Our Services
Essay Coaching • Candidacy Building • Private SAT/ACT Tutoring
Essay Coaching
Cost: Most Popular Options
$2,500/1 college (includes everything you need to apply to your top college, including: personal statement, supplemental essays, activities list, strategic branding, recommendation letters, major selection, etc.)
$10,000/15 colleges (includes everything you need to apply to a complete list of 15 colleges, including: strategic college list, major selection, all essays, personal branding, activities list, interview prep, letters of continued interest, early decision advice, etc.)
Full List of Options
$1,500/Personal Statement only
$2,500/1 college
$5,000/5 colleges
$7,500/10 colleges
$10,000/15 colleges
$12,500/20 colleges
$15,000/25 colleges
$250/hour for consultations
Your essays must be extraordinary.
Admissions officers read thousands of essays each year, looking for those rare diamonds in the rough: students who have a remarkable personal story, or a deep passion for something outside the classroom, or a gifted way of looking at the world. With so many applicants vying for so few openings, you need to identify what makes you different — what makes you extraordinary — and then sell it to the best of your ability. That’s where your college essays come in. And that’s where we can help.
What you can expect…
We begin with a FREE consultation. We can meet on Zoom or over the phone, whichever you prefer. If you’re the student, we want to know a bit more about you: your grades, your test scores, your passions, your interests, your achievements, and your top choice college if you have one.
If we agree to work together, we’ll request a credit card payment. Once we receive payment, we begin.
Our rates…
For $2,500, we help you with all the essays you’ll need for one college.
That includes your 1) full-length Personal Statement, plus all of the 2) Supplemental Essays that are unique to your college. Supplemental Essays may be shorter, but they are just as important — if not more so — and must be approached just as thoughtfully. Supplemental Essays can be challenging because they frequently ask you to explain why you’re a good fit for that particular college. This is where our insights into each school’s unique culture, strengths, and programs are key.
This package also includes 3) strategic branding, so we position your candidacy in the best possible way including your choice of major, and covers your 4) Honors and Activities Lists, where you must present your résumé highlights in the most strategic, concise form and in a way that supports your overall personal narrative.
Which essay package is right for me?
Since students typically apply to more than one college (even if they apply Early Action or Early Decision), we offer discounts on package deals. For example, for $5,000 we help you with all the essays you’ll need for up to five colleges, etc. These days, the majority of our students apply to anywhere from 15-20 colleges. The more competitive a college is, the more unpredictable their admissions response will be, even for the best students. So we compose a strategic list of Reach, Target and Safety schools to hedge our bets against all possible outcomes, including deferrals and waitlists, which have become increasingly common in recent years.
Instead of signing up for an essay package, you can also sign up for a single Zoom consultation ($250/hour) to get live feedback on your writing, brainstorm essay topics, or discuss your application strategy. These live consultations do not include offline editing, and are not meant to replace the comprehensive nature of our complete essay packages.
How our sessions work…
We conduct our writing sessions over Zoom. If you’ve already written a draft of your essay, we review it carefully, looking to improve structure, content, grammar and flow. If you haven’t started, we brainstorm topics, paying particular attention to what makes you stand out as a candidate. Aside from academic achievement, colleges are particularly interested in finding students with passion, purpose and drive — or a compelling backstory — and we highlight these qualities in you.
After each writing session, we give you a few days to work on a new draft, before reconvening again to make further improvements. We go back and forth like this, refining your writing each time, until we get them right.
Your college essays can’t be average — they have to make you look like a rock star.
Peter’s college essay about “garbage” helped him get into Yale where he’s studying environmental science.
Candidacy Building
Complete 1-Year Program:
$5,000/total (Includes 35+ hours of private consultations, high school course selection, extracurricular guidance, summer program ideas and application support, internship strategies, college networking, and capstone project development)
The key to college admissions: uncommon achievement
The single best piece of advice we have for parents is this: start early. Getting into a top university is a marathon, not a sprint. And while there’s a lot we can do at the 11th hour to package your student into a compelling candidate, there’s infinitely more that we can do if we start the process early. That means sitting down with students when they’re still a freshman or sophomore in high school (or earlier) and really taking a hard look at what they enjoy doing, where they can excel, and how they can differentiate themselves from all the tens of thousands of other applicants.
