Teacher Recommendation Letter Request: Fill & Download for Free

I only have to write one per student at my school. I send that letter to the college counseling office, and they take care of proofreading it, making sure it is appropriate, then send it out on letterhead to the appropriate colleges. They even have a photo of my signature on file. My job is pretty simple.I am happy to help any student who asks. I don’t use templates. I pace myself, because there is a deadline. That’s all.

A2A: Yes, high school debate helps in college admissions. There is no pre-med school. You just choose a major while in college and take the prerequisite courses needed to matriculate in a medical school.Speech Helps with College AdmissionsFirst, speech and debate improves academic performance because of the improved writing, literacy, communication and critical thinking skills gained in the activity. This alone will enhance the prospects for college admission and performance. But, colleges are not only looking at grades nowadays and extracurricular activities are important to remain competitive in the college admissions process.One of the most respected extracurricular activities by colleges is high school speech and debate. The Wall Street Journal has cited statistics showing that “dedicated participation in drama and debate has significantly increased the success rate of college applicants at all schools which track such data. State and national award winners have a 22% to 30% higher acceptance rate at top-tier colleges and being captain of the debate team “improved an applicant’s chances by more than 60% compared to the rest of the pool.”Yale Application Reader Reveals 4 Proven Tips For Ivy League AdmissionJames Marshall Crotty ,CONTRIBUTORI cover education as a sector and as the bedrock of all sectors.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.There are no guarantees in the college admissions game, especially at name-brand institutions like those in the Ivy League. Not everyone is going to gain admission, even if, as I noted in my previous post, they meet the top benchmarks for acceptance: stratospheric test results and transcripts. 34,295 students applied to Harvard for the Class of 2018, and only 2,023 (5.9%) gained admission. Harvard could easily fill a second class that’s just as qualified with students from the “no” pile.So how do you improve your odds of admission with such a super-competitive applicant pool? Since I only attended an Ivy League school, Harvard, for summer debate camp, I am hardly the expert here. Thus, I turned to a former Yale University application reader, and specialist in college admissions counseling, Dr. Kat Cohen, of the appropriately entitled education consulting concern, IvyWise. Here's a paraphrase -- with my advice sprinkled in -- of what the good doctor ordered:1. Start Preparing As Early As PossibleColleges look at all four years of high school grades, courses and extracurricular involvement. They want to know that students are challenging themselves each year, and deepening their involvement in activities that interest them. Or, as I routinely tell high school students (not that they listen), college admissions teams want to see that you are a master of one thing (in my case, it was policy debate), not a jack of all extracurriculars. Sustained extracurricular involvement over all four years of high school is, thus, mission critical. Colleges, like marriage prospects, like future employers, want to see that you’re committed to your interest.English: Widener Library, Harvard University 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)However, please don't get involved in an extracurricular activity because you think it will "look good" on your college application. Get involved in a project or activity that deeply engages you. If that's football, or chess, or the math club, or theater, or social work of some kind, it's all good. The main thing is passionate commitment. Remember: elite colleges are not asking you to be "well-rounded." They are looking to build well-rounded classes around a pool of world-class specialists.2. Take Harder Courses With Each Advancing YearThis one is a no-brainer. Just as college courses are designed to get more rigorous and intense with each passing year, so too should your high school courses. As I noted in my previous post, Superhuman High School Transcripts Are Key to Ivy League Admission, colleges want to see students taking harder courses each year on an upward grade trend so they can tell if you are prepared for a heavy college course load. So, take the most challenging courses you can find at your school or nearby community college. And work hard to get the best possible grades in these college-level courses.Recommended by ForbesSuperhuman High School Transcripts Are Key To Ivy League Admission. Is That...Undergraduate Grades Are Crucial To Your Future Academic Life: Get Them Ri...3. Essays Matter: Don’t Slack On The Common AppHighly selective institutions, like those in the Ivy League, ask supplementary essay questions in addition to the main Common Application essay. For example, Brown and Columbia ask variations of the “Why This College?” essay. These supplemental essays are very important because they are often school-specific and act as a way for the college to get to know you better. It’s important for students applying