We Save Our Clients Time
We provide specific, accurate, and unbiased information about college admissions and financial aid that is filtered through professional research and is constantly being updated.
We Can Reduce Stress and Anxiety
We provide individual attention and focus on specific needs, whereas reading a book on college admission speaks to more general needs. We can hold your hand and your child’s hand so to speak, while your child does the research under our guidance, and we keep tabs on their college timeline, keeping them organized. We can be a sounding board between parent and child and possibly unlock the emotional log-jams that block the college search and admission process from time to time. We can be quickly available by phone or through text, Zoom, Google Hang-out or email to answer a simple question such as, “what do the terms SAR, EFC, subsidized or unsubsidized Stafford loan mean?” We provide wisdom as to what are the best websites to go to for scholarships vs. the highly commercialized websites. We remind you of the correct website to start your financial aid request. For example, if you go to fafsa.gov instead of fafsa.com, you will be saving $85 by using the free government website for the financial aid application. Not only do we save you time, but we also save you money in the long run.
We Can Be A Sounding Board
We provide balance in an often out of balanced commercialized world. We can advise you as you confront the efforts put forth by vendors hoping to steer students toward specific websites or other sources of information that are really attempts to take your hard earned money without serving your best interests. We can inform students about how to write their college essays so they reveal themselves, their talents, their abilities, and are authentic, instead of phony. We can prepare the student for a college admission interview if and when that is required. Our son had to interview to get into college while I waited outside the Director of Admissions office. He was admitted, by the way, and graduated in four years! We can advise proactive families who engage this process as early as middle school, so their student is prepared to make the most of their high school years. Unlike middle school, high school grades are permanent right from the freshman year to their very last senior grade. We can advise you on course selection and class rigor, plus enrichment activities that will advance your preparation for college and position you for scholarships and merit-aid. We are mentor leaders who “engage, educate, equip, encourage, energize, empower, and elevate” students! Being independent allows us to bring so much more to the process than the constraints placed on high school counselors who must work with 400-500 total students in some cases. As a high school counselor in the ‘80’s’, I had 400+ students to counsel! I can’t imagine the ratio of students to counselors now, some 30 years later.
One example of the difference between an Independent Educational Consultant and a high school counselor is our willingness to meet on evenings and on weekends, which is huge! As a high school counselor, my teacher’s union would not allow me to work outside the contract day which ended at 3:30 pm. So I volunteered my time on evenings to help students and parents navigate the waters of high school. We are “user friendly,” but we also set boundaries on our time so we can maintain professionalism to all of our clients. As a professional educator, I bring to my clients over 40 years of experience in all the facets of education from middle school to high school, college, and career. I have been a teacher, counselor, coach, department chairman, vice-principal, and principal.
Finally, I humbly assert that any student willing to engage in the “full service” process that I personally bring to students seeking college admission, will be empowered to prosper in college and beyond! I promise you that “The Best Is Still To Come”!
