College Counseling Experts | College Admissions Expertise

Bev Taylor

Founding Partner, Ivy Coach

Bev Taylor’s name is synonymous with helping students beat colleges at their own game and earn admission to the colleges of their dreams. A trailblazer in private college counseling, she’s debunked the myth of need-blind policies, called for an end to Asian American discrimination in admissions, and demystified so many other hot topics in elite college admissions. Over the last 30 years, there has been no more outspoken, ubiquitous, and candid voice in highly selective college admissions.

Bev, a member of NACAC, is a former longtime high school college counselor on Long Island. She regularly conducts workshops on college admissions — presenting seminars to school counselors, admissions officers, students, and parents at Columbia University, the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, NACAC, Peterson’s, NYSACAC, NJACAC, College Week Live, and more.

Brian Taylor

Managing Partner, Ivy Coach

For nearly 20 years, Brian has been helping students at Ivy Coach gain admission to highly selective colleges. The son of the Founder of Ivy Coach, Brian is a graduate of Dartmouth College.

If you’re a regular reader of the most widely read college admissions blog, Brian, a member of NACAC, writes much of this content, serving as a tell-it-like-it-is thought leader in highly selective college admissions.

Brian has been quoted in The Daily Pennsylvanian, sharing insights on topics ranging from the impact of connections in admissions to why to choose the Ivies. Read his quotes in The Harvard Crimson on the waitlist or the elimination of SAT Subject Tests. Or in The Yale Daily News on why Yale’s applications dipped one year. Or in Barron’s on the topic of college tours, The New York Times on summer courses or first-generation status in admissions, or Le Monde on how great grades aren’t enough.

So much of the highly selective college admissions process comes down to students’ ability to share their unique stories with admissions officers. Brian knows how to shape great stories. He won a Peabody Award for producing the acclaimed Showtime series The Good Lord Bird, which earned an Emmy win and featured a Golden Globe-nominated performance. The American Film Institute honored the series as one of America’s greatest screen stories for its “contributions to America’s cultural legacy.”

Brian helps Ivy Coach’s students — through his unapologetic, straight-shooting approach — present themselves in the most interesting way possible to admissions officers. Hollywood is about storytelling to folks with limited time and attention. So too is college admissions.

Jayson Weingarten

Senior College Admissions Consultant, Ivy Coach

Jayson Weingarten served as an admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania. Within the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Jayson rose through the ranks from Admissions Counselor to Regional Director of Admission to Assistant Director of Admission over the course of four years. Jayson cuts through the perceived complexity and simplifies the admissions process for students and families. Jayson has written for a number of blogs and publications on a variety of college admissions related topics, including this fun idea for an SAT question he proposed with Penn’s Dean of Admissions in The New York Times. Jayson holds an MBA from The Wharton School as well as a MSEd from the Graduate School of Education in addition to a Bachelor’s from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ben Schwartz

Senior College Admissions Consultant, Ivy Coach

Ben Schwartz served for three years as an Assistant Director of Admissions at Dartmouth College. In the Dartmouth admissions office, Ben was responsible for evaluating applications and recruitment for applicants from the mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to other regions. During his time in the Dartmouth admissions office, Ben read and evaluated over 3,000 applications for admission. He holds an undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College as well as an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and an MPA from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.