Axios

Northeast Students are heading to Georgia for college
“Students have said to me, ‘I don’t want to go to a college where everybody’s angry at each other and everybody’s fighting over everything,’” Maria Laskaris, a counselor at Top Tier Admissions, a higher education consulting firm, said.

Baltimore Sun

Johns Hopkins freshman class shows impact of Supreme Court admissions ruling

Maria Laskaris, a college counselor from TopTier Admissions, helps students prepare for and get into schools best suited for their needs, beginning younger than high school age. She agreed that the Supreme Court ruling affects primarily highly selective private institutions, but said the changes would not necessarily change how she advises minority student clients.

“I would make sure that any student I advise is aware of the landscape in which they are applying to college and various policies of the colleges they’re interested in,” she said. “It’s about how you set yourself apart. What do you bring to the table that makes you stand out from other applicants?”

On using a college consultant: “It makes the difference between not having a chance and having a chance,” said Michele Hernandez, a former Dartmouth College admissions officer who works with students from as early as the 7th grade.

Best Colleges

Rejecting Your Rejection Letter: Can You Appeal a College Rejection?
For the students who want to send back a rejection letter of their own, Maria Laskaris, a senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, says that while it might prove therapeutic, it will have no bearing on the school’s decision about your admission status.

“You might feel better dashing off a rejection to the rejection, but no, it will not change the outcome of your decision,” she said.

Here’s What Students Should Know About Gender Inequity in Selective College Admissions
“A lot of young women who are very interested in going to Brown can see it in their own schools and in their own peer groups,” she [Maria Laskaris, Senior Private Counselor at Top Tier Admissions] said. “They’ll report back to me, ‘Wow, no girls from my school have gotten in. Brown only takes guys from my high school.”

Still, she advises them, “If you want to go for Brown, let’s go for it. But you need to know it’s going to be harder.”

Laskaris added students should be aware that colleges often use the waitlist to balance the incoming class profile based on numerous factors, including gender.

“The waitlist is an opportunity to very strategically admit students to hit an enrollment goal,” she said. “And if the goal is relative gender parity, then yes, you might use the waitlist for that.”

Bloomberg

I Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy
As one of this fast-growing industry’s most visible practitioners, she uses methods that are publicly scorned by rivals but are nonetheless becoming part of the profession’s standard operating procedures…her clients… rave about the personal service: the regular phone calls to their kids… the academic help… the “brand” positioning… the advice about which colleges to consider and where not to bother; the hours she devotes to each application… Hernandez speaks twice as fast as most people, reads as if it were a competitive sport, and is forceful, opinionated and stubborn…Parents value her confidence; kids, mostly, appreciate her enthusiasm.

Bloomberg Markets Magazine

Halfway into the first meeting with college consultant Michele Hernandez, tax attorney David Selznick walked out of the living room of his home in Somers, New York. He says his head was pounding after he’d listened for more than an hour as Hernandez dissected his son Ben’s high school transcript and college admission test scores, nixed his summer camp plans and described how playing up Ben’s strengths could land him a spot in an Ivy League college. “I was sweating, it was so draining,” Selznick, 47, says. “We got four hours of information in an hour.” Advice from Hernandez paid off for the Selznicks when Ben, now 18, got admitted to Dartmouth last December. “At first I thought I could do this by myself,” says Ben, who graduated in June from Somers High School in Westchester County.

Boston Globe

Ivy League on notice: Can diversity survive Trump’s new order?

Nellie Brennan-Hall, a former associate director of admission at Brown, said schools like Brown care too much about maintaining a diverse student body “to just roll over” and follow the Trump administration’s orders.

“They might accept some of the demands from this administration to keep some funding for research, but the core of these schools is really the diverse dialogue that their undergraduates have,” said Nellie Brennan-Hall, who now works as a senior private counselor for Top Tier Admissions. “They’re just going to figure out a new way to do it. They’ll find whatever way possible within the legal realm.”

Northeastern completely reinvented itself. Here’s what that could mean for higher ed as a whole.
“People used to think of Northeastern as a community, Boston-oriented school, then a safety school if you’re going to [Boston College] or [Boston University],” said Mimi Doe, chief executive of the college counseling company Top Tier Admission. “Now, good luck getting in, with a single-digit acceptance rate.”

