As a former athlete and a die-hard sports fan, I believe in the eternal value of leaving nothing on the table. I bring this same enthusiasm to the college application process. My experience with college applications dates to 1979 when I sent off my own handwritten essays to Dartmouth, Middlebury, and Williams a day after being told by my father that I should, essentially, “start over.” I was accepted despite the homespun look of my applications. After graduating from college, I took a break from academia and spent fourteen years working as a commercial fisherman in Alaska before being accepted into the graduate program in American Studies at Yale, where I received an M.Phil. before devoting myself full time to parenting. When my kids were finally launched in middle school, I worked towards an MA in teaching English, and then spent fourteen years in the classroom, coaching college essays on the side.

The students I have worked with have been accepted to a cornucopia of institutions, including (in no particular order) Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury, Columbia, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Bard, University of Chicago, Wesleyan, Bates, University of Vermont, University of Washington, Northeastern, Dartmouth, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSB, USC, Stanford, Cal Poly, Gonzaga, Colby, Georgia Tech, Georgetown, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Colorado College, NYU, Colgate, Yale, and Hamilton. I claim minimal credit in these successes—the most important variables are always consistent effort, commitment to things larger than themselves, stamina for testing, and total engagement with the writing process.