to any selective school, let alone the Ivies, to submit well-written, compelling essays that convey their voice, interests, who they are as a person and student, and how they would contribute to the campus community. Generic pabulum about how much you admire your wonderful grandma isn't going to cut it.I would add that just as in the job market, elite institutions, like elite employers, want to know that you've done your homework on the school, what it is about, and how you specifically fit into its mission (both in the classroom and out). However, please don't make this stuff up. This is why it is so important to know what you want out of college before you even apply. Instead of forcing yourself into what the college wants, find out what you want first. That will make answering college-specific questions easy and natural.4. Boost Your IQ (Interest Quotient): Demonstrated Interest MattersWith more students applying to more colleges than ever before, colleges are having a difficult time predicting yield, or the percentage of admitted students who end up enrolling. Colleges, especially highly selective institutions that might be battling against one another for highly qualified applicants, want to admit students who genuinely want to attend their specific school and are, thus, likely to enroll if admitted. Because of this uncertainty and the pressure to manage yield, more colleges are considering demonstrated interest -- the level of interest students have shown in their specific school -- to predict who is most likely to enroll and who isn’t. Things like visits, contact with the admissions office, interviews, applying early, are all considered elements of demonstrated interest. Applying in the early round, in particular, is one of the best ways for students to demonstrate interest, as early decisions are binding (meaning a student must attend if admitted) and single-choice early action prevents a student from applying to another private institution until they receive a decision from the first school.Early admission rates at Ivy League schools can be much higher than the regular admission rate. For example, for the Class of 2018 Harvard admitted 21% of applicants in the early round, and with an overall admit rate of 5.9%, that means Harvard admitted just 3% of applicants from the regular admissions pool. So, boost your IQ, and dramatically improve your odds.-- James Marshall CrottyAccidental Hero . College AdmissionsForensics and College AdmissionsProfessor Minh A. LuongYale UniversityFor nearly all high school seniors involved in forensics, this is a very busy time of the year. Between coursework, tournament preparation, and college applications, there is precious little time for much else. I began this academic year with a dozen email requests from former students for letters of recommendation and every week I receive several more. When I was a high school instructor, I wrote over twenty letters of recommendation every fall and compared to my colleagues who taught in public high schools, my commitment represented a relatively light load. Nearly every request for a recommendation that I receive is accompanied by a long list of extracurricular activities, community service projects, club memberships, and a transcript. Unfortunately, nearly all high school students make the erroneous assumption that participation in more activities is better than fewer and in an increasingly complex world that demands in-depth knowledge and expertise in a chosen field of study, colleges and universities are now preferring applicants who choose to be the best at single pursuit. "What counts," says Swarthmore College Dean of Admissions Robin Mamlet, "is how committed students are to an activity."Extracurricular activities like forensics are playing an increasingly important role in the college admissions as well as the scholarship awarding processes. Why? Grade inflation is rampant in both public and private secondary schools and test preparation programs are distorting the reliability of national standardized tests like the SAT and ACT. According to the Wall Street Journal (Interactive Edition, April 16, 1999), college admissions directors are relying less on grade point averages and standardized test scores, and are relying more on success in academically related extracurricular activities such as speech and debate as well as drama. Successful applicants to top schools still need to demonstrate academic success in their coursework as well as perform well on standardized tests, but the days of a 4.0 GPA and 1600 SAT score guaranteeing admission into a top school are gone. In 1998, Harvard University rejected over 50% of its applicants with perfect Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and 80% who were valedictorians. Private and public institutions of higher learning, facing the reality of needing to train graduates for a global economy, are selecting applicants who can not only perform well academically but can also set themselves to an endeavor and succeed in extracurricular activities. After all, college students must select a major that concentrates on a particular field of study; why not select the students who have demonstrated success with that type of focus and dedication?Colleges now acknowledge, based on years of experience, that students who demonstrate success in extracurricular activities