In a curious way, Doe said, Northeastern’s elite status makes it less distinguishable from the other big name schools in Boston on one front: Many students who are set on attending college in the Boston area but lack the scores for competitive schools apply to smaller, less selective ones, such as Curry College, Lesley University, or Emmanuel College.

Northeastern is “another shiny apple along with Tufts, Harvard, BU, BC, and MIT,” Doe said.

‘Harvard is Harvard’: Will controversy harm Harvard’s reputation?
Mimi Doe, cofounder and chief executive of the college counseling company Top Tier Admissions, said she has noticed that some students who were accepted to Harvard during early action this year are continuing to apply to other Ivy League schools, rather than committing to Harvard now — a departure from years past.

“It’s interesting and telling that this year there are students who are throwing their hat in the ring even though they have the golden apple in single choice early action from Harvard,” Doe said, but added she doesn’t believe that’s indicative of any larger trend for the university’s admissions or enrollment.

“The benefits will always outweigh [the concerns] just because of the brand and the reputation,” said Doe.

SAT tests canceled. College tours on hold. High school juniors struggle with life ahead
“They’re going to have to make adjustments for everyone,” Bayliss said. Families have been scrambling in recent weeks, and Bayliss and her business partner Mimi Doe have advised students to adopt a plan B.

Bribery scandal puts college counselors on edge
But there’s a line, Hernandez Bayliss said. When a potential client brazenly asked her how large a check he needed to write to Stanford University to ensure his child got in, Hernandez Bayliss walked.

“That’s not how it’s done,” Hernandez Bayliss said she told the father.

What’s the craziest thing about a $16,000 college application boot camp: that it has a wait list, or its secret location
At the application boot camp, students worked on all essays including supplements, completed the Common App, learned interview techniques, created a list of their activities and awards, and developed an admissions strategy to maximize early acceptances.

Harvard report found Asian-Americans faced admissions penalty
Students’ personal qualities are gleaned from alumni interviews, essays, and considerations about which extracurricular activities students participate in while in high school, said Maria Laskaris, a former admissions dean at Dartmouth College who now works as a senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, a Concord-based college counseling company.

Brown University Daily Herald

Fishing for Applicants with Shiny Hooks
In a video on the Office of Admission webpage, for a minute and a half — as soft electronic music plays in the background — John Krasinski reveals why “you should look no further than Brown University.”

Burlington Free Press

Tips From an Expert: How to Wow Top Colleges
Attention high school students (and your parents): Do not write a college application essay about your community service trip to Africa. No one is interested.
Write an essay that focuses on your intellectual curiosity and passion for scholarship. Discuss something that excites and inspires you in the classroom or laboratory. Describe to the admissions committee your scholarly interest.
This advice comes from Michele Hernandez Bayliss, a college consultant who lives in Weybridge. Bayliss works with students around the country and sometimes beyond, helping to steer their academic trajectory and guide their college application process….

Business Insider

Location, campus life, and abortion access: Overturning Roe v. Wade adds yet another concern to students’ college search
Dr. Kristen Willmott, a private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, for example, told Insider that one student told her they worried they wouldn’t receive “up-to-date, accurate information that isn’t skewed by politics” from campus health services if they went to a school located in a state where abortion is illegal.

BuzzFeed News via CNBC

Princeton is scrambling to block its admissions records from being released
“Everyone want to see what goes on behind the curtain,” said Mimi Doe, the president of Top Tier Admissions, a college admissions advising company. While it is generally known that top schools give applicants numeric grades and rankings, Doe said, “We haven’t seen the qualitative piece of this — the unspoken quotas. What will probably come out is that, for years, colleges have been — just as they did in the 1940s with Jews — saying, ‘we don’t want this person, because this is a stereotypical Asian applicant.’ These kids are penalized because of their race.”

CBS News Sunday Morning

The Tuition (& Admissions) Blues
At the top end of the scale in college coaching, Michele Hernandez says her objective is simple: to get kids into the school they want.
“Every year, 90 to 100 percent get into their top college choice,” she said. “Last year, I had seven out of seven kids get into Dartmouth, three out of four got into brown, three out of three got in to Princeton. I spend 50 to 100 hours per each student before they apply, doing applications with them.” Hernandez has admissions experience at Dartmouth. She’s written a best-selling book. And she has a success record she boasts about on her Website. Hernandez charges $40,000 for her services and starts working with kids in eighth grade. The only thing that could go wrong, she says, is college admissions officers finding out that an applicant is using her; but that, she says, has never happened. “I’m pretty good at hiding my tracks,” she said.

