About Us...

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

We are a mother and son who have traversed the admissions process….successfully ( in the end). We learned a lot about the admissions process that we think will particularly help middle income and lower income parents navigate the admissions process.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have legacies to elite institutions, aren’t “development” families and cannot afford consultants that charge over $35,000.00 to guarantee our children admission to the school of their dreams. I have learned some parents do not know how to assist their children in the admissions process. My son has learned that a lot of students have no idea the number of options available to them when selecting and applying to colleges and universities. Whether your child aspires to gain admission to one of the eight Ivies, one of the “highly selective” colleges or universities, or any of the other many fine colleges and universities throughout the country, your child needs guidance from you primarily in the area of management of the applications and sometimes in the manner in which the child presents themselves to the admissions committee in their applications. If you are really brave, you can ask your child to let you look over their essays before they send them out with the applications. I would suggest that you ask under the guise of “just checking for spelling errors.”

This Blog might be viewed as a retroactive journal of our journey from application to the day my husband and I dropped our son off at college. Hindsight truly is 20/20. The Blog will contain our views on different aspects of the application process. Sometimes our views about the admissions and application process will be just as different as they were during the time he was applying for college last year. In the application process, he prevailed because it’s his life. However, on the Blog, well… frankly my dear…

Okay, just in case you are dying to know, who we are, here’s the short of it: I am a mother who has been, from time to time, while not on the “Mommy Track” an attorney, a law school and college instructor and an itinerant consultant for various enterprises. I have a hyphenated name which my son recently told me (when I introduced my self to his new roommate) I should stop using because it was so “seventies.”

My son is a freshman at one of the eight Ivies. I will let him decide if he wants to share which one. He earned an International Baccalaureate degree at one of the top public high schools in the country. I will let him decide if he wants to share which one. It should be noted that when he started the college admissions process his sole goal was not to get into an Ivy League school. He considered a number of top state colleges and universities. Being an old soul and not wanting to incur a lot of debt, he was open to whatever turned out to be the best situation for him academically and financially. By the luck of the draw, the” best” situation for him was his “ first choice” Ivy.

Okay, enough about us. I hope you will join us as we explore the wonderful world of college admissions.


Best Regards,

Mother (with hyphenated name) and Son (who doesn’t know as much about the seventies as he thinks)