Smart college solutions for every need, every budget.

We offer two core types of service, based on where a student is in the process.

The first is application consulting, designed for students in the second half of junior year through senior year who are actively applying. These packages focus on strategy, storytelling, and execution during application season. They come in three tiers — Silver, Gold, and Platinum — and are further scaled by the number of applications a student is submitting. An application is defined simply: one Common App plus that school’s required supplemental essays. Apply to one school, that’s one application; apply to five schools, that’s five. Clean, transparent, no games.

The second is mentorship consulting, designed for students in grades 9–11 who want structured, ongoing guidance before application season begins. Mentorship is offered in one-year engagements at three levels — Silver, Gold, and Platinum — based on how many consulting hours a student needs over the year. All mentorship engagements begin with the same strategic discovery process, then shift into a bank of hours. We’ve studied the patterns closely, and most students’ needs fall cleanly into one of these three levels. The flexibility is intentional: families can dial support up or down year-to-year as needs change, rather than being locked into a rigid multi-year contract.

Across all packages, our model is the same. Every student works with a lead consultant and a dedicated essay specialist. That’s not an add-on — it’s the baseline. The difference between tiers is scope, not quality: how early we start, how many applications we support, and how deep the strategic work goes beyond essays. We deliberately avoid nickel-and-diming because it distorts incentives. Your consultant should be focused on what strengthens your application, not on whether a recommendation triggers an upsell.

At a high level, the difference between tiers is scope, not quality. We don’t tier consultants by experience or credentials — every student gets the same caliber of lead consultant and the same dedicated essay specialist. The engine is the same in every tier. What changes is how much road you want, and how many features matter to you.

For mentorship services, tiers are determined by the number of consulting hours included over a one-year engagement. All mentorship students go through the same initial strategic discovery process; the difference is how much ongoing guidance you want during the year. Some families need a lighter touch to stay on track. Others want more frequent check-ins, deeper iteration, or help navigating complex academic or extracurricular decisions. We’ve designed the tiers around those natural usage patterns.

For application services, the tiers are modular.

Silver covers the core: application strategy and essay work. It’s designed for students who are already strong and focused, or who are coming to the process later and need efficient, high-impact support.

Gold includes everything crucial across the full application — strategy, essays, activities, recommendations, and interview preparation. For most students, this is the sweet spot. If you want everything you actually need to submit strong, competitive applications, Gold is it.

Platinum includes all of the above, plus additional layers like blind application reviews, admissions committee simulations, premium interview prep, and other advanced tools. None of these are strictly necessary — you can get excellent results without them — but for families who want maximum coverage, more perspectives, or have specialized needs, they can be genuinely valuable.

Think of it like choosing between trim levels of the same car. The engine is identical. The safety is identical. Gold gets you where you want to go with everything that matters. Platinum adds comfort, optional features, and extra margin — worthwhile if those things matter to you, unnecessary if they don’t. You can’t go wrong with Gold or Platinum; the right choice depends on how much support you want, not on the quality of the work.

On the consultation call, we’ll tell you plainly which tier makes sense. If you don’t need the higher one, we’ll say so.

In general, no. Our pricing reflects the way we staff and deliver the work, and we don’t routinely restructure packages or spread payments out as a default.

That said, if there’s a real logistical constraint or timing issue, we’re always open to a straightforward conversation about whether there’s a way we can make things work. Talk to us.

We offer an initial grace period at the start of an engagement. During that window, you can change your service level — add scope, reduce scope, or cancel — for any reason. We do this so you can commit with clarity, not pressure. If something doesn’t feel right once the process begins, it’s better to correct course early than to force a bad fit to continue.

After the grace period ends, we do not offer refunds. At that point, your consultant and essay specialist have committed real, finite capacity to your work. We’re a boutique firm by design, and we don’t overbook or overload our consultants — when we say yes to a client, it necessarily means saying no to someone else. That’s how we protect quality, and it’s also why the policy needs to be firm once the engagement is underway.

We’re upfront about this so there are no surprises and no fine-print games. Read the policy, ask questions, and make sure the fit is right before you sign — that’s exactly what the consultation call is for. Once we start, we’re all in — so make sure you are too.

At the highest level, this work doesn’t get more “elite” than taking a genuinely complex student — imperfect stats, a personality that isn’t easy to coach, real narrative risk — and helping them compete credibly for the most selective universities in the world. That is the hardest version of this job. And it’s one we do as well as anyone, full stop. If a student has real Harvard-level potential in them, our job is to surface it, shape it, and make sure the admissions committee actually sees it. That’s the work. We don’t know how to do it halfway, and we don’t know how to do it better by charging ten times as much.

