Pros
Most of the staff at IvyMax is quite nice and easy to get along with. You also have a lot of freedom and little supervision, but this is mostly due to poor management (see Cons). They provide lunch on weekends, but it's always from the same restaurant.
Cons
If you are the type of person who doesn't particularly care about making a difference or helping people, IvyMax will be just fine for you; the office environment is pleasant and the job is quite easy. If, on the other hand, you want to educate young people or get some sense of fulfillment from your job, seek employment elsewhere. IvyMax's philosophy seems to be "let's find ways to trick schools into admitting underqualified applicants." Most of IvyMax's students are first-or-second-generation Chinese immigrants, so that mostly involves faking a proficiency in English. You'll notice, if you look at their website, that IvyMax uses the language of a school: they call themselves an "academy," the head of the company is called the "Principal," and they do offer classes. Some of IvyMax's instructors are great, to be sure, and they legitimately teach their students about important subjects. But the management's focus is on producing appealing college and job applications, not on education in any meaningful sense (more on this later). My position is/was "Senior Editor*," which meant that during application season, I helped students with their essays and applications. This part of the job was alright, as I got to help genuinely bright young people. However, on many, many occasions, I was asked to behave unethically. Once, I was asked to "edit" (read: re-write) a letter to a private high school on behalf of a student who spoke very poor English. The goal was to convince the school that the student should be placed in the non-ESL track, even though the student very clearly belonged in the ESL camp. On another occasion, I was asked to "edit" a job application cover letter, again to convince the recruiter that the applicant was proficient in English - when they clearly were not. In general, I was pushed to polish students' pieces, but not to teach them how to write better. Furthermore, IvyMax trades in nonsense "experiences" that pad college applications, but provide no real edification for students. Ideas like "leadership" and "service" are tossed around as if they have some significance. Meanwhile, the materials for our English classes are in complete disorder, and no one puts the slightest effort into or shows the slightest concern for genuinely improving the skills or understanding of the students. In a similar vein, company meetings center around advertisement and sales, with no regard for providing a quality service. As an instructor, I constantly had to apologize to students for things that any professional company would have thoroughly taken care of: workbooks were missing pages, or were not put together consistently from student to student, lessons were painfully outdated and/or incoherent (because they are cobbled together from grammar books with expired copyrights), our office lacked basic supplies like whiteboard markers, LINED PAPER, and staplers. In fact, a basic sense of professionalism is lacking in all of IvyMax's administrative staff. I routinely had students show up with no prior knowledge on my part because I had not been told that a student had been scheduled. Students became (understandably) furious with me because administrators mishandled their college application materials. In general, no one seems to communicate or pay any attention to serving our students in an orderly and responsible manner. As a final complaint, the management is stuck in the past, and has very strange ideas about classrooms. The best example of this is their cell phone policy. Cell phones are not allowed in IvyMax's classrooms (even though the staff are on their phones 24/7, including the "Principal," who runs the company and originated this policy), despite the fact that the rest of the modern world has gotten over its trepidation of having them in public. Before this policy was implemented, my students had their phones in class, but did not use them when I was talking because they tend to be well-behaved, respectful young people. There were quite literally no problems. After the policy, the students felt disrespected (because they were being disrespected), and went to great lengths to smuggle them in and use them when they weren't supposed to. Moreover, because so many of the students are ESL learners, they had previously used their phones to look up words that were new to them. After the ban, responsible students who could have been using their phones as learning resources were forced not to, and the irresponsible students (who are less inclined to follow rules) were MORE inclined to be disruptive. When I brought this up with the Principal, I was told they could bring laptops, which is ridiculous because those are just as potentially distracting, if not more so. Sorry for the long rant, but this is a genuinely terrible company. *This was a farcical job title. I was "Senior" on my first day, and my job duties were much closer to that of a tutor or teacher than an editor.
