What kind of experience do your consultants bring?

We look for coaching talent above everything else. It’s a plus if someone has personally navigated competitive admissions and understands the DNA of people who get into the world’s top institutions. But beyond that baseline, what we care about is whether they can bring the heat.

Here’s our honest view on experience: it’s overrated by itself. We would rather have the equivalent of a Roger Federer or Carlos Alcaraz in their rookie year — someone with freakish instincts, natural feel for the craft, and the kind of competitive drive that makes everyone around them better — over a fifteen-year veteran who’s competent but has plateaued. Experience plus talent can be extraordinary. But talent alone, with the right environment, will outperform experience alone every single time. For us, coaching talent is the experience that matters most. Everything else — knowledge of specific schools, familiarity with application platforms, understanding of committee dynamics — can be learned quickly by someone who has the underlying gift. The gift itself can’t be taught.