How we help high school seniors get into choice colleges

By Rajkamal Rao  

We will be glad to help your 12th grader (or rising 12th grader) through every step of the college admissions process.

We are honored to have helped hundreds of student clients in the United States and from around the world win admission to top colleges and universities in the U.S. For the Class of 2024, several clients reported getting interview calls from the very best schools, including MIT, Caltech, Yale, Columbia, CMU, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Cornell, CMU, and Johns Hopkins. Several students got confirmed admissions to Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Rice, NYU, Vanderbilt, Wash U and CMU. A few got admissions to direct MD programs.

Many clients reported getting into some of the best public Ivys. UT Austin, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, the University of Michigan, Purdue, the University of Virginia, and the College of William and Mary repeatedly made the list. Clients also got into Texas A&M, Arizona State, the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech.

We place all of our expertise online. There's a good chance that our answers to many of your questions are already available for free. We also conduct numerous low-cost webinars to educate parents and children about all things college. We publish event details on our Facebook page so, please follow us on Facebook.

We recognize that the college admissions process is complex and parents need professional advice tailored to the needs of their 12th grader. Here are the various value chain elements of our service including the various proprietary tools and decks.

1. College selection and finalization, including evaluation of ED/EA strategies. [Included: Long-form resume template, our flagship guide to college admissions (280 pages), BS/MD deck for interested students].
   
   
2. Advice for H-1B families with children on H-4 visas.
   
   
3. Describing the step-by-step task plan to successfully complete a college application. [Included: College selection master tool, Campus visit questionnaire]. Our tool prompts clients to plan regular checkpoint/status calls to review progress.
   
   
4. Essay reviews for platforms such as the Common App, the Coalition App, ApplyTex, MIT Admissions, and UC Apply. We follow the same process as the top schools with two professionals reviewing your essays independently.
   
   Our founder and lead counselor, Rajkamal Rao, continues to serve as an editorial board member of tippinsights, an American media company. Clients find his writing/editing experience to be valuable during essay reviews. 
   
   
5. Supplemental essay reviews.
   
   
6. Financial Aid and scholarship planning. [Included: Our comprehensive guide to college financial planning].
   
   
7. Assistance in successfully completing college applications, such as for ApplyTex and the Common App. 
   
   
8. Assistance in petitioning high school or college administrations to handle extraordinary situations, such as requesting in-state classification for tuition, credit transfer, visa issues, or other exceptions.
   
   
9. Mock interview practice. [Included: Interview questions after the practice session].
   
   
10. Deciding on which offer of admission is the best, using our structured, analytical approach.
    
    
11. Any additional support.
    

Bonus: At the end of every one-on-one counseling session, we will provide you with a summary of discussion points and a clear set of action items for future conversations. Such a summary may include links to our proprietary tools, templates or posts. This is a free service and is extremely popular

When it comes to pricing, we do not want to constrain parents with burdensome fixed-price all-in-one contracts because not all students need help in all the above areas. Some may need assistance only for essays, or others a combination of elements in the value-chain list. This is why we follow a simple pay-by-the-drink model wherein you're always in control of what specific area of college admissions you want help with, how much engagement you wish to have, and how much you wish to spend.

All of our pricing is by the hour. Please review our fees section.

So, what is an approximate estimate for a Texas high school student who wishes to apply to seven Texas public institutions including the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University?

1. College selection and strategy meeting, plus discussion of step-by-step plan. Zoom call. 2-3 hours.
   
   

2. Review of student resume, one pass only, 2 hours. Resume template will be provided.
   
   

3. Review of the required essay, 700 words, both passes, 2-3 hours.
   
   

4. Review of the two UT Austin supplementals, 300 words each, both passes, 4-6 hours.
   
   

5. Review of the three Texas A&M supplementals, 300 words each, both passes, 3-4 hours.
   
   

6. ApplyTex application, SAT/ACT score send assistance, four checkpoint calls: 4-6 hours.
   
   

7. College financial planning and FAFSA application assistance, 1-2 hours.
   
   Applications to UT Dallas and other TX public universities with no essay requirements, 0 hours (covered by effort above).
   
   

8. Total: 18 - 26 hours. Average: 22 hours.
   
   
   
9. Application to honors programs, TAMU Engineering (which requires an additional essay), scholarships (which require additional essays), other assistance: Extra, but will follow the same pay-by-the-drink hourly model as above.

 

Please check out client reviews on Google.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.