The admissions guru who gets the children of billionaires into college for $750,000
2 weeks ago
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Christopher Rim, the 29-year-old chief executive of Command Education – James Jackman
How do you get your child into a fiercely competitive, world-renowned Ivy League university?
You pay admissions guru Christopher Rim $750,000.
The 29-year-old chief executive of Command Education is the mastermind behind hundreds of teenagers from wealthy families winning coveted spots at the world’s best institutions.
With his team of mentors on call 24/7, Mr Rim offers students from as young as 12 unlimited help with everything from preparing for exams to cultivating a “compelling hook” to draw in university admissions staff.
“Demand is really growing, our business is operating incredibly well, so I’m very happy about that,” Mr Rim tells The Telegraph.
Mr Rim offers students from as young as 12 help with applications – James Jackman
He’s not wrong – the company turns over more than $20 million a year. Mr Rim owns a $7.5 million home in Miami and a $2.3 million apartment in Manhattan.
He has tapped into the booming industry of independent education consultants which, according to marketing firm IBISWorld, has ballooned in value from $400 million to $3 billion in a decade.
Command’s current clients include one of the top 10 most followed influencers on Instagram, the chief executive of one of the largest banks in Europe and the president of a country.
While the majority of his students are based in New York, a third are international and include British teenagers studying at Harrow, Eton and Radleigh.
They get students Oxbridge places every year, although most end up choosing elite US schools.
“All I can say is that we work with a lot of influential families in the UK,” Mr Rim adds.
A third of Mr Rim’s students include British teenagers studying at Harrow – Peter Dench
One of his British clients asked him to sign a 40-page NDA.
The billionaire parents who pay for Mr Rim’s services are so passionate about their children’s education they will cancel board meetings to join calls with Command Education advisers, the chief executive says. “It’s really cool to see that. These are highly influential people across the globe.”
They are also willing to go to great lengths to boost the chances of their child’s success.
One father of a Trinity School, Manhattan student offered Mr Rim $1.5 million not to work with any other pupil in his child’s class, an offer he declined.
A survey of Harvard’s class of 2027 found 23 per cent of respondents had used a private college counsellor to help with their applications.
With an acceptance rate of less than four per cent, the Massachusetts-based university is often ranked among the hardest colleges to get into in the world.
“At this point, they’re not looking for a well rounded student, these top schools are trying to put together well rounded classes made up of students who are experts in individual fields,” Gabe Cramer, the managing director of Command Education, says.
“You don’t need someone who’s an amazing orator and a computer science whiz, you need one of each, and those are made up by two different people,” he adds.
“The classic profile of being a boy scout, a three-sport athlete, playing the piano… at one time, being well rounded in that way was really great. In this day and age having that spike and that hook is the way to go.”
Mr Rim took his business full time after helping two younger students from his school get into Stanford
Mr Rim, who went to a state school in New Jersey, was, by his own admission “not the best student” – and was repeatedly told he would never get into a top university with a GPA of 3.7 (equivalent to an A-).
“So then once I got to college, everyone was like, ‘Chris, what did you do? How did you get into Yale? You didn’t have the best grades?’ And I was like, ‘well, I think it was my extracurriculars.’”
Outside of the classroom Mr Rim had founded an anti-bullying non-profit organisation as well as earning a spot on the Youth Advisory Board for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.
After his success, he helped two younger students from his school get into Stanford and MIT from his dorm room, and charged $50-an-hour for essay writing help.
When he graduated in 2017, Mr Rim took the business full time.
He initially charged $75-an-hour for consultancy, until one of his billionaire clients sat him down and insisted nobody would take him seriously unless he upped his hourly rate to $1,500.
Now, parents pay him and his team of 42 $120,000-a-year for their help.
The full package from seventh grade to university admission costs $750,000, which includes unlimited tutoring for SAT and ACT exams.
Seven years ago, Mr Rim had around 40 students, this year he is helping 220.
Command claims to have helped 94 per cent of its students get into one of their top three university choices – James Jackman
In 2024 one student got into seven of the eight Ivy League universities. The eighth, Cornell, was the only school they had not applied for.
If parents come to Mr Rim after their children fail to get into their college when early decision acceptances come round in December, Command Education charges $250,000 for a two-week service to help them streamline their application for regular admissions.
Command touts the statistic that over the past five years it has helped 94 per cent of its students get into one of their top three university choices, although it adds the caveat that this “excludes students who did not follow our advice”.
“We’re getting more and more younger students who are signing up for our services now only because of how competitive it is… grades and test scores are the foundation of a strong application but it’s really the extracurriculars, it’s really the impact you had in your community that’s going to allow you to truly stand out and shine through the process,” Mr Rim says.
It does not matter what the student chooses for their “hook”, but everything the student does should be carefully tailored to fit this narrative, even where they choose to volunteer.
“Going to the food pantry if you’re going to be a computer science major is not necessarily the right place to be volunteering, it’s better than no volunteering, but let’s identify a place where, at a local library, you’re going to be teaching basic foundational computing skills to potential students who don’t have access to computers at home.
“Those are the types of volunteer opportunities that are now going to align with the things you’re interested in,” Mr Cramer, a former professional baseball player, adds.
They also help their students plan a “passion project” which should be an “intersection between the things that you are amazing at, the things that you are passionate about, and the areas in your community that require some assistance”.
There is no ideal niche students should focus on. They told one pupil who was into beauty and makeup to create a TikTok and YouTube account to review skincare products.
Her following swelled to more than 80,000 and she was able to show admissions officers she had made a difference to her community by donating the leftover samples to charity. She got into the University of Pennsylvania.
“What other college consultant will tell a student to do that?”, Mr Rim says.
Mentoring sessions cover everything from preparing the student for a Spanish test, to making sure the marketing assets and copywriting for their website are in good shape.
Command’s 23 mentors are made up of recent graduates, meaning the students they work with look up to them like “an older brother, older sister type figure”, which Mr Rim says sets them apart from their competitors.
Along with this, he says, they help students develop life skills for after they graduate, such as public speaking and how to write cold emails.
The lengths wealthy parents in the US were willing to go to get their children into college was exposed by the Operation Varsity Blue admissions scandal, which saw 57 people charged with crimes.
Among those given prison sentences was actress Felicity Huffman, who spent 11 days in jail after paying to inflate her daughter’s exam results to help her get into university.
Admissions consultants, while completely legal, do raise some moral questions about how much help privileged students can tap into compared to their less fortunate peers.
Mr Rim notes that as well as working with the top one per cent, around five per cent of Command’s clients are taken on pro-bono.
“Our process does not change whether a student comes to us who is very privileged versus somebody who has free or reduced lunch at school throughout pro bono work,” he says.
