FAQs for Admission Services

 

  • Yes! We provide college test prep tutoring and academic tutoring for high school course work. 

    Meet the CTK team of tutors

  •  I am new to this process, and navigating it with my first/oldest child is confusing. 

    We know! We are all parents ourselves who, in addition to being admissions and writing coaches, have navigated the process with our oldest kids. Please book a free consult with Christina here so we can chat through the process and help assess your needs.

  • It’s hard to get on the CTK team’s calendar if you contact us late in the summer just before applications are due. We always try to accommodate as many clients as we can, but we are only human. We find that parents of a second or third child know to reach out by winter of junior year or earlier so they can book the admissions services they want. We also appreciate that students are still discovering what they want out of college and where they will apply at this juncture, so we have created sequential packages so we can get the best outcomes for our students.

  • Many junior year English teachers provide class time and some coaching for writing the personal essay toward the end of the school year. This is wonderful! Our experience is that often these essays either are written on a topic that does not highlight the student’s authentic self and/or are in need of major restructuring and heavy editing.

    We are happy to review your student’s school essay to provide feedback on whether the student will need a personal essay package or only 1-2 hourly sessions for coaching (or nothing!).

    Schedule a free consultation to get started.

  • At most high schools, guidance counselors are heavily burdened with a caseload of dozens or even hundreds of students. Their job is to guide the student through graduation and to submit paperwork to colleges the student has applied to. Our experience is that although a guidance office almost always provides the right information to students, many students need one-on-one guidance from a parent or coach to accomplish these tasks, including reviewing Common App for common errors (not listing all academic awards, choosing the wrong deadlines for applications, not moving colleges into the right column in SCOIR so guidance can submit documentation to colleges), answering questions (how do I apply test optional to some schools and not others? What is my GPA scale? Does my school rank students?), and troubleshooting problems (I can’t find the supplemental essays required by this college). 

    Even more importantly, we find that many students rely on Common App/SCOIR to know deadlines, but there are many deadlines and submissions behind those listed deadlines. For example, if a student is applying to Pittsburgh, does he know it has a rolling application and can be submitted in August? Does he also know that he can apply to the honors college but must write a very substantial essay? For Clemson, does your student know she has to submit a SRAR (manually inputted courses and grades for all four years) after the application has been filed but before the application deadline? We work with package clients to create a Master Timeline for the student so that both coach and student know exactly what is due and when for every school.

  • Some college admissions coaches only work with clients on a package basis. This makes it simpler for the coach– she can be the project manager on the timeline she sets– and it provides certainty for the client. However, that is not the right fit for every family. Some want targeted advice on an occasional basis, and others are looking for more intensive help but only in the admissions season of senior year of high school. Our team aims to meet those differing needs with several options:

    • hourly sessions scheduled by the client, 

    • admissions-season-only packages (the Personal Essay package and the 10-school Application package), and 

    • the Concierge package

  • We have learned from experience that although it can be beneficial to have the initial consultation and possibly hourly advising before the end of tenth grade, it is too soon to enter into a package relationship before the student has completed or nearly completed two years of high school. Until then, we cannot well predict the student’s academic trajectory or activity profile sufficiently to guide a family on the college list.

  • The main difference is duration and coach. Concierge clients begin as early as 10th grade with Christina, while application package clients begin the summer/fall before their senior year and are with a member of the CTK advising team. View this two page overview to see which services are included in each package.