How do you decide which consultant to pair with my child?

Several factors come into play at once: your student’s background, personality, target schools, the specific strategic challenges in their profile, and any preferences your family has expressed. If a requested consultant is available, we’re happy to accommodate that.

That said, here’s what actually drives the best outcomes. The strongest predictor of a great engagement isn’t where a consultant went to school or whether they’ve worked with a particular demographic. It’s whether the consultant is genuinely excellent at diagnosis and coaching — and whether there’s natural working chemistry with the student. A brilliant strategist who doesn’t connect with a particular seventeen-year-old will produce worse results than a slightly less experienced consultant who makes that student want to show up, think harder, and do the work.

We’re confident making these matches because of how carefully we hire. Our screening process evaluates work product without a résumé attached — we’re selecting for craft and judgment, not credentials. We’re selective about who joins our team, not for prestige, but because the quality of your consultant matters more than anything else we do. The result is a team where we could assign any consultant, sight unseen, to our most demanding engagement and feel genuinely confident.

So while we do optimize for fit, the honest truth is this: there’s no bad match. The baseline is simply that high.