which give them real-world skills like critical thinking, oral and written communication, and the ability to organize ideas and present them effectively perform better in college and turn out to be successful alumni who give back generously to their alma mater. What does this mean? According to Lee Stetson, Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, "We realized one of the better predicators of success is the ability to dedicate oneself to a task and do it well." But according to the Wall Street Journal’s recent study of top universities and ten years of applicant, admissions, and scholarship data, "not all extracurricular activities are created equal." Two of the surprising findings were that participation in some of the more common sports in high school athletics, soccer, basketball, volleyball, horseback riding, skating, and baseball, did very little for applicants. Unless these students win state or national awards, there does not appear to be any significant benefit from participation in these activities. Second, the Wall Street Journal study noted that "although community service has been widely touted over the past decade as crucial to college admissions, our numbers suggest it matters much less than you might expect."The Wall Street Journal report did specifically highlight a "consistent trend"—one that forensic coaches have known for a long time—that dedicated participation in drama and debate has significantly increased the success rate of college applicants at all schools which track such data. State and national award winners have a 22% to 30% higher acceptance rate at top tier colleges and being captain of the debate team "improved an applicant's chances by more than 60% compared with the rest of the pool," according to the report. This is significantly better than other extracurricular activities that tend to recruit from the same pool of students as forensic teams such as school newspaper reporter (+3%), sports team captain (+5%), class president (+5%), and band (+3%). Even without winning major awards, participation in speech and debate develops valuable skills that colleges are seeking out and that is reflected in the above average acceptance rate (+4%). Colleges and universities today are looking for articulate thinkers and communicators who will become active citizens and leaders of tomorrow.The National Forensic League, with its mission of "Training Youth for Leadership," is one of a handful of national high school organizations which leading colleges use as a "barometer of success." Qualification to NFL Nationals is viewed as a considerable accomplishment with late elimination round success being even more noteworthy. The fact that the NFL is also seen as the national high school speech and debate honor society is even more significant; with the higher degrees of membership and NFL Academic All-American status carrying more weight than ever in college admissions reviews. Schools that are not NFL members are literally cheating their students of the opportunity to receive credit for their training and accomplishments, and those students are at a disadvantage when they apply for college compared to other students who have distinguished themselves as NFL members. The key here is that real-world communication skills must be developed at the league and district levels, which selects qualifiers to NFL Nationals. Superior communication and persuasive skills are essential for success in both the college classroom and professional life.As a former policy and Lincoln-Douglas debater as well as student congress and individual events competitor, I appreciate the different skill sets that each event emphasizes, as well as the shared lessons on research methods and critical thinking skills. As a college professor, I note that my top students are most often former high school debaters who actively participate in class discussions and articulate persuasive arguments both in class and on written assignments. The Ethics, Politics, and Economics (EP&E) major at Yale College is an elite course of study which requires special application prior to the junior year to be admitted into the program. It is often known as the "debate major" because most of the students in the program are former high school debaters and/or members of the Yale debating team who are some of the brightest undergraduates at Yale. It is no surprise that many of my students are entering their senior year of college with multiple employment offers already in hand and quite a few of them already own their own companies. One of my graduating seniors, who is in the process of taking his company public, told me that his debate experience was a critical factor in persuading investors to support his business venture.As a corporate advisor, I see the skills developed in forensics paying rich dividends as I work with talented managers at client companies and on teams with other consultants. Over the years, I have had discussions with many senior executives and managers, nearly all of whom identify effective communication, persuasion, and leadership skills as "absolutely essential" for success and advancement in their respective organizations. Many of these successful business executives, government leaders, and non-profit directors do not directly attribute their graduate degrees to their own achievements but rather