Avoid this "College Prepatory Service" at all costs
This is not a home care service. This should be listed as a "College Prepatory Service"
The Ivy Institute (ivyinstitute .org) owned by Michael Marks as a nonprofit needs to be investigated/fined/prosecuted for criminal and civil charges for Fraud/Wire Fraud/Intersate Commerce Violations/Theft by Deception/Fraudulent Business Practices and non-delivery of services paid for. The contact details are as follows: Ivy Institute, President Michael Marks 1029 Piedmont Ave NE; Suite 205 Atlanta, GA 30309 - info @theivyinst.org or michael @theivyinst.org - https:// www. linkedin.com /in/michael-college-admissions-consultant /.
They have not delivered on services paid for and outlined in their agreement with exception to several SAT tutoring sessions that were supposed to be focused on past PSAT results and were not. The following services listed on the agreement as part of their services they deliver and are "experts"in: Application Strategy, Academic Assessment, Class Selection, Testing Guidance, Activity Recommendations, Community Engagements, School Breaks, Summer Plans, Teacher Relationships, Professional Experiences, College List, Main Essay(s), Supplemental Essays, Essay Transformations & Editing, Honors List, Testing Preparation, How to Secure Letters of Recommendation, Preparation for Interviews, Application Guidance, Application Review. They have not delivered any of the aforementioned services in over 6 months.
As far as I can tell the "College Preparatory Services" sold by Ivy Institute /Michael Marks are a scam abd they dont deliver on any of the promises they post on their website, on their agreement or in their marketing material. They are perpetrating consumer fraud, internet fraud and non-delivery of services interstate while claiming a nonprofit designation. Ivy Institute have been a bottleneck that does not disseminate important information in a timely manner to address critical documentation that was promised and guaranteed as part of their service which has resulted in personally incurring a financial loss of capital. The Ivy Institute consistently no showed to scheduled calls or failed to send web conference links timely and consistently rescheduled meetings to future dates which always resulted in non-deliveryof paid services. The calls they did attend were generic at best with no actions or deliverables. Any company promising that they are experts in a specific field, possess vast College prepatory experience and knowledge as well as strategic relationships and collect money for a managed service should have a plan/phased approach/milestone/method to engage, which they stated verbally they had but do not or have never shared in 6 months.
I have been a customer for 6 months. It tool over a month to have the first 30 minute "Onboarding Call" scheduled, wasting 1/12th of the annual payment out of the gate. The response times and availability were far from what any reasonable person would expect in the corporate world, should be 24 hours best case, 3 days worse case. I consistenly had to chase and follow up to have Ivy Institute engage with my 16-year-old-son. They try to blame my 16-year-old-son when they don't have a process, timeline, framework, or expectations set, which I have requested numerous times. They never proactively set next meeting and always involved a slew of emails after the fact to secure a call weeks out.
When I pressed them for accountability and shared my displeasure for failing to meet the false expectations they set, it is met with delays and meeting with other people in the company that come on calls "cold" and know nothing about my son (the student) or why they are on call. Most importantly, we were told before signing agreement that the onboarding calls purpose would be to assign my son, an advisor that would deliver the above-mentioned services and be proactive and hold cadence calls with him that were aligned to the course of major he is seeking college acceptance to. No advisor was ever assigned, only random people (Michael/Akua/David/Josh) that attempted to teach math different then taught in Florida. We had to revise our expectations on the tutoring and amended to SAT prep to try and gain some value as the high school work tutoring were a disaster with math methods not aligning to common core.
Again, the program wasnt marketed or sold as tutoring and not why we invested the money, it was to help us obtain other skills/engagements/experiences like internship for summer which were never attempted nor delivered.
Since we started in Nov of 2024 we have completed everything Ivy has requested of us and they have not delivered services paid for and are not providing refund. Authorities notified pursing legal.