try different coursework and different areas, which is quite different to the very structured degrees in some of the Aussie and New Zealand universities.
You note that there’ s been a surge in the last two years. Why? There are more and more applicants from Australia heading overseas, but the particular driver of the massive spike in applications we’ re seeing is a result of increased interest in using Crimson to go overseas.
We’ ve been doing a lot of great work with principals and counsellors across various states. For example, in Victoria, where we’ re educating these counsellors on the US / UK pathways, they’ ve been in turn educating the students. And many students are then coming to Crimson to navigate a fairly complicated process and get a great outcome.
Another thing driving this is that many universities in recent years have had much more developed international financial aid programs. There’ s a myth in Australia that overseas studies for undergrads is very expensive, but many of the programs in the US and UK have substantial scholarships and financial aid offerings. Many of our students go over on full rides or very subsidised fees. It can be more cost-effective than domestic options in some cases.
If financial aid isn’ t an issue, what are some of the barriers that applicants might face in getting into one of these universities? I’ ll give you an example. In my class at Harvard, about half went into consulting, finance or technology at places like Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Amazon and Uber. Many of these companies actually recruit on campus. There’ s a lot of security for you in going into a degree pathway and some great opportunities immediately upon graduation. Because the opportunities are so good at these schools, there are many applications, and they’ re very competitive. And because so much financial aid is available now, students in the middle of Nigeria from more challenged backgrounds, as well as people from affluent communities in Beijing, can apply. As a result, the application calibre has really increased, and thus the major hurdle is the competitiveness of it, and also the complexity.
In applying for the US, for example, they look at your last four years of high school, including academics, extracurriculars, leadership and your personality, and various characteristics about
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