they point to the life skills and work ethic learned in high school speech and debate that started them down the road to success. One vice president told me that "my Ivy-League MBA got me my first job here but my forensics experience gave me the tools to be effective which led to my promotion into my present position."From someone who is active in both the academic and professional realms, I have some advice for high school students (and their parents) who are interested in pursuing their studies at a top college or university:First, select an activity based on what you need to develop as a person, not necessarily what might look good on a college application or what your friends are doing. Consider the many benefits derived from participation in speech and debate that can help develop both personal and professional skills.Second, parents should assist their children in selecting an activity as early in their high school career as possible but they must support them for the right reasons. Living vicariously through your children or forcing your children into an activity that is intended primarily to impress friends and college admissions directors will not yield the intended results.Third, pursue your selected activity with true passion and seek to be the very best to the outer limits of your abilities. In the case of speech and debate, it will most likely mean focusing on improving your oral and written communication skills as well as your critical thinking skills. It also means working with your coach as much as possible and even seeking additional training and practice during the summer.Fourth, document your successes and what you have learned. Many colleges will accept portfolios of work where you can demonstrate your intellectual development and progress. Do not merely list on your college application form the forensic awards that you have won but instead discuss in your personal statement or essay how you have developed your intellectual curiosity and enhanced your ability to pursue your academic interests through participation in forensics. How has dedication in forensics made you a better person ready to pursue more advanced intellectual and professional challenges?Finally, keep in mind that colleges have a mission to train future active citizens and leaders. Concentrate on enhancing your passion for speech and debate by developing your communication, work ethic, time management, networking, and social as well as professional skills as your primary objectives. If you develop your abilities in these areas first, competitive success will inevitably follow.The world is changing rapidly and we as Americans must further develop our critical decision-making and communication skills in order to successfully compete in the expanding global economy. In my opinion, there is no better activity that will develop essential academic, professional, and life skills than dedicated involvement in speech and debate. Colleges and employers are actively seeking these skills and when it comes to selecting extracurricular activities, like many other things in life, those savvy high school students who will win admission to the best schools will select quality over quantity.MINH A. LUONG is Assistant Professor in the Ethics, Politics, & Economics Program at Yale University and International Affairs Fellow at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies where he teaches both graduate and senior seminar courses. A sought-after corporate consultant, Professor Luong advises multinational corporations in the financial services, telecommunications, insurance, and professional services fields on human resources, training & development, operations, crisis management, class-action lawsuits, and merger & acquisition (M&A) issues. He continues to be active in the forensic community as he is the volunteer director of the National Debate Education Project, an organization that offers affordable, non-commercialized forensic education seminars across the country. He is member of the Tournament of Champions Advisory Committee and is serving his eighth year as the Director of Lincoln-Douglas debate at the TOC. He has served as Chairperson of the Communications Studies Department at Pinewood College Preparatory School (CA), Director of Debate at San Francisco State University, and Director of Forensics at the University of California at Berkeley. Minh is the only person to have won the National Collegiate Lincoln-Douglas Debate Championship title both as a competitor and coach. He serves as the Academic Director and Senior Instructor at the National Debate Forum held at the University of Minnesota and previously served as Curriculum Director at the Stanford, Berkeley, and Austin National Forensic Institutes. Professor Luong can be reached at his National Debate Education Project address at [email protected] of ForensicsMeet Tommie LindseyMeet the StudentsGet Involved For TeachersFor ParentsThe FilmContact UsHome©2002 Mac & Ava Productions. All rights reserved.