Chronicle of Higher Education

Michele Hernandez says colleges regularly play with numbers — for example, counting Asian Americans students among minorities in a way that does not provide black and Hispanic students with a realistic sense of the total. “It’s important,” she says, “for students to visit campuses, see the racial makeup of the student body for themselves, and ask for numbers confirming their observations.”

CNBC

To get in to an Ivy League, more families turn to expensive private consultants
“One hundred hours of random community service hours is a colossal waste of time,” Doe said. “They should be doing something they are passionate about.” “Colleges don’t want a well-rounded student, they want a well-rounded class.”

CNN

Amid campus protests, some teens and parents consider enrollment decisions
Mimi Doe – the co-founder and CEO of Top Tier Admissions, whose admission experts help students get into their college of choice – told CNN some students have already reconsidered where to attend, particularly when it comes to enrolling at Columbia University. Columbia has had perhaps the highest profile pro-Palestinian encampments and protests.

“We recently received frantic texts and calls from a student who got into Columbia … and [they] ended up taking the school off their list [due to the protests],” she said.

The SAT/ACT haters might have it all wrong
I reached out to Mimi Doe, one of the co-founders of Top Tier Admissions, which admittedly caters to students who have the resources to pay for extra help applying to college.

But Doe said her advice to all students going to college, regardless of their background, is to start early and to take the SAT and ACT seriously.

Here’s what you need to know about the College Board’s new SAT score
In a blog post, Top Tier Admissions said the College Board plan raises numerous questions. “Is it fair that the College Board, the group that has designed a test that has proven to be unfair and biased towards black and Hispanic students and those from low income backgrounds, is now telling everyone that they have a secret score that somehow mitigates the discrimination?” the post said.

Education Week

“The ironic thing is that colleges don’t want to see a package that is over edited. They want to see raw talent. In the most selective colleges, packaging doesn’t help,” says Michele Hernandez.

Entrepreneur

If You’ve Applied to College, You Can Pitch Investors. Here’s Why.
Surprising similarities in these life-altering exchanges include the art of persuasion as part of a unique communication skill set.
Motherhood complements a successful career in multiple ways — here are four ways I help them reach their full potential in my company.

Why I Hire and Invest in Working Moms — And You Should, Too
Motherhood complements a successful career in multiple ways — here are four ways I help them reach their full potential in my company.

6 Ways to Nurture Introverts and Quiet Leaders in Our Schools and Workplaces
From years helping introverted students thrive, here are my six best tips for nurturing quiet leaders.

5 Simple Tips for Incorporating Gen Z Into Your Workplace
In the years since I co-founded my company, a college admission counseling firm, there has been a profound cultural change in the students we advise. When we started the business, our students were millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. About eight years ago, that changed. Enter Generation Z.

Lessons Learned From A Midlife Venture Into Business Ownership
If you are also thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, here are the key lessons I’ve learned in my two decades running Top Tier Admissions…

How to Ace Your MBA Interview (Virtually)
It’s that time of year… MBA programs are offering interviews. Dr. Kristen Willmott offers her insider tips on how to crush the virtual interview.

Why Small Business Owners Need to Reconnect With Their Mission
When a crisis comes, don’t panic and don’t pivot. Instead, find new space within your stated mission to achieve your goals. You are the expert in your space. Trust that expertise and stay focused. It worked for us as we emerged with one of our strongest years under the most challenging circumstances.

10 Tips to Get into Undergraduate Business Programs
2021 may be the most competitive college admissions year to date. If you are looking to enter a business program, follow these tips to help navigate the overcrowded admissions process.

Forbes

The Real Work Before College Admissions: Raising Resilient Teens
Long before senior year, students are already learning how to navigate pressure, setbacks, and identity. The admissions process simply brings those lessons into focus.

Are First-Year Abroad Programs Reshaping College Admissions?
As application numbers surge, colleges are expanding alternative entry points, often through study abroad and off-campus programs.

When College Decisions Arrive, Parents Set The Emotional Tone
As Ivy Day approaches, parents set the emotional tone. Experts weigh in on how steadiness helps students stay grounded and resilient amid college admissions stress.

How Ambitious Girls Can Thrive Without Burning Out
Gen Z girls are redefining ambition with curiosity and purpose. Here’s how that shift supports well-being and leads to stronger college outcomes.