So why do some firms cost dramatically more? In some cases, you’re paying for scale inefficiencies. In others, for layers of branding, legacy prestige, or the comfort of an ultra-high price tag itself. There are categories of luxury where cost becomes part of the perceived value — where spending more feels like doing more, regardless of whether the underlying service meaningfully changes.

If that’s what you’re optimizing for, you should absolutely choose accordingly. But if what you care about is the quality of thinking, the sharpness of strategy, and whether the work actually holds up against the strongest applicants in the pool, price alone won’t tell you that story. Put us up against anyone in the arena. We’re comfortable with that comparison.

If you’re looking for the most expensive option, we may not be your firm. If you’re looking for the best work, we’ll see you in the winner’s circle.

You might not need to. If your situation is straightforward — strong profile, clear story, a limited school list — a lighter-touch option may be perfectly adequate, and we’d rather you save the money than pay for firepower you don’t actually need. We’re happy to say that plainly, and in some cases we can even point you toward other options within our broader network that may be a better fit.

Where the price difference starts to matter is in the caliber of judgment you’re buying. High-stakes admissions work is ultimately about the quality of the person diagnosing the situation and steering the strategy. The consultants who can do that consistently — especially with complex profiles or competitive targets — command real market value. You can find less expensive alternatives, but at some point the math forces a question: what’s being compromised? Experience, attention, selectivity, or depth of thinking.

Think of it the way you’d think about buying a diamond. There’s a range where the price differences are about preference. And then there’s a price below which you start wondering what you’re actually getting. If your application is low-risk, that uncertainty may be acceptable. If it isn’t, it usually isn’t.

The real question isn’t whether Admissionado is cheaper or more expensive than someone else. It’s whether the level of expertise you’re buying matches the stakes of your situation. If it does, we’re a strong fit. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too.

Yes — and there’s a reason not every firm does. Hourly and a la carte work can be genuinely useful in the right situations, and genuinely frustrating in the wrong ones.

These options are best for students who already have a coherent strategy and need a targeted second set of eyes: pressure-testing an essay, sanity-checking a school list, or preparing for an interview. In those cases, a focused engagement can deliver exactly what’s needed without forcing anyone into a larger package that doesn’t make sense.

What hourly work is not designed to do is replace comprehensive consulting. If what you actually need is someone diagnosing the full picture, shaping the narrative, and quarterbacking the process over time, a one-off session won’t deliver that — and pretending otherwise helps no one. We’re careful about this distinction precisely because we want expectations to stay aligned with reality.

We offer flexibility because some families truly need only a narrow slice of help. Our job on the consultation call is to be honest about whether that’s you. If it is, we’re happy to meet you there. If it isn’t, we’ll tell you that too — before you spend money on the wrong solution.

There’s no formal enrollment deadline, but there are real constraints that matter. Consultant availability is finite. Our strongest consultants fill their rosters months before application season, and once they’re full, we don’t overload them — because overloaded consultants do worse work, and we’d rather turn away revenue than dilute quality.

The ideal timing depends on where your student is in the process. For families starting in freshman, sophomore, or junior year, engaging early preserves the full range of strategic options: profile development, extracurricular planning, testing timelines, and thoughtful school list architecture. For rising seniors, spring or early summer is the sweet spot. By late summer, we can still add value — but the runway is shorter, and options are narrower, simply because deadlines are closer.

The consultation call costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If you’re even considering working with a consultant, having the conversation sooner expands your choices. Waiting rarely does.

Usually, no. Our packages are priced to cover the full scope of work most students need, and we do that deliberately because we hate nickel-and-diming. We don’t want clients paying extra for things that are reasonably predictable parts of the process, and we don’t want anyone subsidizing services they’ll never use.

There are two exceptions worth calling out. The first is rush work. When timelines compress at the last minute, delivering the same quality requires outsized effort and reallocation of consultant capacity. We do offer rush support when needed, but it comes at an additional cost — not as a penalty, but because it genuinely takes more to execute well. Our goal is always to help clients avoid this scenario through early planning, not to profit from it.

The second is highly specialized situations that fall outside the norm — things like Oxbridge-specific interview preparation or other uncommon requirements that don’t apply to most applicants. It wouldn’t be fair to bake those costs into standard pricing, so in rare cases, they’re handled separately.

The principle is simple: we price our services so that most clients never see an extra charge, and when something truly falls outside the expected scope, we talk about it clearly and in advance. You’ll never be surprised by an invoice you didn’t understand or agree to.