College Admissions Counseling | Educational Consultant

At Ivy Coach, we provide college counseling to students seeking admission to Ivy League colleges as well as other highly selective universities. Whether it’s through Zoom, phone, or email, we are able to work with students from across the United States and around the world.

To get into a highly selective college, applicants must stand out from the tens of thousands of applications that colleges receive each year. It’s no wonder so many parents have been seeking assistance from educational consultants.

Overall admission rates for the Class of 2025 at the Ivy League schools ranged from 3.4% (Harvard) to 8.7% (Cornell)
High SAT / ACT scores and grades alone don’t suffice
Well-rounded students who excel in sports, music, community service, and more are not what highly selective colleges are seeking

Free 20-Minute Consultation

We offer a free 20-minute consultation to parents and students by telephone (or Zoom if the parents and students are outside of the United States). This is an opportunity for you to ask questions about our counseling services and how Ivy Coach can help you navigate the highly selective college admissions process. All we ask is that you complete our free consultation form. Once we receive it, we will email you our fees and ask you to respond with some dates and times that are convenient for you for our free consultation. Based upon the 20-minute consultation, we will recommend to you how we can proceed.

One-Hour Strategy Session

For students who first come to us as middle schoolers or as ninth, tenth, or eleventh graders, we begin with a one-hour strategy session. In advance of this strategy session, we request a student’s transcript, any testing they’ve completed, a list of extracurriculars, Naviance/SCOIR/Maya Learning log-in information (if your child has such an account), etc. During this strategy session, we put together a plan so that your child is sure to max out on his or her school’s courses, fill in any gaps he or she may have (that you may not know about), take courses outside of his or her school (if necessary), know which exams to take and when to take them, and — if the student is in eleventh grade — come up with an appropriate list of colleges. In so doing, we would also develop an academic and extracurricular strategy that will make your child as competitive as can be to the colleges to which he or she will eventually apply. Whether you proceed with our assistance with the college application process or not, you will come away from this one-hour strategy session with invaluable insight into the process. One common comment we hear subsequent to this one-hour strategy session is: “So much of what I thought I knew was wrong.”

Assistance with College Applications

The vast majority of applicants to highly selective colleges submit applications that not only don’t help their case for admission but indeed significantly hurt their chances. They submit cliché essays about sports, community service, deceased grandparents, trips to Nicaragua, and playing first chair violin. ZZZzzz. And then some. They submit supplemental essays that don’t convey why they want to attend a specific university. Maybe the premise of their Why I Want To Go To A Specific College Essay focuses on that university’s great liberal arts education. Well, they’re not fooling anyone. Just about every highly selective college offers a great liberal arts education. Our students do their homework. They show rather than tell admissions officers how much they want to attend a specific university and why.Read MoreLess Text

For most highly selective colleges, there are a number of supplemental essays in addition to the Personal Statement on the Common Application. Some students may choose to work with us on just a few college applications and some students may choose to work with us on several applications. Our package, which includes interview prep, a review of the Common Application (there are so many mistakes that students can make on the application alone that they may not realize!), assistance with letters of recommendation (yes, students can help their teachers and school counselor craft powerful letters of recommendation), etc., depends on the number of schools you seek our assistance with.

Whether a student works with us on a few applications, including to an Early Decision or Early Action school, or on several applications, we will help that student find his or her angle so that in a sea of boring and trite applications, this student’s application is a refreshing and unique gem. Helping students tell their stories so that they’re distinctive and interesting is a big part of our secret sauce at Ivy Coach. And it’s a big part of the reason why our students tend overwhelmingly to gain admission to their dream colleges.

Other College Admissions Assistance

Letters of Enthusiasm after Early Decision / Early Action deferral or Regular Decision waitlist
Postmortem Strategy Session after Early Decision / Early Action deferral or denial
College Interview Prep

Maybe a student is first coming to Ivy Coach after being deferred or waitlisted. Ivy Coach can help this student stand out from other deferred or waitlisted candidates by helping craft a powerful and compelling Letter of Enthusiasm, a term we at Ivy Coach coined many years ago. Or maybe a student is seeking assistance with only prep for an alumni interview. Many students come to us for assistance with bits and pieces of the admissions process and Ivy Coach can sometimes accommodate these students as well. Or maybe a student needs help once he or she has earned admission to college in order to improve their writing in college papers. A parent once criticized us, “You helped our daughter get into Yale. But we never heard from you once she got there. We’ve missed your guidance.” While this is a high class problem, it’s one we’ve taken to heart.

Unlimited Package

Our Unlimited Package offers our clients the ultimate level of continuous personal attention to every detail in college admissions counseling. The Unlimited Package is our most exclusive college counseling concierge service. If the student is seeking our help with applying to 10 to 20 colleges (20 is the maximum number of colleges allowable through the Common Application), each requiring different, uniquely tailored essays, then this service is highly recommended. As a college consultant, we can provide the student with a step-by-step approach of guidance so that the student stands the best chance of admission to each of these many universities. While many parents initially inquire about our Unlimited Package, the vast majority of Ivy Coach’s students work with us under different packages and that is typically because of the fee for the Unlimited Package. And we make no apologies for this fee.