Applying To Selective Colleges? Earn Top Grades—Then Get A Hobby
Hobbies that show curiosity, discipline, and intrinsic drive can set top students apart in selective college admissions.

The New Education Luxury: Family Retreats To Think About College
Families are turning to structured retreats that blend vacation, wellness and strategic reflection, reshaping how major education and legacy decisions are made.

How Parents Can Better Prepare Their High School Boys For College
Why timing, temperament, connection, and developmental realities—not intelligence—shape how boys experience high school and college readiness.

Sustained Attention Is The New Ivy League Advantage
Attention spans are shrinking in a scrolling culture. What art history, neuroscience, and college admissions reveal about rebuilding focus.

3 Ways To Strengthen Your Ivy League Candidacy Over Winter Break
Early admissions results signal another highly competitive year. Learn how students can use winter break strategically to stand out beyond grades and test scores.

Don’t Call It A Setback: What To Know About College Deferrals
A college deferral can feel destabilizing, but it’s not a final verdict. Use this pause to gain clarity, build resilience, and strengthen your regular-round strategy.

When College Planning Becomes ‘Toxic Grit’
How high-achieving parents turned college planning into a second job—and what it’s costing them.

The Analog Edge: Why Showing Up Still Matters In College Admissions
In an age of digital fluency, colleges are looking for something rarer: students who still know how to show up, serve others, and make a human impact.

Wellness Culture Is Redefining The College Search
The wellness movement has reshaped how parents think about balance and fulfillment—and many now seek colleges that reflect those same values for their children.

Executive Women Are Burning Out—College Admissions Is Making It Worse
When careers, caregiving, and college admissions converge, women leaders face a perfect storm of invisible labor and burnout.

The Rise Of The Vibe School In College Admissions
Discover the Top Vibe Schools of 2025—colleges where academics, campus culture, and social capital converge to shape prestige and opportunity.

A New College Admissions Mindset: Why Values Alignment Matters
Families are reframing college admissions in 2025—prioritizing values like faith, fit, finances, and well-being over rankings and prestige.

What Supplemental Essays Reveal: 5 Traits Colleges Value Most In 2025
Supplemental essay prompts for 2025–26 reveal what top colleges are really looking for in college applicants: resilience, authenticity, and a sense of purpose.

The New Status Symbol? A Humanities Education
Elite families embrace the humanities as public universities cut programs, turning liberal arts into a new marker of privilege and cultural capital.

What Teens Lose When AI Writes The College Essay
More students are using ChatGPT to draft college essays, but at what cost? Experts warn it hinders critical thinking and leaves them unprepared for college writing.

What Colleges Really Want In An Outstanding Application
How high school students can turn back-to-school season into a launchpad for Ivy League admissions with deeper interests, writing habits, and purpose.

Back-To-School Season Is Go Time For Ivy League Hopefuls
How high school students can turn back-to-school season into a launchpad for Ivy League admissions with deeper interests, writing habits, and purpose.

How To Decode A College Website Like An Admissions Insider
College websites are polished for marketing, but behind the glossy pages are clues about academics, institutional priorities, and campus life. Here’s how to spot them.

Columbia, Dartmouth, And The Politics Shaping College Admissions
For college applicants and their families, federal investigations and institutional responses are reshaping how elite colleges like Columbia and Dartmouth are evaluated.

Gen-Z And Climate Change: What Business Leaders Should Know
My college admissions consulting firm has watched academia evolve to meet Gen-Z students’ desire to engage with climate change. This response has been broader and more nuanced than one might expect—and can inform how business leaders integrate the next generation into their workforce, as well as define their role in the climate crisis. 

Junior Guides: How Two 23-Year-Olds Are Building A College Prep Empire
But here Crimson faces a mature market full of counselors like Top Tier Admissions and test prep companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review. Michele Hernandez, who runs Top Tier, is skeptical that students can learn much from video consultations about admissions. “You can go to Khan Academy and watch videos for free,” she says.

Fox Business News

How to get into Harvard University
According to data from Top Tier Admissions, Harvard had a record-low of 895 of 6,424 early applicants for the class of 2024. This is a 13.9 percent early acceptance rate, which is just a 0.5 percent increase from the previous year.  In fact, Harvard’s acceptance rate hasn’t increased year-on-year since 2013.

