“Every student we took on last year got into one of their own three top choices.”
Leo Cao, Aristo Scholars
Past results
Where our students got in
Top-25, or a top-ranked program
48%
Offers of admission in hand
57
Students we took through the cycle
39
The philosophy
Top colleges want a well rounded student class.
We take our philosophy directly from admissions officers and directors of admissions at Stanford, the UCs and other top 20 schools. A class needs a cellist and a classicist, so the work is finding the one thing your student is already undeniable at and building the file around it. Everything we do across the year runs off that one decision.
Know who is actually reading you
An officer reads forty applications a day in March. When the reader deciding is on their eighth hour, your writing must slow down a speedreader.
Build one thing to an unusual degree
Insiders call it a point of excellence: the thing a reader describes you by. Four activities around one identity hand a reader that sentence, and every student has one to find.
Submit fewer activities on purpose
The form gives you ten lines and most students fill all ten. Admission officers are speedreaders; don’t waste their time with three good extracurriculars and seven fillers.
Write an essay that teaches them something
The strongest personal statements hand the reader an idea they did not have. An officer who finishes yours having learned something argues for you in the room.
This is our own research: two years interviewing admissions officers at Stanford, Berkeley, USC and NYU.
Free · 30 minutes · Google Meet
Meet the counselors
Step 1 of 3Times in PDT
Pick a time
A live session for parents. Learn what colleges look for, meet the counselors in your student’s field, and find the one your student will work with.
- How admissions works, walked through live
- Meet counselors who match your student’s interests
- See every price. Nothing is decided on the call.
Admission counselors
The people we would hand your student to
Every counselor here is trained using inside admissions knowledge and earns a College Board admissions certificate. Each is someone a highly selective university chose for itself, a top-tier writer who knows the extracurricular record and the admissions process cold. The strip below is the kind of university this work is aimed at.
Computer Science Student, UC Berkeley
Tanisha Patil
Best for seniors: builds the timeline, sharpens essays, makes the whole application one coherent story before deadlines.
Education Student, Harvard
Maddie Alvendia Johnson
Human Biology Student, Stanford
Sam Beckett
Business/ Global Management Program Student, UC Berkeley
Ella Verde
Knows the Stanford and top-UC applications inside out, and works every essay until it earns the reader's yes.
Integrative Biology and Political Science Student, UC Berkeley
Fatima Faisal
Best for students with a real story to tell who have not figured out how to tell it yet.
Data Science & Economics Student, UC Berkeley
Advait Sharma
Every family on this roster gets all of this.
If yours is one of them we will know your student’s teachers by name before October, and you will have our number on the March night the decisions land. There is a full year in front of the 2027 cycle, which is the whole of what this work needs.
Free, live, 30 minutes. Choose your counselor after.