Word: achievas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that pales beside Achieva's birddogging of the senior-year college-application process. Advisers first help a student select 20 to 25 colleges, prodding the student along until he or she pares down the list to the eight or so to be considered seriously. Other kids may informally ask teachers for recommendations. Not with Achieva. Counselors help kids choose whom to ask for recommendations and then edit the cover letters and resumes that students are told to give to the chosen instructors. There's even strategizing on the art of asking. "Make sure you ask for a strong letter...
Test prep and tutoring have been around awhile, along with one-on-one private college counseling, services usually purchased by the wealthy. But the advent of Achieva signals something very different. The company is the first to join all three jobs in one program, micromanaging a student's life. Achieva's pitch is simple: while others boast they'll increase a student's grade by one letter or an SAT score by 100 points, Achieva says all of last year's 1,050 clients got into college, and 85% ended up at one of their top two choices...
Test-preparation giants Kaplan and the Princeton Review, reacting to Achieva, have launched their own plans to compete with the upstart's full-scale service. This approach, which costs $300 to $5,000, is expected to become almost as common as braces. But it's a development many in education view as hysterical and unnecessary. "Getting into college is not rocket science," says Jon Reider, an associate admissions director at Stanford. "This is crazy...
Into that breach stepped Achieva. In 1997 the company, initially called Sierra, opened in Palo Alto in a remodeled limestone house, whose major decorations today are framed acceptance letters received by Achieva clients from such colleges as Brown, Harvard and Amherst...
...competitors may further distort a system skewed in favor of families with money. "It's the kids who need this, who already have 2 1/2 strikes against them, who'll get left behind," says David Breneman, dean of the education school at the University of Virginia. Watson counters that Achieva regularly does pro bono work in poor schools and has a free summer academy in East Palo Alto, a disadvantaged neighborhood. The company also has counseling contracts with seven high schools in low-income San Jose, where Achieva works with hundreds of kids who can't afford Watson's services...