If we had to pick the key ingredient to our firm’s secret sauce in helping students earn admission to their dream schools over the last quarter of a century, it’s our ability to help our students zero in on a singular talent which they will then showcase in powerful ways to admissions officers. We help find the weird in our students — yes, the weird. We dare admissions officers to pass on our students who are going to change the world in super specific, often small but meaningful ways. And while we experience great joy when our students earn admission to their dream colleges in spite of absurdly low admission rates, we also experience great joy when our students come to realize that they too can showcase unique narratives.

Today, we thought we’d share with our readers how our passion to find the magnificently unique can be effective beyond college admissions. It can be effective when our former students apply to top graduate programs and jobs. And, for us, that passion to find the magnificently unique can help lead to a television series. You see, we love finding unusual, remarkable stories in literature to help bring them to the screen — an effort that requires surmounting television executives who, like admissions officers, have a predisposition to say no. So when a television series makes the air, like a student earning admission to a top school, it’s the culmination of an often years long obstacle course.

On Sunday, August 9, we invite you to tune in to the bow of Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, which stars Academy Award-nominee Ethan Hawke in the iconic role of crazy American freedom fighter John Brown, the man whose failed raid on Harper’s Ferry very much served as the catalyst for America’s Civil War. The series, told with wit and humor from the point of view of a boy mistaken as a girl as he bears witness to the historic campaign, is based on the National Book Award-winning novel by the American literary treasure James McBride. It also stars Daveed Diggs, Wyatt Russell, and the young and remarkably talented Joshua Caleb Johnson. Our company’s managing director is among the series’ executive producers. In describing the role of playing John Brown, Ethan Hawke said, “It’s the best role I’ve ever had, bar none.” Do check out the trailer that dropped yesterday below.