Jamie Beaton, the Co-Founder and CEO of Crimson Education applied to the world’s top 25 universities, and was accepted by them all. He says this experience was a key factor behind his decision to start Crimson Education – to help students achieve a similar level of success.
When did you start preparing to apply to the world’s top 25 universities and what was your process?
When I was 15 and approaching the last two years of high school, I really started to consider pathways beyond my home town of Auckland, New Zealand. After completing high school, I applied to study at the top 25 ranked universities in the world and was accepted to all of them.
I found the maze of information I had to navigate complicated and overwhelming and my application to so many universities was more so due to my own uncertainty as to whether I’d be successful in gaining admission to any of them.
Most students don't consider studying overseas because they're unaware of pathways available to them. I thought that if information about overseas universities was accessible and explained for students looking to study abroad and if mentoring was on hand to guide students to discover what was a best fit option for them, more students would apply.
What made your application stand out and why were you accepted to all of the most selective schools in the world?
Each university in the US boats a unique culture, strong discipline and a reputation for paving pathways to specific industries and careers for their alumni. It is fundamental to research your target universities intimately, visiting them if possible and differentiating yourself as the right fit compared to the majority of candidates to really stand out. To best connect with a school, you need to tailor your application essays to reflect the school’s ethos and your story and journey to those schools.
A piece of advice I would like to share is, do what you truly enjoy throughout high school and chase those passions with a fervent intensity. Your authentic interest area will shine through and will be considered a deciding factor to whether you will be making a passionate contribution to the college community, you are accepted into, and to your future career.
Remember, you are competing against similarly intense and focused students all around the world so the earlier you start to consider the right fit universities for you, the greater the advantage.
For students and families concerned with the price of a US or UK education - how do you help them combat this fear and search for opportunities to soften the cost?
A common misconception is that acceptance into a prestigious university like an Ivy League school comes with the highest cost. In fact, these prestigious universities benefit from endowment funds that allow them to be more generous than many public universities. Our students have benefited from receiving generous financial aid from these universities; many even securing full-ride scholarship such as the Robertson Scholarship to study at Duke University.
Universities within the United Kingdom can involve a lower tuition cost compared to those in the US, however financial aid is less so overall cost can vary. Having a clear sense of Return On Investment from a degree and expected earning potential upon completion is an important strategy to have.
How does Crimson help students find the perfect fit university and get accepted?
At Crimson, we have a strong focus on helping students discover their passions and guide them on which universities would be the right fit for them. For example, we run student international experiences, which include themed tours such as STEM, finance and humanities to world leading universities and organisations like Harvard, Stanford, Google, NASA etc to help them explore their specific areas of interest.
How would you sum up your company’s mission?
Simply put, we are continually striving and committed to enabling students to realise their greatest potential through personalised education.
What makes Crimson Education different from other edutech college consulting companies?
It comes down to impact. Success is having the biggest impact on the most people and it also requires constant learning. At Crimson, we create an environment where we as leaders are continually building new knowledge and that filters through to the environment we create for students. We want every experience to be incrementally additive to our community’s knowledge bank. Personally, once admitted to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business I chose to study a Masters in Online Education and now having started my Oxford Rhodes Scholarship, I have chosen my PhD focus to be on EdTech.