'But you don't like to read. Why do you want to go to Harvard?'(This story is from Fortune Magazine.)Daniel Grayson thought there was probably something fishy about the kid who said his childhood friend died from a procedure in a back-alley abortion clinic in Bangkok. Grayson, an associate director of admissions at Tufts University who recruits students and reviews applications from Southeast Asia, had been warned about too-good-to-be-true applications from Thailand. This one, from a student who claimed to have been so inspired by his friend's plight that he made a documentary on illegal abortion and promoted it with great success on the Internet, got him wondering. Grayson emailed the applicant, a senior at a Thai international school, asking to see the film. He heard back several weeks later from the student, who sent a link to a video posted to YouTube the day before by another person. The "documentary" -- a three-minute reel of stock photo images accompanied by a student reading a bland script on abortion -- looked hastily thrown together.Tufts denied the applicant. In fact, during the 2013 admissions season, Grayson threw out a quarter of the applications from Thailand for suspected cheating. The applicants, he says, had offered impressive stories of enterprising (but fictitious) extracurricular projects, like the student who said he had invented an elephant motion detector to help protect agricultural fields in rural Thailand.Padding college applications is virtually as old as higher education itself; for all we know Nostradamus may have overstated his powers of prophecy to secure a spot at the University of Avignon. But many undergraduate and graduate officials say that in recent years there's been a spike in problematic submissions, especially from emerging markets, where the families of the elite and the growing middle class are eager to ensure their children's success with degrees from top U.S. schools. And they are enlisting the aid of a growing professional class of consultants and fixers who will not only help a student navigate the complexities of the American college system but in many cases buff and polish a candidate's application beyond recognition.In the most extreme cases, students and parents turn to savvy and unethical admissions consultants who excel at packaging students for U.S. audiences; for a pretty price, consultants will happily write essays and recommendations, fabricate student backstories, and coach applicants through enough interviews that the lies stick. "There do seem to be countries where getting unwarranted 'help' isn't considered cheating as much as it is seen as a necessary way of doing business," says Therese Overton, an associate dean of admission at Wesleyan University. "As the stakes rise and more people are apprised of the possibilities, it does appear the problem is getting worse."Then there are students, particularly in China and increasingly in India, outsourcing their applications to commissioned agents who are paid a bounty for every international student they get into an American school, a system that encourages recruiters to gussy up and enroll as many students as possible. (In a bizarre double standard, colleges are barred from paying agents to enlist U.S. students partly to prevent unscrupulous colleges from scamming the financial aid system.)That's not to say that every candidate from an emerging market is dishonest or that schools should turn their backs on the benefits of diversifying their campuses with kids from developing economies; bad actors represent just a fraction of the millions of applications that U.S. schools review each year. But admissions fraud isn't a victimless crime: Ill-prepared students find themselves overwhelmed at school, and universities are stuck with underperformers they need to bring up to speed. And in an increasingly competitive process, cheaters take seats away from deserving students -- American and international applicants alike -- while gaining access to the ranks of the global elite.You'd think university administrators would be outraged by such attacks on the integrity of the admissions process, but few schools are willing to talk about dirty applications. Fortune contacted the undergraduate admissions offices of all eight Ivy League universities; Harvard provided a prepared statement, and only Dartmouth College's dean of admissions discussed the matter on the record. (She says detecting fraud makes reviewing international applications "more challenging.") The few rank-and-file admissions officers who are vocal on the matter suggest that schools may not want to expose flaws in a closely guarded system they take pains to portray as fair, while others, in all seriousness, fret that being too suspicious of applicants violates the "spirit" and "essential connection" of the admissions process. Privately, though, many suggest that university leaders simply don't want to shut down a pipeline that helps schools stay in business and boosts their college rankings: Under financial pressure from federal and state budget cuts, falling tuition revenue, and mounting operational costs, many colleges have come to rely on income from international students, who typically pay full freight. The 820,000 foreigners currently pursuing degrees at U.S. schools represent just 4% of total students (at elite institutions the number trends toward 10%), but their ranks have swelled from 586,000 a decade ago. "It's a money business for most schools," says Bruce Poch, a longtime admissions dean at Pomona College who became the dean of admission and executive director of college counseling at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes Peninsula, Calif., last year. "It's not about