“Grueling.”
That’s how one student summed up the college admissions process — a single word that captures the stress and pressure of chasing acceptance to elite universities in today’s hyper-competitive landscape. This high-stakes competition has transformed what was once a straightforward, simple process into an exhaustive game of strategy and storytelling. In response, a booming industry of expensive college admissions counselors has emerged, offering insider expertise for a hefty price tag often accessible only to upper-class families.
Consequently, a new generation of admissions influencers, empowered by social media and its innate ability to disseminate information, has amassed popularity on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. By outsourcing information typically guarded by private consultants, influencers are seemingly leveling the playing field for low-income and middle-class families. However, these guides have plenty of critics who claim that, in reality, they proliferate the same elitism as private consultants. Understanding the influence of these online advisors requires a closer look at a deeper issue: a changing admissions system.
A Changing Landscape
Changes in the college admissions process emerged from a perfect storm of rising application numbers, declining acceptance rates, and mounting pressure from parents, peers, and schools.
For most of their history, colleges were open only to the economically privileged families who could afford the high tuition. Consequently, competition was relatively low, while exclusivity was extremely high. Better financial aid programs and the “Free Application for Federal Student Aid” have made college vastly more accessible, democratizing the process and decreasing exclusivity. In turn, more students have chosen to apply to college, thereby increasing the applicant pool. As such, college acceptance rates have dropped significantly, forcing applicants to compete with more candidates for a limited number of seats at each college.
Acceptance rates are not only declining because more students are applying to college, but also because those same students are choosing to apply to a greater number of colleges. The central culprit is the Common Application, which has become the main platform through which students apply to college. The Common App simplifies the college admissions process by organizing applications and facilitating their delivery to colleges, enabling students to apply to more institutions with little inconvenience.
Between 2014-15 and 2021-22, the share of students applying to more than ten colleges shot up from 8% to 17%. As college acceptance rates drop further, students are being encouraged by parents and peers to apply to as many colleges as possible in order to hedge their bets: if a student applies to multiple institutions, they have a better chance of being accepted into at least one. Inevitably, however, the process feeds on itself and lowers acceptance rates for these institutions even further.
Due to these factors, college admissions have become increasingly competitive, leading financially privileged families to hire expensive consultants to improve their children’s prospects. These consultants charge anywhere from $85 per hour to a one-time payment of $100,000, giving an advantage in the college admissions process to those who can afford their services.
As a result, an information gap has emerged — one defined by income, geography, and access to guidance, which resembles the elitism of century-old college admissions. In schools with limited counseling staff or underfunded college prep resources, students are often left to navigate a complicated admissions process alone. This has made room for a more accessible admissions guide: the social media influencer.
New Influencers
On TikTok and Instagram, influencers have attracted millions of followers by posting content about essay tips, résumé building, application hacks, and “standing out” in a sea of competitive applicants. Their advice is typically free, quick, and wrapped in Gen Z humor, making it more attractive than conventional, drier college admission help. For many students, it feels more relatable and more digestible than what they might hear from a school counselor juggling hundreds of seniors.
One such influencer is Daniel Lim, who goes by the name of @limmytalks on TikTok and Instagram. His content is fairly straightforward; in an interview with the HPR, he said that he “read[s] the college applications of students that apply to college” and then predicts where they will be accepted to. His content started with a single student, who asked Lim, a student at Duke University, to predict his upcoming college decisions. Lim stated that he “Guessed where he’d get in, and the video did well. And then 10 more kids sent me their applications, and were like, ‘Can you do the same thing for me?’”
From then on, Lim continued to create college admissions content, landing at the top of many prospective students’ social media feeds. The formation of his content echoes the very nature of the platforms themselves — driven by demand, engagement, and visibility. What began as a one-off video quickly evolved into a crowdsourced resource for students seeking clarity, validation, or simply a second opinion to guide them through a confusing process.
Why Social Media?
Instagram and TikTok are powerful tools in the realm of college admissions because, according to Lim, they are the opposite of closed-door institutions like Hollywood. It’s “a perfectly efficient market…where any random person can go on there, and if the video is good enough and it gets picked up by the algorithm, then they can go viral in the first day.”
By allowing information to spread freely and openly, social media platforms empower creators to share insights, strategies, and stories directly with students. The algorithm does not prioritize credentials as consulting agencies do, but instead rewards engagement, relatability, and clarity. As such, the content that becomes popular is precisely what students are looking for and is often more helpful than traditional resources, such as college fairs and school assemblies.
