Where are my students now?
I left Pomona College in 2023 and began working with my first group of High Schools Seniors and Transfer Students shortly after. In my first year (2023-2024) as an independent college counselor, I had 4 high school seniors, who were thankfully admitted to many of their top choice colleges (USC, UC San Diego, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, LMU, Chapman, NYU, Vanderbilt, and Duke, to name a few).
During the 2024-2025 application cycle, I worked with 6 high school seniors, and I’m pleased to share where they will be attending this Fall. For the early rounds, we got 1 into UPenn (Wharton) through Early Decision 1 and another to USC in Early Action! The rest were Regular Decision rounds, to Harvard, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Pomona College.
Now let me be clear: my students did not get accepted to these institutions simply because they worked with me. There is no getting in without the student themself being an amazing, passionate, curious, critical, and creative thinker. However, I think an effective college counselor is able to help bring that out in their application, tell their story, and shape their profile in a way that is both compelling and strategic. And that’s exactly what I did!
To give you more context, I have highlighted my students with a concise synopsis of their portfolio. References from both my previous students and parents are available by request.
Class of 2025
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UPenn (Wharton)
Coming Soon…
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USC
Coming Soon…
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UC Berkeley
Coming Soon…
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Pomona College
Coming Soon…
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Harvard
Coming Soon…
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UCLA
Coming Soon…
Class of 2024
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Harvey Mudd College
This student attended a high school in Orange County, CA and was in the top 10% of her class. While her GPA and test scores were solid, we needed something more. To highlight her diverse interests, we collaborated to create a college application that showcased her abilities in both engineering and art. We shaped the narrative from one that was academically talented, to a candidate who valued interdisciplinary thinking and problem-solving. We ultimately decided to target Early Decision 1 - and she got in!
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Boston University
This student was an international student who attended a large, public high school in Los Angeles County. While academic performance wasn’t at the top of his school group (middle 50%), we were able to leverage his extensive experiential experiences. This was a case where we wanted to provide context for the middling academic performance with all of the time he spent doing community-oriented service work.
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Pomona College
This student attended a high school in Taiwan, with her dream school being Pomona College (I can’t think of a better student-to-counselor match!). For her, our work together mainly focused on 2 aspects: multiple essay revisions/edits and application strategy. With my background in Liberal Arts Colleges, we brainstormed and talked about the themes of her essay and short answers, specifically how best to showcase and tell her story. And with her being an international applicant, there’s a lot of strategy that goes into her application (financial aid, major choice, institutional priorities, etc.). I’m so glad it worked out for her!
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UC Berkeley
This student attended a high school in Diamond Bar, CA, where many of her peers apply to similar selective colleges at a very high rate (with over 90% of her peers going on to 4-year colleges). It’s competitive, to say the least. While her ‘dream school’ was UCLA, through our time together, I think she began to see more of what life could be like outside of Los Angeles. While she had many great options in Southern California, I’m so happy to see her taking that leap and getting out of her comfort zone by moving up North!