Jamie Beaton

CEO & Co-founder of Crimson Education

“When I was a 14-year-old Kiwi kid, looking outside at the big, wide world of America and the dream universities I aspired to get accepted into like Harvard, I couldn’t help but wonder: How on earth could I ever get there? How could a boy from New Zealand who had the same dream as millions of high schoolers in the US and beyond, compete with the world’s smartest students?

As a student in Auckland, I didn’t have access to a college advisor who could provide me with guidance as to how I might navigate this process. My advisor was wonderful but also swamped with helping all of my peers navigate their own application processes to local universities.

The day I applied for Harvard, I had literally no idea what would happen. In fact, the reason for applying to 25 top universities was simply a matter of my teenage self attempting to hedge my bets.

I had worked hard my entire high school life, and I’d been passionately engaged in extracurriculars that mattered to me - creating clubs for all of my interests from journalism to human rights. I took six SAT subject tests because I wasn’t sure if two would be good enough, I took ten A levels not confident in taking three.

When I received letters in the mail, confirming that I had been accepted into every one of those 25 universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Cambridge, Wharton (UPenn), Duke and others, I was blown away with excitement. But I was equally as stunned that the opportunities I had been gifted were not available to the wider student community. I wanted my peers to have the same study options that were suddenly available to me.

I founded Crimson Education in 2013 with a vision to equalize the world leading university admissions playing field, initially on a micro-scale and now in 2020 on a level where we leverage millions of data points on college admissions, artificial intelligence and thousands of expert tutors and mentors from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge and other top ranking institutions with the incredible support of my international team.

Having attended Harvard, Stanford, and now Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, I can say that these institutions truly possess the springboard to transform one’s life and the lives of their families for generations to come. My grandfather John Beaton had to turn down a scholarship to a top British high school because he couldn’t afford the cost of the uniform, and as a result worked for more than fifty years in a highly manual role.

Crimson is the launching pad that equips young students around the world to fight and compete on the world stage. Our technology takes away the barriers of geography and legacy and sees our students - a great number of whom are first generation - reach their greatest potential thanks to the dedication and expertise of their personalised Crimson teams.

We have entered markets like the US and the UK where college admissions consultancies are in abundance, and changed the dynamic by offering more than the ‘obvious’ by matching students psychometrically to mentors and tutors who understand the way that they learn. We have offered internal financial aid and scholarships for under-privileged communities and dedicated ourselves to assisting our students beyond their life-changing admission to help them secure internships, ambassadorships and career opportunities beyond.

The college admissions industry has had its detractors in recent times and while much of it is completely justified, much of it is not. At Crimson we believe that no one owns a seat at a top university, and that such opportunities must come to those who work the hardest, the smartest and the most enthusiastically to realize their full potential.

At Crimson we are incredibly proud of our students and the 3,000 odd staff members who support them and we invite you or your child to join us, and seize your/their own individual position on the international stage.”