finding needy kids. It's about finding kids who can pay."As college acceptance letters start to land in mailboxes around the world, inevitably a few of those fat envelopes are bestowed on students who are unqualified, unethical -- or both. "We want to believe -- we want to think that students applying to our school are cool enough, smart enough, dynamic enough to do this -- and we're lucky enough to admit them," Tufts' Grayson told a crowd of college counselors and admissions officers at an industry conference last year. "It plays to our hubris." Indeed. The applicant Grayson denied, the one with the amateurish documentary? Fortune has learned that he's now a freshman at a prestigious East Coast university.Susitt "Sai" Thanarat is the founder of Bangkok's oldest and most expensive admissions consulting firm, Admissions-Office (AO). Modeled after "the ancient Socratic school of Athens" and operated out of the 18th floor of an office tower in central Bangkok, AO sells itself as "Asia's premier educational consultancy." And AO touts winning results, citing 1,100 Ivy League acceptances to date -- among them 88 at Cornell, 39 at Harvard, 65 at Columbia, and 125 at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. (Acceptances at elite non-Ivies are impressive too: 214 at Duke, 107 at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and 103 at MIT's Sloan School of Management.) A 2010 advertisement claims that 90% of AO clients are admitted to their top-choice school, and a recent AO offer from daily-deal site Groupon advertises that its clients received 75 million baht ($2.3 million) in scholarships in 2012 alone. But like many of Thanarat's claims, AO's acceptance rates are probably exaggerated, along with Thanarat's own credentials and those of a number of the students his firm ushers into top-tier U.S. schools. According to several former employees and clients, all of whom requested anonymity, Thanarat is running the equivalent of a high-priced applications mill, churning out remarkable résumés, pristine essays, and perfect packaging for students, some of whom needn't lift a finger. Thanarat, who spoke to Fortune via phone several times, denies any wrongdoing.A cherub-faced, bespectacled 38-year-old, Thanarat's pedigree gives him credibility with Thai families seeking his help. The grandson of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who staged two coups before becoming the country's Prime Minister, a position he held until his death in 1963, Thanarat attended top private schools -- the International School of Bangkok (former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner's alma mater) and the Pomfret School in Connecticut -- and received a merit-based Bank of Thailand scholarship to attend Stanford. There he studied economics and international relations and was a member of the polo club. He graduated in 1998 at the height of the tech bubble -- alongside future tech stars like YouTube's Salar Kamangar -- and returned to Bangkok to begin his career as an analyst at the Bank of Thailand, the country's Federal Reserve equivalent.He soon realized he had other assets: Being a Stanford graduate made his advice highly prized among Thais aspiring to an elite U.S. education. He founded AO, inspired in part, he says, by the dedication of his own prep school guidance counselor. Though Thanarat would not share his rates -- he says that it depends on the client and that he charges a lump sum (the more work, the higher the price tag) -- sources say that fees can be as high as 500,000 to 1 million baht ($15,000 to $30,000). Thanarat says he does not agree to help everyone; he is selective about clients in order to protect his consultancy's exclusivity. He also does business with top public schools and large Thai companies, like energy giant PTT and Siam Cement Group, where he advises on human resource matters, including business school programs for current employees. Neither company responded to requests for comment.In the first of several phone conversations with Fortune, Thanarat described private admissions counseling in Thailand as the "Wild West," but vowed that AO maintains the highest ethical standards, including the "two obvious givens" of the profession: that essays be true and written by the applicants themselves. The company's website also emphasizes that point in bold and underlined type.But according to six former staffers, two of whom let Fortune review what they say are fabricated and ghostwritten documents from their time at the company, AO consultants ignored the company's policy and fabricated compelling profiles, often from a small kernel of truth, like the fact that a family hailed from a rural province or that the applicant liked to swim. In essay-writing sessions, the students would sometimes be in the room, but rarely engaged. A few ex-staffers recall students sleeping and fiddling with their cellphones.Thanarat himself, with a colleague, would lead "brand strategy sessions" for each student. One ex-employee described Thanarat as energized by this creative process, at times joking as he mused about new stories they could try. Typically such strategizing would result in sensational -- and given the well-heeled clientele, quite ludicrous -- stories of Thai hardship or novelty that would be sexy to a Western admissions officer who didn't know better. Thanarat insists