High-End Admissions Consulting: Worth the Cost?
The college process is long and arduous, and students and their parents are increasingly turning to private admissions consultants in an attempt to outshine the competition and increase acceptance

HerCampus

5 Things You Should Look for On Admitted Students Day
Entering college for the first time can be stressful, scary and most of all— hard. With the flurry of transitioning between the halls of high school to the green campuses of college, it can be difficult to decipher…

Huffington Post

The Ivy League Asian Problem
There are two problems with Asian college applicants and Ivy League colleges. The first is that the vast majority of Asian applicants focus on a subset of Harvard/Yale/Princeton (and a disproportionate number on Harvard, the Asian dream for many). The second is that the acceptance rates for Asian students are typically lower…

4 Days that Can Change your Life: How to Defy the Odds and Get into the Ivies and Top Colleges
Twenty years ago, I unsettled the notoriously secretive college admissions process with the publication of my first book, A is for Admission, which caused something of a scandal upon its release. For years, the Ivies and top colleges…

The New College Scorecard: How to Find Gold in the Data Dump
As if college admissions wasn’t confusing enough, now we have yet another ranking system to supposedly make it more transparent.
President Obama’s governmental plan to rate 7,000 U.S. colleges has been replaced by the new College Scorecard and greatly impacts college-going and college-interested students and their families. Tuition shaming, or perhaps more accurately, tuition transparency, is a concept that has gained an increasing amount of public interest in recent years. The College Scorecard does not necessarily score or rank colleges at all, but rather aims to …

Why Highly Selective Colleges Should Kiss the Common App Goodbye
The Common App had its chance, but this year it’s blown it big time; in the process, it’s exposed many of the problems and inequities of the admissions process. It’s time for colleges to draw a line in the sand. Stand up for yourselves — say NO to a common application, and design one that is specific to your college.

Save Our Teenagers: Ditch the SAT Reasoning Test
One of my students, a bright young woman from Westchester County, took a break from her marathon SAT Saturday study session to call me. She was anxious about her practice test scores even after prepping for 30 hours last summer and three hours every Saturday since with her tutor. She’s…

10 Secrets for Top College Admissions
The following 10 college admissions secrets seek to offer insight into the college application and preparation process:
1.) High test scores are not a hook
High test scores alone (SAT/Subject Tests/ACT/AP/TOEFEL) do not guarantee admission to any institution. High test scores can boost the chances that your application…

What Harvard and Princeton Don’t Want You to Know
“Our son is in 8th grade and he will go to Harvard, Stanford or Yale — how can you help us reach our goal.” That’s how the dialogue begins with many Chinese parents I speak with day in and day out as a college consultant.
Note the possessive pronoun that…

Tiger Kids With Heart: What the Ivies Want
Educationally, it’s self-defeating to focus solely on the name recognition of a school rather than the quality of a specific department or the “fit” with a student’s needs and abilities. Plus, it’s a particularly Tiger parent thing to value prestige over personal fit; I advocate finding the right fit.

Harvard Hampers Admissions at All Top Colleges
College acceptances, which went out at the end of last month, broke records for the 10th year in a row: Harvard admitted only 6.9%, Stanford 7.2%, Princeton 8.2%, Brown 9.3%, MIT 10.1%, Dartmouth, 11.5%, University of Pennsylvania 14.22%, Duke 14.8%. Those lucky admittees will be deciding where to go; the…

Inside Higher Ed

How to De-Escalate the Arms Race at the Ivies
There are ways, if colleges would cooperate, writes Michele Hernández.

Not Just Admissions
Maria Laskaris, the former dean of admissions at Dartmouth College and now senior counselor at Top Tier Admissions college consultants, told the San Francisco Chronicle that students from wealthy families that can donate large sums of money have improved chances of being accepted by selective colleges.

New SAT Score: Adversity
“Much of this is already baked into how selective college admissions work, especially those contextual factors that have to do with a student’s family and school,” the post said. “Data on the high school environment — curricular rigor, percentage of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch, and AP offerings — are easy to discern from the school’s official high school profile or website.”

Kera News

Applying to College Amid the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
Companies like Top Tier Admissions say can help Asian and Asian American students remove stereotypes from their applications to break through and appear distinctive.