However, the algorithm comes with its own set of faults. Anything engaging can become popular on social media, which means some creators may sacrifice accuracy or be less inclined to offer constructive advice in favor of getting views and making a profit from their content. In addition, since social media does not screen influencers for credentials like a private consulting agency would, some advice may not be wholly accurate, threatening the credibility of all college admissions influencers.
Student Opinions and the Dark Side of College Admissions Influencers
Opinions on the college admissions process and the influencers covering them are just as diverse as the applications that universities receive. Some believe that the system is fully based on merit, but others, like high school senior Vincent Price, disagree. In an interview with the HPR, Price expressed that “the lack of set structure, or the perceived lack of set structure on what truly matters to a student, leaves this sort of almost like you’re submitting a lottery ticket.” For students like Price, the unpredictability of the process makes it difficult to feel in control, even after years of hard work, leadership roles, and high academic marks. This begs the question: shouldn’t we gratefully accept the guidance offered by influencers?
In Price’s eyes, not necessarily. He believes that only a few influencers, such as Gohar’s Guide, offer an “extension of help.” The less helpful content “almost feel[s] like fear mongering, where it’s just this student that has insane extracurriculars, a 1600 SAT, and they’re a first-generation student, yet they didn’t get into this school, and it’s because of the way I graded their essay.” This “fear mongering” is a well-documented criticism of creators such as Daniel Lim, which can lead students to not apply to colleges out of fear of rejection.
Worse, even, Price notes that many creators gatekeep certain information: “Now, if you go with my [paid] essay course, you’ll be able to get into these schools and don’t end up like this kid.” Even on an open-access platform such as TikTok and Instagram, access to knowledge can still be paywalled, just in a different form. Although the content may be presented as accessible, many influencers sell and advertise paid courses, essay reviews, or one-on-one consulting. For students like Price, this undermines the idea that social media is truly democratizing admissions help. In the past, expensive private consultants were hidden among the very wealthy; now, they are visible to everyone, but still only accessible to those who can pay for essay courses or one-on-one consulting.
Moreover, these influencers use fear-mongering to attract business. By framing the admissions process as a “lottery ticket” in which a list of activities or boxes needs to be met to even be considered, influencers intentionally increase student anxiety. As a result, psychological pressure is applied to students, making paid courses feel less like a luxury and more like a necessity to survive the college admissions process.
Connor Chaffin ‘29, a freshman at Harvard College, shares a similar sentiment with Price, in that “the resources that someone can access through videos just will not be as effective in their process as the people who can pay for, like, an application coach or someone who is helping them one-on-one. So, it does help somewhat, but it doesn’t necessarily level the playing field.” Since many influencers lock up content behind paywalls, their impact on democratizing information is greatly reduced.
Chaffin goes further, remarking that “a lot of the messaging that these influencers send is actually pretty damaging to high schoolers, because it tells them not to explore their opportunities in high school, or try to grow as a person, but instead to try to check
these boxes that they think will get them into college.” In these ways, influencers can limit what students explore and who they become out of a desire to get into the best possible college, preventing them from developing holistically. Ultimately, influencers’ strategic business decisions have lasting impacts on the college admissions process. How much this conflict of interest undermines the value of influencers necessitates serious discussion and debate.
Looking Forward at the Future of College Admissions
In the face of a college admissions process that feels increasingly unpredictable and exclusive, social media has stepped in to offer clarity, or at least a sense of control. Influencers like Daniel Lim and others have built communities around sharing knowledge once reserved for the privileged few, giving rise to a new ecosystem of digital guidance.
But with that rise come benefits and severe risks. For every piece of empowering advice, there’s a risk of misinformation. For every free video, there’s a monetized course. And for every student who feels seen, there’s another who feels discouraged by success stories and algorithm-driven narratives. While social media influencers may have cracked open the door to elite institutions for some, they have also introduced new forms of pressure to many and, at times, paywalled exclusivity.
Although the college admissions system is not perfect, it is undoubtedly more open to a diverse range of people than it was centuries ago. If this democratizing trend continues, college admissions will keep expanding to more people, even despite expensive college consultants and resources. Ultimately, whether social media becomes a true force for equity or just another layer of inequality will depend on how transparently and responsibly this new information ecosystem evolves, and how students choose to navigate it.
Associate World Editor, Comp Director
