Command Education stays ahead of admissions trends so families can make informed, strategic decisions.

How Summer Volunteering Can Boost Students’ Admissions Profiles By Christopher Rim | Apr 19, 2026, 06:32pm EDT For high school students with their sights set on selective colleges, summer is an invaluable opportunity to explore their interests, cultivate their skills, and build their college admissions profile. While many students default to resume-padding programs or summer […]

Prior economic downturns have pushed people toward graduate school as a way to wait out a bad labor market and build credentials in the meantime, according to Christopher Rim, president and CEO of college consulting firm Command Education.

Command Education’s founder, Christopher Rim, famous for charging $750,000 to help get kids into Harvard University and Yale University, offers bespoke career coaching programs tailored by industry that range from a few months to a year, with pricing starting at $50,000. Some clients start working with him as early as the summer after high school graduation.

Other top-tier schools are seeing similar low acceptance rates, including Duke University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College. And some small liberal arts schools, such as Bowdoin College and Williams College, are also notching record-low acceptance rates, writes Christopher Rim, the CEO of Command Education, in a recent article published by Forbes.

Every spring, thousands of highly qualified applicants find themselves in the disappointing position of being waitlisted at their dream school. Most students know that one of the most important steps to take after a waitlist notification is to write a Letter of Continued Interest (LOCI), a brief note that enthusiastically reaffirms a student’s interest in a school and provides relevant updates on their candidacy since the application deadline, such as a new award, an updated GPA, published research, or a recent leadership role.