London Times Educational Supplement

$36K for one little word: yes
…the admissions process in the US is becoming more cut-throat. Michele Hernandez knows this more than most. The American admissions consultant runs “college application boot camps” and boasts and acceptance rate among clients of 90-100 per cent eight years running at institutions at which only 8 to 15 percent of applicants are accepted. Hernandez touts the “inside knowledge” she gained from four years as an assistant admissions director at Ivy League Dartmouth College…Clients can count on discretion. “I work behind the scenes so that no one except you and your family will be aware that anyone assisted you in the application process”…but demand outstrips supply. She says she had to turn down scores of students last month.

MarketWatch

The real reasons colleges told students they’re OK with gun-control protests
While supporting students interested in raising their voice is “the right thing to do,” colleges also have their own incentives for making the public statements, said Mimi Doe, the founder of Top Tier Admissions, a college admissions consulting firm.

How colleges aggressively use big data to target potential students
Many high school seniors and their families will spend the next few months pulling out whatever stops they can to impress their top choice colleges. But what most may not realize is that colleges can get desperate too.

SAT snafu could leave many college applications incomplete
As if applying to college wasn’t stressful enough already.
Teens who took pains to get their early-decision applications to colleges by Nov. 1 may be disappointed to find that their colleges didn’t receive their SAT scores by the deadline.

What a college scandal costs in terms of applicants and donations
Mimi Doe, the founder of Top Tier Admissions, a college admissions counseling company, said she’s seen this dynamic play out on the ground for 16 years. “Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT — the scandal can’t be harsh enough to bring down the applications because it is such a gold platinum brand that international applicants aren’t going to be swayed by that,” she said. “Those premier brands, nothing will really get in their way.”

Sorry, that college acceptance letter may just be a computer glitch
The process more often than not goes off without a hitch. Despite the opportunity for error, students can generally trust the communications they receive from colleges, said Mimi Doe, the co-founder of Top Tier Admissions, a college counseling company. “As a student, it’s tragic,” she said. But “if we look at the statistics, chances are it’s not going to happen to you.”

Minnesota Public Radio

The hyper-competitive world of college admissions
Competitive and stressful are the two words most students and parents use to describe the college application process. But does it always have to be that way? Michele Hernandez: Author of “Acing the College Application.” She’s president, Hernandez College Consulting LLC.

Nashville Business Journal

Southeast Colleges Defy Enrollment Cliff as Applicant Numbers Surge
Experts say the South’s demographic advantage is one key factor — the region won’t hit its peak in high school graduates for another decade — but so are migration trends, rising institutional reputations and lower tuition costs. Together, Kylie Dowling, a senior private counselor with TopTier Admissions, said those forces are positioning Southeastern schools a step ahead of peers elsewhere, reshaping the geography of American higher education at the very moment many predicted contraction.

National PTA

Ten Ways for Parents to Help Teachers by Mimi Doe
Many teachers have written to me over the years, frustrated with how unprepared their students are—and they don’t mean academically. Chris, a kindergarten teacher, wrote what many teachers have expressed, “I would love it if you could write a 10 tips for parents to help us teachers do our increasingly demanding job. Many parents of children I teach have left the job of spiritual, character, and social/emotional education to me. I can’t do it all in addition to teaching academic skills. I’m getting burned out and pretty soon won’t have the energy left to nourish one child let alone 25.” So here goes—my 10 tips…

National Public Radio – Here and Now

Michele featured on National Public Radio on Here and Now.

NBC News

Bloomberg-backed Group to Help Poorer Students Graduate From College
“African-American and Latino students who are out of the traditional college admissions pipeline may not know it, but it can be cheaper to go to Harvard, Yale or Princeton than a regional or local college,” said Michele Hernandez, co-founder and co-president of Top Tier Admissions.

New Hampshire Public Radio

5 Things to Keep in Mind as Your Child Applies to College
“The bottom line is they have to begin…to take ownership of this process because…once they get to college…they will be the ones responsible for their experiences on these college campuses,” according to Maria Laskaris, Senior Private Counselor at Top Tier Admissions and the former Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Dartmouth College.

Pulling Back the Curtain on College Admissions

Newsweek

The Jet Set: Wealthy Touring Colleges in Private Planes
On a late August morning, in the dusky haze of the San Fernando Valley, a former Los Angeles politician boards a Gulfstream G200 jet with his teenage son. Inside the 175-square-foot, overwhelmingly beige cabin, complimentary varsity swag is neatly arranged on a few of the leather lounge chairs, cheerily setting the tone for what’s to come: a privately chartered trip to some of the nation’s finest liberal arts colleges, including Johns Hopkins, Colby College and Dartmouth.

