Our college admissions consultants and private school admissions experts help you plan and prioritize tasks and activities that will strengthen your applications and significantly boost your chances for admission to your top-choice schools.
By working with the best college admissions consultants, you will get a jumpstart in the following areas:
Choosing a college that is the best fit for you is a complex process. Our holistic approach to college consulting enables us to get to know your unique strengths, interests, and considerations. We create a balanced college list with carefully identified target schools, reach schools, and safety schools. Our consultants give honest advice, ensuring your choice of schools aligns perfectly with your academic goals.
No matter what schools you apply to, you’ll need to write a compelling admissions essay, a personal statement essay, or a Common App essay that sums up your life experiences and convinces admissions officers that you are a good fit for them. Our college application consultants will guide you through the process of essay writing and help you identify which personal anecdotes should be highlighted. We specialize in making your story stand out.
Even with many schools remaining test-optional, we believe that taking the SAT and ACT will be advantageous, especially if your GPA and extracurricular profile need a boost. Strategic and well-planned test prep, including tools like an SAT practice test or ACT practice test, will be a net positive for a college application.
Admissions recommendation letters provide insight into the type of student and leader you are. We help you understand what kind of information and anecdotes you should provide to your teachers and counselors to ensure they write glowing recommendation letters that admissions counselors lean on heavily. Read this article to help you choose the teachers you will be requesting recommendation letters from.
Filling out the Common App takes time, and the data that you provide will be the first impression that admissions officers will have of you. We help simplify this time-consuming process to ensure all information is relevant, accurate, and optimized to your college application so you don’t miss out on anything.
Visiting colleges is an important part of the admissions process, as it is a way for students to demonstrate interest. We advise on how to strategically approach college visits to learn more about a school and determine if it is indeed the right fit.
Your participation in extracurricular activities and the leadership role you play matter a lot in your college application. We provide strategic planning to ensure you choose activities that match your interests, your intended major, and the values of the schools you are applying to, avoiding wasted time and resources.
A high school internship provides students with hands-on experience in their field of interest. It equips students with knowledge and skills to make them stand out from other applicants. We can help you choose the most suitable fall internships for high school students to enhance your application and profile.
A student is responsible for choosing classes that align with their profile and selected major. Demonstrating rigor and achieving top grades (GPA) is a crucial part of your application. We’ll help you carefully select and plan your academic calendar to maximize your time while ensuring you still have bandwidth for your extracurricular activities. For tips on how to choose the right classes, click here
While both services focus on helping your child present their best selves, the scope and strategy for private school admissions are distinctly different from college admissions. For private schools or boarding schools, our consultants focus heavily on the admissions interview preparation, which is often the most crucial component. We guide families through navigating the unique school environment and understanding the mission of the institution. We also focus on profile building, ensuring their coursework and extracurricular activities align with the values of their target schools. College consulting, on the other hand, is much more concentrated on the written application: mastering the Common App essay, developing a strategic college list, and optimizing application sections like testing and recommendation letters. Our educational consultants are experienced in both processes, ensuring a tailored approach whether your goal is admission to a top-tier private high school, elite boarding school, Ivy League college, or a highly competitive university.
That’s a very common question, and it gets right to the heart of the current admissions landscape. While many schools are test-optional, based on our experience, we know that high scores on the SAT or ACT remain a significant advantage, particularly for competitive universities. If your child’s GPA or high school course rigor isn’t top-tier, a strong test score can act as a powerful differentiating factor proving their academic readiness. Furthermore, the skills gained during test prep sessions, like taking an SAT practice test or an ACT practice test, sharpen academic discipline and time management. As we have proven many times, submitting a competitive score is simply the best way to boost your child’s college application and maximize their chances for admission.
The College List Development service is arguably the most strategic part of our college consulting. The goal isn’t just to list prestigious names; it’s to create a balanced, personalized list that maximizes your child’s success and happiness or what we call the best fit. Our educational consultants begin with a holistic approach, thoroughly assessing your student’s academic strengths, personal interests, and desired geographic location. We then categorize schools into target, reach, and safety schools, using current admissions data to ensure an appropriate balance. We look beyond basic ranking, focusing on factors like departmental specialization, student culture, and job placement rates within their specific area of interest. This meticulous strategic planning prevents wasted time on schools that are poor fits and dramatically improves the effectiveness of every other part of the college application process.
We go far beyond simply telling students to “join clubs.” Our strategic planning approach for extracurricular activities focuses on developing a compelling narrative and demonstrating impact, depth, and leadership, not just breadth. We advise students to choose activities that directly align with their intended major or future career path, making them stand out. For example, a student interested in engineering shouldn’t just volunteer; they should seek a high school internship or fall internship for high school students at a local firm or university lab. Our college admissions consultants help students identify meaningful opportunities, secure these positions, and document their impact and leadership roles effectively. This process ensures that every activity listed on the college application provides powerful evidence of dedication and initiative, essential factors for successful college admissions.
DISCLAIMER
Cardinal Education is an independent educational consulting company. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any private school, including those mentioned on this website. All school names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for descriptive purposes only.
