For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the go-to person for first reads on college essays from friends and family.  I’ve always enjoyed reading the essays and offering feedback.   Then along came my own children, boy-girl twins who graduated high school in 2014.  I soon discovered first-hand how much more there is to college admissions than just writing an excellent Common App essay.  There’s the list and deciding whether to ED, ED2 or EA. There's the resume, ECs to rank, and endless supplemental essays.  Add to the mix outside scholarship applications and even more essays.  One needs much more than an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of it all. 

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Both my kids applied to sixteen schools which, in retrospect, was too many.  They got into most, but not all.   (I believe if you aren’t rejected somewhere, you haven’t reached high enough).  Bottom line:  I became obsessed with the entire college application process.  By the end of that crazy year I was, while not an expert (no one really is), well steeped in the nuances and nuts and bolts of the process.  We racked up a lot of Early Action admissions (always a relief).  We dealt with disappointment when a favorite school wasn’t affordable. We went through the agony of the waitlist.  We cried and we celebrated.  At the end of it all, my son was off to the University of Pennsylvania and my daughter to Fordham University, both with financial packages that were (sort of) affordable.  Between the two, my son and daughter had also been awarded $24,000 in outside scholarships which helped enormously when those first tuition bills arrived … and then kept on coming. 

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Since then, I’ve been working with a select number of students each year guiding them through the college application process.  Every student is different, and our approach is customized based on the student’s unique story and dreams for the future.  Some parents are hands-off, others want to be involved in every step. Some students have "dream" schools in mind and others are clueless where to apply.  That's fine. We will work with you to develop a customized plan, and we will modify it constantly as the landscape shifts throughout the process. 

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As for me, in addition to working with students on the college application process, I’m also a writer and a middle school English teacher.  I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

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