Curiosity Creates Opportunity
01
Our Mission
To empower a student’s curiosity, personal growth, and skills development through the unique educational opportunities of the college application process.
Too often, the college application process can feel like a report card on everything a student has done during K-12. Instead, College Curious seeks to transform the college application journey from that of a hazardous obstacle course to an exciting adventure brimming with curiosity and skills development. As students complete each step of our education-focused college application curriculum, we immerse them in scaffolded exercises and successful examples that both build compelling college applications and develop students’ research, writing, and self-advocacy skills.
02 College Application Counseling for 11th & 12th grade
The counseling process begins with a comprehensive discussion and inventory of each student’s context, strengths, and goals for the college application process. This information, combined with counseling input, will serve as the starting point for personal narratives that demonstrate a student’s uncommon value and “fit” with colleges. In addition to this goal of demonstrating a student’s “fit” with colleges, we deliberately structure our counseling process and workshops to foster skills development in research, writing, and taking initiative – all of which are critical for college success.
Together with the student, we will build a list of colleges that reflects both the student’s current position and the student’s future goals. Since higher education institutions have all kinds of shapes, locations, and missions, our main goal while building the college list is to provide broad perspective and options that allow the student to discover colleges that “fit”.
The main goal of a college application is to demonstrate that a student both aligns with and can contribute to a college campus in a unique fashion. To best display a student’s unique “fit” for each college of interest, our counseling process involves crafting a narrative built upon a student’s strengths, experiences, goals, and understanding of what each college has to offer.
As students progress through our college application counseling, they will have the advantage of working with two counselors throughout the process. This means that students will receive assistance from both a former Stanford and Northwestern admissions officer and a counselor with over 20 years of experience who has helped students receive admissions offers to selective institutions such as Stanford and Harvard every year.
The core of our college application counseling revolves around the essay brainstorming and revision processes. Since so many colleges evaluate applications on a holistic basis, a student’s essays are often the crucial narrative pieces that tie together academic accomplishments, extracurricular activities, and a student’s aspirations for the future. Not only does our essay guidance process lead to compelling narrative pieces, but it is deliberately designed to encourage skills development in writing, research, and self-advocacy.
After students have prepared all the components of their applications with our guidance, we launch a complete review to ensure that these applications reflect the most promising version of each student. At this stage of the counseling process, each student’s application will demonstrate compelling strengths, a student’s unique voice, and a cohesive narrative that brings everything together.
After students receive their admissions decisions from colleges, we will offer our expertise to students and their families on which colleges would align best with the students’ future goals. Also, we can assist with decision appeals letters based on the circumstances of each student.