Jamie Beaton, at just 29 years old, stands out as a leading figure in the world of full-time college consulting. According to data from market research firm IBISWorld, the overall revenue of college consulting agencies has doubled over the past two decades, reaching an impressive $2.9 billion. Mark Sklarow, CEO of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, noted that there are currently around 10,000 full-time college consultants in the U.S., with an additional 3,000 abroad. To put this in perspective, there were fewer than 100 full-time college consultants back in 1990. The Wall Street Journal highlighted Beaton as one of the top consultants in this burgeoning field.
As co-founder and CEO of Crimson Education, Beaton has made quite an impact in the college consulting landscape. Born in New Zealand and a Rhodes Scholar, he boasts an extraordinary resume, including a Ph.D. from Oxford and master’s degrees from prestigious institutions like Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Tsinghua University. Many students—even those from halfway across the globe—fly to New York seeking his expertise to gain admission to elite American universities.
Beaton shares with these aspiring college students, “Great education changed my life, and it can change yours too.” One Japanese high school student even likened him to “the Steve Jobs of college consulting.”
This year, nearly 2% of the students admitted to elite universities such as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania were clients trained by Beaton. Among those, 24 were accepted to Yale, 34 to Stanford, 48 to Cornell, and 52 to the University of Pennsylvania.
Crimson Education charges clients between $30,000 to $200,000 for comprehensive programs spanning four to six years. These programs encompass academic tutoring, exam preparation, and guidance on obtaining top-notch teacher recommendations and enhancing extracurricular activities.
Beaton is often praised for his ability to decode the admissions process for elite universities, with Wall Street viewing him as a close ally who can tap into parents’ anxieties about their children’s college prospects, thus unlocking lucrative opportunities. Private equity investors have also taken notice, with PitchBook reporting that Crimson, founded in 2013, currently holds a valuation of approximately $554 million.
However, some critics argue that Crimson’s success may be overstated, pointing out that many of its student clients are already high achievers academically and in extracurricular activities, and thus had a strong chance of gaining admission to Ivy League schools even without the consultancy. Some college admissions officers have echoed this sentiment, suggesting that many of those students had a “very high likelihood” of acceptance regardless of their association with Crimson.