Top Tier AdmissionsA former Admissions and Financial Aid Officer for Harvard University, Kristen brings over 20 years of experience working in higher education. Kristen has a PhD in Education with a concentration in Higher Education, an M.S. in Business Management, and a B.A. in English. Her PhD dissertation won the International Susan B. Anthony Institute Dissertation Award. In her role at Harvard, Kristen oversaw admissions for 17 departments and was also responsible for distributing funding from the National Science Foundation Fellowships Program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Student Research Fellowship Program. Kristen previously worked as a substitute K-12 teacher, as adjunct faculty at three universities in MA and NY, and as an educational researcher. Kristen recently published a book (Information Age Publishing) on faculty and tenure in academia which Stanford University Libraries featured on their recommended "Gender and Education Books" list. Kristen has written for Entrepreneur Magazine and published in journals such as the Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs and the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences Journal. Kristen has also been featured in and interviewed for publications such as U.S. News & World Report, the Washington Examiner, Yahoo News, and Business Insider.
You’re applying to graduate school, investing in yourself and taking the next step in achieving your educational and professional goals. Congratulations. Whether you’re applying for a Master’s Degree, Master’s in Public Health (MPH), Master’s in Public Policy (MPP), Master’s in Business Administration (MBA), or PhD, the graduate admissions process can sometimes be unnecessarily confusing. (And, […]
–by Dr. Kristen Willmott Having read thousands of essays and applications to top tier graduate school programs, I know what works and what might raise a red flag. Graduate school admissions officers and faculty can tell, quite clearly, if the personal statement they are reading was one of the first that the student prepared, or […]
by Dr. Kristen Willmott The time for graduate school admissions is in full swing with December, January and February deadlines approaching. As a result, we are fielding lots of calls from parents and prospective graduate students who are seeking help in the process. As the Director at Top Tier Admissions, and utilizing my experience as […]
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