Read a Case Study of how we helped one student get into Cornell.
We don’t believe in pursuing activities that you don’t really enjoy, because it’s simply not sustainable. And on top of that, you’ll be miserable. Don’t play the flute if you don’t like the flute. Don’t join the debate team just because you think it will look good on your résumé. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t excel. And if you don’t excel, it won’t help your application stand out.
It’s far better to tap into things that genuinely interest you, and for us to strategically come up with ways that you can explore those passions in ways that challenge you, push you out of your comfort zone, offer opportunities for leadership and growth, and possibly even coincide with your long-term career ambitions.
What it’s not…
Candidacy building is not about padding your résumé. It’s about growing as a human being, which is exactly what you should be doing in your formative high school years. When you find something you love, and devote yourself to it consistently, that’s where you find growth, success and happiness. College admissions officers love candidates who demonstrate uncommon passion, purpose and drive, and they routinely select those candidates over other students with better grades and test scores.
That’s not to say your grades don’t matter. They do. But simply having a perfect GPA is not enough to get you into the best schools these days, because there are simply too many candidates like that. You need to offer them something much more: some kind of personal spark that gets them excited. And that only comes through uncommon extracurricular achievement.
Our pricing…
Building a student’s college candidacy is like hiring a private athletic coach to help them elevate their game from average or above-average to extraordinary. It takes time, focus and dedication, but the results are often the difference between getting in and not getting in to your top-choice schools.
Our complete one-year Candidacy Building program assumes no less than 35 hours dedicated to your student over the course of the year and includes: one-on-one Zoom sessions, brainstorming work, internship exploration, summer program advice, summer program essay editing, strategic high school course selection, career guidance, networking opportunities, community service ideas, capstone project development, and more. Our flat fee of $5,000 covers the entire year of candidacy building, including live sessions as well as offline editing and support.
The best extracurricular activities 1) tap into your genuine interests, 2) show leadership and initiative, 3) create an impact on your community, and 4) differentiate you from everyone else.
Rates:
Full Course: $3,500 (Includes 18 hours of private instruction, weekly homework assignments, and 4 full-length practice tests)
1-Month Bootcamp: $1,500 (Includes 8 hours of private instruction and 2 full-length practice tests)
Private SAT/ACT Tutoring
1-on-1 Remote Tutoring…
Most test prep centers feature large classrooms with no personalized attention. They are based on student volume, and they are designed as “one size fits all” programs. Our private tutoring is the exact opposite. We structure our entire program to work around the specific needs and learning style of your student. And we drill areas of weakness until they become areas of strength, tracking a log of the types of questions that give you trouble. Plus, we work around your busy schedule, and conduct all of our sessions on Zoom so you never have to leave your home.
Full Course ($3,500 for 18 hours) — This comprehensive program gives you all of the preparation you need to take the new digital SAT or the ACT test. We cover practice tests, test-taking strategies, time management, and all content curriculum, with weekly homework assignments. Plus we offer flexible scheduling. Some students prefer to meet twice a week, for one hour each time, over 9 weeks. Other students prefer to meet once a week, for 90 minutes each time, over 12 weeks. It’s whatever works best for you and your schedule.
Either way, you get 18 hours of private, 1-on-1 instruction. And students who complete our full course (including all homework assignments and practice tests) typically see substantial improvements in their test scores, up to 200+ points on their SAT, or 4-5 points on their ACT.
1-Month Bootcamp ($1,500 for 8 hours) — Our 8-hour refresher course is designed for students who don’t have time for the full course or the weekly homework assignments, but who really need to drill their areas of weakness, whether that’s Math or English or both. You can schedule the 8 hours any way you prefer. Most students like to spread the sessions out over a month (2 hours/week), but we’ve had students complete the entire course in a few days before their official test date.
Students of our Full Course frequently boost their SATs by up to 200 points, and their ACTs up to 5 points.