that the student-clients participate in AO's strategy meetings and that his jocularity was taken out of context by newbies to the firm. "We make fun of all sorts of people internally," Thanarat tells Fortune. "It may have been an oversight to do it with junior-level staff around."Even qualified candidates, such as those seeking graduate school admissions, often had their applications and essays written or rewritten for them. And once the firm got a student into a college, AO would sometimes continue to provide ex-clients with ghostwritten homework and papers to help them get through their classes. In a later interview with Fortune, Thanarat acknowledged that some unethical behavior -- ghostwriting essays for applications, for example -- may have occurred at AO at the hands of rogue counseling staff, whom he has since fired. He acknowledges that they got clients into U.S. schools but denies that he personally took part in or encouraged dishonesty on applications.Lately, though, some U.S. schools are starting to suspect AO of unsavory tactics. Stanford's Graduate School of Business and MIT's Sloan School of Management each rescinded an invitation to a Thai student last year after discovering the student had misrepresented himself on his application and then tried to cover it up. Both schools linked the student's application (but not necessarily his misrepresentation) to Thanarat's services. Thanarat denies he worked with the student.Stanford's business school also discovered that AO took credit for the admission of two Stanford students who had never been AO clients. And the school hears from Thai applicants who are under the impression that Thanarat is a channel of influence at the business school. As a result, the institution now monitors its informational events in Thailand to make sure Thanarat is not in attendance, and it has informed large companies like PTT that they do not need to work through him for access.Thanarat has further disenchanted his alma mater by claiming for years on his website, in news stories, and in at least one advertisement that he or colleagues worked in admissions at Stanford University and other prestigious schools. Stanford spokeswoman Lisa Lapin says that is not true. "We have had repeated issues with Susitt Thanarat misrepresenting his connections to Stanford and his credentials and using Stanford's name in connection with his business without permission," she says.Thanarat chalks up the various Stanford concerns to misunderstandings. He says AO has tried to clear up confusion about his ties to Stanford. As for the students AO inaccurately claimed to have gotten into the business school, Thanarat explains that those young people used an affiliate test-prep company whose website is linked to AO's, and that somehow led to "confusion" about their provenance. He also tells Fortune that the college consulting business has become increasingly competitive, and sharp-elbowed rivals are "mudslinging" in an effort to discredit his firm. "We are going through an extremely difficult time," he says. "But at the end of the day, the students who we work with and who got into these top schools -- they are deserving of that."Some of Thailand's elite are starting to recognize that there are consequences to the kind of over-packaging that consultants provide. In late 2012 a group of 14 Ivy League alums in Thailand petitioned trustees of their alma maters to be more vigilant in monitoring applications from their home country. "Word on the streets of Bangkok is that unqualified applicants can purchase admission to any of the eight Ivy League colleges," read the letter, signed by Thais and expatriates, including an official with Thailand's ministry of finance. "The effects of this ongoing fraud are to diminish the global reputations of the universities, damage the reputations of honest and qualified Thai students who have not cheated, and lessen aid available to all students who are truly needy and deserving." Maria Laskaris, dean of admissions at Dartmouth, called the situation in Thailand "complex" and said it was the most concerted effort she's seen by alumni to rein in cheating.In the spring of 2013, Bangkok's top private high schools informed parents that selective U.S. colleges had become "increasingly concerned about the authenticity of applications from Thailand" and the use of unethical, private college-counseling agencies. Many of the city's private high schools this year have implemented strict policies to ensure that their students' applications are authentic, and they've lectured kids on ethical practices. Despite those efforts, one high school counselor suspects that students continue to use the city's more unscrupulous private consultants. The pressure is simply too great. Though parents and students in America put a premium on getting into a top college, that's especially the case in Asia, where American tuition is considered a huge investment, and one only worth making for a brand-name school. A degree from Stanford or Princeton is less an intellectual pursuit to some than a coveted symbol of economic and social status. One individual, who ghostwrites applications in Bangkok and claims to have gotten all but one student into top institutions, remembers having a conversation with a client: "But you don't like to read. Why do you want to go to Harvard?"Cheating on