FAQs for Admissions Packages

Q: How do I know which services are right for my student? 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.

Q: Why do I need to book all of these services so early? 

It’s really hard to get on the CTK team’s calendar if you contact us late in the summer 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 so they can get the 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.

Q: Why would my student need a Personal Essay package if they will write the personal essay in English class at the end of their junior year? Why would we need any help with this? 

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!).

Q: Application Planning Package: Why would my student need help filling out Common App? They already have a SCOIR/Naviance account, so what more do they need? Isn’t this what the guidance counselor does? Isn’t everything organized on those web sites?

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 deadline? We use these sessions to create a Master Timeline for the student so that coach and student know exactly what is due and when for every school.

Q: Why should my student begin any of this work before fall of senior year? I applied to Yale in 1992 by slipping my FedEx envelope with my one essay and typed-out form into a drop box on December 30. 

There are two issues: the first is that the amount of work per application is often much more than it was 30 years ago (eight additional prompts for Stanford in addition to the Common App essay), and students often apply to more schools than they did a generation ago. 

Second, the application cycle is earlier than it was for Gen X parents: it opens on August 1 for Common App schools and the University of California (some individual schools post applications before August 1). With students’ heavy senior year course loads, it is advantageous for many students to frontload writing the personal essay and getting organized with the Master Plan before August 1 so they can get ahead of applications before school work kicks in. Moreover, some schools offer rolling deadlines, and for those schools, the sooner the application is in, the sooner the student will receive a response. Other schools have early action or early decision deadlines as soon as October 15 (and typically November 1).