There's a question your kid has to answer on every college application.

It isn't on the Common App. It isn't in any supplement. No college will ever say it out loud. That's why I call it the invisible question.

Here it is.

Why should we take you instead of the 50,000 other kids who look exactly like you on paper?

I have this conversation with kids several times a week, most weeks of the year, and it's an uncomfortable one. I tell them: I know you're special. I know your mom and dad think you hung the moon. But to this college, right now, you are a dime a dozen.

That's not an insult. It's a description of the pile. Thousands of applications, similar grades, similar scores, similar activities lists. I call it the sea of sameness.

Getting out of it is not about deserving it more. It's marketing.

Let me tell you where I learned that.

Years ago, long before I did this for a living, I bartended at the Four Seasons in Boston. The retired founder of Avis used to come in about once a week. Even...

Here's a scene I've watched play out for 24 years.

Great grades. Great scores. The guidance counselor looks at the software and says that one's a target, you should get in there.

Denied.

The family is blindsided. They did everything right and the machine still said no.

Mistake number three is not understanding that college admissions is a marketing exercise, not a meritocracy.

Start with the software. Most high schools run Naviance, some run SCOIR, a few use something else. Whatever the logo, it does roughly the same thing. It plots your kid's GPA and test score against other kids from your high school who applied to that college, and tells you how you stack up.

That's useful. It is also badly incomplete, for two reasons.

First, the admissions decision isn't built on grades and scores. It's built on twenty-something factors. The software can see two of them.

Second, your kid isn't competing against the other kids at your high school. They're being compared to kids in your high school a...

Mistake number two on my list of the 12 deadliest college planning mistakes is the one almost every parent makes without noticing.

You assume it works the way it worked when you applied.

It doesn't. Not remotely.

I graduated high school outside Boston. Back then Northeastern admitted 90% of the people who applied. Nine zero. It was the school you landed at when the other doors closed.

Northeastern's admit rate today is around seven percent.

Same school. Same name on the sweatshirt. Completely different institution to get into.

Now go run that exercise on your own list. The safety school you're penciling in because your neighbor's kid got in a decade ago may not be a safety anymore. It may not even be a target.

That's the trap. Not that parents are lazy. Parents are working incredibly hard off a map that expired.

Here's the rest of what moved while nobody sent out a memo.

Admit rates at the selective schools are at all time lows. A lot of colleges now cost north of $100,000 a year all i...

Last month I ran a webinar on the 12 deadliest college planning mistakes. About a hundred families showed up.

I opened with a poll. What's your biggest challenge right now? Getting into a decent school, paying for college, or you don't know where to start.

"All of the above" won. "Paying for college" came in a close second.

Nobody picked the thing I had listed as mistake number one.

That mistake is putting all your emphasis on the four years instead of the 40.

Everything in this process points at one moment. The decision letter. Families organize two years of their lives around it. And frankly the ads from people like me don't help. You've seen them. "93% of our students got into one of their top three choices."

You know how easy that is to pull off? Tell a Long Island kid to apply to Princeton, Stanford, and Nassau Community College. One out of three. Every single time.

So your kid gets in somewhere. Then what?

Getting in is not the finish line. It's the starting line. And where your ...

1:1 College Advising Introductory Call

There’s a mistake I see every year.

And it’s usually made by good students with good intentions and high college aspirations.

Once they understand that the application is only partly academic, the instinct is almost always the same:

“Okay. Then we need more.”

More activities.

More leadership titles.

More volunteering.

Another nonprofit. Another summer program. Another credential.

On paper, it sounds logical.

In reality, it often makes the application worse.

Here’s why.

Admissions officers don’t reward busyness. They reward meaning.

When a student does too much, everything starts to look the same.

Depth gets replaced by noise. Signal gets buried under activity.

John Wooden, legendary basketball coach at UCLA, said it perfectly:

Don't confuse activity with achievement.

I’ve seen students with 19 impressive extracurriculars look less compelling than kids with eight, simply because no one helped them decide what actually mattered.

1:1 College Advisory Introductory Call

There’s something I want to clear up, because it causes a lot of unnecessary stress for families.