applications goes on in places other than Bangkok, of course. Last May the SAT was canceled for all of South Korea after one of the tests was leaked. The unabashed ghostwriter, who has worked in several Asian countries, says the demand for his services is highest in East Asia. According to a 2010 study from Zinch China, a service that promotes access to education, a large majority of application materials submitted by Chinese candidates are fake, including 90% of teacher recommendations, 70% of essays, and half the high school transcripts.It would be convenient to blame overzealous parents for the number of unqualified students arriving at American universities' doors, but admissions is a two-way street, and a growing number of schools are paying agents to turn up foreign students to bolster their enrollment numbers. Proponents say agents provide a real service, helping foreign students navigate the U.S. college application system. But reliance on paid recruiters can backfire and seriously damage a school's reputation.Far from the Ivies sits Dickinson State University, a school of 1,450 students in western North Dakota that sought to make up for declining enrollment tied to the region's diminishing high school population and, more recently, as local students began bypassing school in favor of lucrative jobs in the region's oilfields. From 2003 to 2011 it enrolled about 800 international students, primarily from China, in special-degree and certificate programs purely on the word of agents in China -- recruiters that Dickinson State paid for each student. When auditors finally checked in 2012 -- at the request of the school's new president -- they discovered that most of the students didn't have complete admissions files, often lacking transcripts or proof of English proficiency. Moreover, the hundreds who had graduated from the special program had received diplomas without completing all degree requirements.Dickinson State's president, D.C. Coston, disclosed the scandal and vowed to restore the integrity of the university by rescinding unearned diplomas and recommitting to college standards. Dale Gough, director of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers, commends Coston for making the hard choice to be transparent about the school's mistakes. "Not many do," he says.Of course, schools don't need extensive audits and investigations to suss out bad applications. Admissions officers can compare a student's SAT writing sample to the application essays to make sure the two match in terms of writing ability and voice. Many schools also conduct interviews via Skype, or through a graduate or third-party service in the country. "The obligation is on us to be more vigilant, proactive, and thoughtful about what we see and are willing to believe," says Tufts' Grayson. It is a daunting task for an already pressure-filled profession. (See Tina Fey's high-strung workaholic character in the film Admission.) According to Inside Higher Ed's 2013 survey, 59% of colleges failed to meet their enrollment goals in 2013. Since 2011, the number of high school graduates in the U.S. has been declining, yet partly because of the surge in international interest (the very interest universities are stoking) and the emphasis colleges put on selectivity, there are more applications to process. (Colleges, too, try to game the system: The more applications a school can field, the more selective and highly rated it will appear in influential college rankings.)"It's going to take time and energy," Grayson admits. "But it's important, or else we're contributing and making it easier for [unethical consultants] to operate."In the meantime, the global get-into-college consulting business continues to boom. A trade association, the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling, has seen membership swell from a handful of mostly European advisers when it was founded in 1991 to 1,300 today. Most consultants, of course, are ethical and get into the profession to help students. Indeed, that's how Sai Thanarat says he started, aiming to carry on his own high school counselor's tradition of walking promising young people through the college admissions process. By at least one measure, he has succeeded. According to AO's website, the firm just had its best admission season in company history.Editor's note: From 2006 to 2010 Erika Fry worked as a reporter for the Bangkok Post in Thailand. In 2009 she wrote a thoroughly reported and documented story about a Thai government official who was accused of plagiarism by a British agricultural consultant. After the story was published, she, an editor, and the consultant were charged with criminal defamation. The Bangkok Post defended the editor and Fry against the charges. On the advice of her own legal counsel, she left Thailand illegally in 2010 to avoid being in that country for the period of years it would take for the case to make its way through the system. Charges were dropped against the editor and dismissed against the consultant who raised the allegation; Fry's case is still pending because she had left the country. Fry, a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and a former writer for the Columbia Journalism Review, has been a reporter at Fortune since 2012.This story is from Fortune Magazine. ‘But you don’t like to read. Why do you want to go to Harvard?’