Education

Democratizing The College Admissions Process Is Big Business


An often-marginalized topic in the pantheon of education storylines might just be the path high school students traverse to gain acceptance into institutions of higher education across the U.S. College Admission Statistics reports that 45,013,575 students applied for enrollment in the academic year 2021-2022, representing a 22% rebound from the previous year according to CNBC.

A byproduct of increased applicants is even greater competition for acceptance into top universities. Harvard and Stanford, for instance, have seen their acceptance percentages shrink to 3% just last year alone.

Increased competition for fewer spots in top universities is also playing a part in the growth of the tutorial market worldwide. The U.S. tutoring market is expected to reach $8.37 billion by 2025, with global numbers reaching $201.8 Billion by 2026. These projected numbers indicate a growing trend of students and professionals looking for services to improve college placement and career opportunities.

Despite the availability of simple online delivery platforms, such as video courses and digital downloads, some companies recognize the high value of personalized coaching methods, especially for those from underrepresented or underprivileged backgrounds.

John Koelliker, the co-founder of Leland, a marketplace for coaching, classes, and community, is driven to expand 1:1 coaching models with inclusivity in mind. Just awarded a $4 million seed round, Leland, with the support of Koelliker, is now rolling out new coaching categories to their platform with hundreds of coaches from various professional backgrounds, schools, price points, and experience levels.

By partnering with early-stage and marketplace investors, including Contrary, FJ Labs, Peterson Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Next Play Ventures, and other supportive angel investments, Koelliker and his team are buying in on the expertise economy. The efforts of Leland are unlocking the human potential for both students and those seeking career advancement by using a combination of mentor-driven knowledge-sharing and personalized relationship building.

With a Stanford MBA under his belt and former project manager positions at LinkedIn and Uber, Koelliker is well equipped to lead the next stage of Leland’s journey. As he enters the interview, he enthusiastically sums up the potential of Leland’s growth. “Imagine an Airbnb for professional mentors,” he says.

Rod Berger: What issues did you see in the current education admissions and career prep market that made you want to start Leland?

John Koelliker: Getting into top schools and companies has never been more competitive. Harvard’s acceptance rate fell to 3.19% and Google receives over 3 million job applications every year. Of course, Harvard and Google aren’t the only good options, but they illustrate how competitive the market is.

Those who can afford it turn to help—often paying $15-20k+ for expensive admissions consultants or career bootcamps to increase their chances of breaking in. It’s still hard for them to find the right coach because there isn’t a central platform to compare options, read real reviews, or ensure their consultant isn’t a bad actor, but at least they have some form of help.

Those who can’t afford this prohibitively expensive option apply to schools and jobs alone or lean on limited (and often erroneous) advice from friends and family. High school college counselors aren’t much help either, especially with student-to-college counselor ratios of 750:1.

In digging deeper, I discovered a few important things: 1. coaching prices are high today because coaching firms take 70-80% of what they charge customers, 2. experts are willing to offer services for less, but it’s hard to find them today, 3. the market is much larger than expected, and could be 10 times bigger if it were made more accessible to the average person.

Berger: What are the broader implications of these issues?

Koelliker: It leads to the wealthiest students getting into the best schools (e.g., 38 of the best schools admit more from the top 1% than the bottom 60%). Top schools have stronger alumni networks and better career opportunities, which leads to their graduates landing the best jobs out of college. Those without the resources to get help on applications go to less competitive schools with weaker alumni networks and fewer career opportunities. The opportunity gap perpetually widens.

It’s hard to know who to blame in this situation. I don’t blame people with resources for paying to get help—it’s a super important step. But I feel for those who don’t have the resources to pay. I also worry that by dropping standardized tests, schools are only going to put more weight on the essays and other lengthy parts of the application, which are much easier to complete with the help of a professional.

Berger: What makes Leland different from traditional admissions or career coaching firms?

Koelliker: Leland operates as a true marketplace—like Airbnb—where customers can browse coaches from various price points, school specialties, professional experiences, racial identities, sexual orientations, and geographies. Once they find a coach who fits their budget, background, and goals, customers set up free intro calls with coaches and book time through the platform, from which Leland only takes a 10% to 20% fee.

All coaches on Leland are vetted carefully and are given training and resources to deliver a high-quality coaching experience. Customers are encouraged to leave reviews on coaches, making it easier for future customers to find the right fit. Leland also has a free community, free content, and free events with coaches that customers can leverage to pursue their goals.

Berger: What about your background positioned you well to solve these problems?

Koelliker: I’ve spent my entire career building marketplaces that connect people to people—Uber, LinkedIn, and Curated (eCommerce marketplace). This taught me how to kickstart the supply and demand flywheel and build features and processes that foster quality human interaction at scale.

As a side hustle, I built a successful coaching business helping people get into top MBA programs. I ran that for three years. After that, I experimented with 1:1 coaching, larger scale cohort-based courses, small group classes, and written content. This small business enabled me to test many early hypotheses about Leland before launching.

These experiences have given me unique insight into the opportunity and a unique skill set to go after it.

Berger: How many people are using admissions consultants or career coaches? How big is this market?

Koelliker: Admissions coaching is estimated by experts to be at least $10 billion globally. This market is very opaque and difficult to size, especially because people don’t like talking about how much they spend on admissions help. However, it’s likely a function of the $16 billion online tutoring industry, the $10 billion test preparation market, and other untracked data on graduate and international admissions coaching.

The career coaching market is more straightforward and is estimated at $15 billion. According to PwC research, the coaching industry was the second fastest growing sector in the world.

The percentage of students at top universities who used professional help with applications is estimated at 50% to 70% for the most competitive universities. Unfortunately, sources on this aren’t as concrete because the data is so difficult to pull from students.

Bottom line: This market’s size is much larger than most people think and growing faster as competition for the best schools and companies rises.

Berger: Who coaches on Leland? Can anyone sign up?

Koelliker: Coaches on Leland come from all professional backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, geographies, schools, companies, etc. Coaches go through an application process and then we vet to ensure quality. Since launching, we’ve been overwhelmed with coach interest. They love being able to give back, set their own prices, take on as many clients as they want, and work on their own time (90% of our coaches indicate helping people realize their dreams as a top reason for signing up and 80% mention a side hustle as a strong motivator).

The expertise and creator economy is red hot right now. One in three Americans has a side hustle—one in four plans to start one. Leland is building a platform for people with expertise to be able to share and monetize it. Our mission is to unlock human potential by making the world’s expertise more accessible. We think the next wave of the expertise economy will be about enabling more intimate (1:1 or small group) expertise sharing.

Berger: What’s the vision here? How is the world different in 10 years because of Leland?

Koelliker: Leland wants to create a world where everyone has access to the help they need to reach their goals and unlock their potential. We believe that help should be personalized and affordable.

In the same way, Google organized the world’s information and made it searchable, Leland aims to organize the world’s expertise and make it accessible in a more personalized way. For example, if you were trying to learn how to play the guitar, would it be more effective to watch a video of a famous rock star or work 1:1 with a local guitar teacher? Sure, the rock star is fun to watch, but the local teacher can give you personalized feedback that dramatically improves results.

Expertise on its own can be valuable, but expertise plus personalization is life changing.

Leland is building the marketplace that powers the expertise economy.


The term agency get’s bounced around when discussing one’s sense of independence. Yet, the transition from high school to college can be experienced as anything but liberating. Koelliker is betting that this generation understands the power of agency and that they will pay to obtain it. An impressive seed round indicates others are betting on him too.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.