China Family Sues Over Ivy League Promises

The Boston Globe picks up on a lawsuit that illustrates just how lucrative the growing field of "admissions-consulting" can be. Two parents from China paid $2.2 million over two years to a consultant who promised to help their two teenage sons get into Harvard. It didn't work, and now they're alleging fraud and want their money back from Mark Ziminy and his IvyAdmit company.

“A lot of them don’t understand how the American college system works,” says another consultant of Chinese families. “I think the mentality is, ‘You can buy your way in.’” The case, though, is far from clear-cut. Ziminy's employees worked with the boys as they attended American prep schools. He allegedly promised to pull some strings at Harvard, where he once lectured, and he apparently acted as a sort of middleman for the family's big donations to elite schools. The boys did end up at "top universities," notes the Globe, but not at Harvard. (More Ivy League stories.)