The college application isn’t mysterious.

And it isn’t random, actually.

It's roughly 60–40.

About 60% of an admissions decision is academic-based.

Grades. Course rigor. SAT or ACT scores.  

(Sidebar: all admissions officers would rather see test scores than not see them. Because they're more accurate predictors of a kid's ability to do college-level work.)

Those things matter. A lot.

But they're not the whole story. Here’s the part that surprises people.

The other 40% is where outcomes really separate.

Part of the 40% is stuff that's out of your control:  race (still), your high school, your zip code, whether your parents went to college.

Then there's the rest of the story, where admissions officers consider questions like:

Who is this student, really?

What VALUE will they add to campus?

What story does this application tell (when w...

Private College Advising

Let me ask you something, Ajay

Where do you want your child to be 12 months from now if nothing changes?

Or in two-three years?

I don’t mean that as a guilt trip.

I mean it as a question worth sitting with.

Because after decades of working with families, here’s what I’ve seen.

Most parents dramatically underestimate the cost of staying stuck.

Not the obvious costs.

Not missing a deadline or choosing the “wrong” summer program.

Or picking the wrong classes. (I’m starting to do that now with my students, and I ALWAYS  have tweaks that aren’t recommended by guidance.)

The hidden costs. The ones that compound quietly.

Another year of confusing activity with achievement...

Doing more-more-MORE! without knowing if it’s the right move. 

Another year of stress around essays, activities, and decisions that feel high-stakes, but the actual payoffs are unclear.

Another year of watching other students pull ahead, not because they’re smarter, but because so...

1:1 College Advising

Can I give you a quick update?

The calls have been coming in, and I’m starting to see my Q1 calendar take shape.

I’ll be honest with you.  I haven’t looked forward to anything in my work quite like this in a long time.

Part of it is the format:

One family.

One student.

One focused block of time.

No rushing. No juggling. No noise.

Just sitting down together and figuring out what is actually going to move the needle.

But a big part of it is who I’m meeting.

These are thoughtful, motivated, coachable kids.

Parents who care deeply, but aren’t trying to micromanage or game the system.

Families who recognize the stakes involved and don’t want to leave it to chance.

That combination is rare. And energizing.

After doing this for decades, I finally know exactly what kind of work I enjoy most.

This is it.

Here’s what these sessions look like:

You, your student, and me. Working together on Zoom or in our Glen Head or Boca Raton office.

We identify the re...

Private College Advising

Let me tell you a little story about Ava, before she got into her dream school Early Decision. 

She came to me with a problem.

Not a grades problem. Not a test scores problem.

An essay problem.

The kind that doesn't just hurt your application, but could flat out kill your chances at elite colleges.

She'd been “working on it” for weeks, whatever that meant.

Her mom had looked at it from every angle.

Her English teacher was useless (college essays don’t have a “rubric”).

Nobody could see a way forward.

Here's what I noticed when we sat down one on one:  Ava was flailing.

Smart kid, strong student.

But too close to the problem.

She'd been staring at this thing for so long that, in reality, she hadn't produced anything, except two random paragraphs that she hated.

I saw the solution in less than six minutes.

Not because I'm smarter than Ava. (I'm not.)

But I was outside the problem.

I didn't have Ava's years of built up internal assumptions ...

[Trigger warning to any guidance counselor, sorry, "school counselor" who may have stumbled onto my email list:  if you're easily offended by what parents REALLY think about guidance counselors -- private school and public school -- you may want to skip this email. ]

There’s something I almost never hear parents say out loud, but I hear it between the lines all the time.

“I feel like my kid’s doing everything she’s supposed to…and I still don’t know if it’s enough.”

That feeling of "we're missing out" isn’t paranoia.

And it isn’t because you missed a checklist item.

It’s because the college admissions system quietly changed, but most school counselors are still playing by the old rules.  Here’s what I mean:

They're drowning in administrative work. Schedules. Discipline issues. Testing logistics.

Many don't even meet with students about college until junior year…which is far too late since grades 9-12 all count on the application.

And honestly? A big chunk don't even know thei...