What types of students do you work with? Do you work with challenging profiles?

All of them. Every background, every profile type, every competitive starting position. We work with students from elite prep schools and first-generation applicants from under-resourced high schools. Students with flawless transcripts who need help telling a story that isn’t forgettable, and students with real red flags who need careful, thoughtful framing. International applicants. Athletes. Artists. Students whose parents built companies and students whose parents drive buses.

We don’t quietly screen out challenging profiles to protect a marketing number. That’s worth saying plainly, because it’s common in this industry and almost never acknowledged. When a firm turns away applicants with real risk and then advertises a 98% success rate, that number isn’t measuring the quality of the consulting — it’s measuring the selectivity of intake. Our 96%+ success rate is built across the full spectrum of candidates, including many that other firms would decline.

That said, we’re honest about what’s realistic. If a student’s target list is misaligned with their current profile, we’ll say so — not to limit ambition, but to ground the strategy. Our job isn’t to validate unrealistic lists; it’s to help build smart portfolios that include genuine reaches alongside credible targets and reliable options. Sometimes the most valuable thing we offer is the honest assessment a family wasn’t hearing anywhere else.

The students who thrive with us tend to share one quality that has nothing to do with stats or pedigree: they’re coachable. They engage, they reflect, and they’re willing to be pushed past what’s comfortable. If that’s your student, everything else is our job.