New York Times

College Admissions: Vulnerable, Exploitable, and to Many Americans, Broken
“It’s like going to the movies — you need a ticket,” said Mimi Doe, a founder of Top Tier Admissions, a college counseling service. “Your scores and grades get you in the door. But guess what? Half the seats are roped off with a big red cord.”

Taking the College Tour by Private Jet
Mimi Doe, a co-founder of Top Tier Admissions, which teams up with Magellan, said its objective was to streamline the college admissions process for the private jet clients, the same way it does for families who pay for its individual services, like its $16,000 four-day college application boot camp.

College Admissions Is Not a Personality Contest. Or Is It?
Colleges take it as a sign that their criteria work so long as their retention rates are good. But even subtle differences in criteria may reveal something about a college’s values, or at least those of its admissions dean. Maria Laskaris, the admissions dean at Dartmouth College from 2007 to 2015, said she directed her staff to consider “empathy” rather than “kindness.” “It’s a broader term,” she said. “And it speaks to what you want students to learn from each other.”

A College Application Guide for Gap Year Students
Delay freshman year, not your application. Students interested in a year off should still apply to college their senior year of high school, advises Michele Hernández, co-president of Top Tier Admissions and a former admissions officer at Dartmouth. It ensures that you’ll have access to your school’s resources and won’t be bogged down with applications and standardized testing during a year that may include travel abroad. “You’d be surprised how quickly your high school forgets you,” Dr. Hernández said. “It’s really hard to go back and ask for teacher recommendations and the other materials you might need after a year has passed.”

In College Admissions, Athletes Are the Problem
Like it or not, 40 percent of the class at most top colleges are reserved for “hooked” kids — the largest group is generally recruited athletes (up to 20 percent), the rest are legacies, underrepresented minorities, development cases (donors) and V.I.P.’s (famous people’s kids). It’s hard for me to say legacy preferences are not fair because the truth is that the process isn’t fair and legacies take up a relatively minor percentage…

Naked Confessions of the College-Bound: Oversharing in Admissions Essays
The Yale applicant had terrific test scores. She had fantastic grades. As one of Yale’s admissions officers, Michael Motto, leafed through her application, he found himself more and more impressed. Then he got to her essay…

The Electronic Lowdown on Colleges
LET me say from the outset that my college-bound daughter has never won an Olympic medal for speed skating.  And even if she had, she could cross Harvard off her list. Across America this is how parents of high school juniors are thinking.

NewYorkUpstate

Is the SAT unfair?
Admissions counselors use the scores to compare students from different … The college-preparation agency Top Tier Admissions says that it is “not …

NJ.com

Is the SAT unfair?
Admissions counselors use the scores to compare students from different … The college-preparation agency Top Tier Admissions says that it is “not …

NonProfit Quarterly

Scandal Sparks Review of University Fundraising/Admissions Overlaps
Maria Laskaris, the former dean of admissions at Dartmouth College, is quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle as saying that at selective colleges, admissions prospects for students improve when they come from families wealthy enough to donate. “It’s not a guarantee of admissions for sure, but it is certainly something you’re made aware of,” she says. “Colleges are always in fundraising mode.”

NPR (Kansas City)

Kansas City’s College-Bound Students Making Hard Decisions About Fall
“Plenty of schools are saying: ‘Come on back. We’re going to be partially online but partially in the classroom,’” Doe says. “But what they’re not telling families is that faculty are voting department by department at many colleges and universities.”

PBS News Hour

To account for hardship, College Board adds ‘adversity’ score to SAT tests
“It’s hard not to wonder what else might be behind the College Board’s actions,” the post said. “The inclusion of ‘AP opportunity’ seems like an overt ploy to get more high schools to implement the AP curriculum. We know that the College Board has been losing market share to the ACT, so is this a business decision intended to reverse the declining revenue?”

Peterson’s

What is the SAT’s New ‘Adversity Score’ and How Does it Affect My College Applications?
“[The College Board] is getting pressure and heat for discriminating against a certain subset of zip codes, because those students don’t have the same advantages. The problem now is that this is just a layer to the test that becomes even more complicated,” said Mimi Doe, Founder of TopTier Admissions.

Transferring Colleges: How to Transfer to Another College or University
“The statistics around transferring are pretty shockingly high. It’s getting higher every year because admissions is getting more difficult, so kids are not getting into their first choice school and then thinking they can fix things once they start college,” said Mimi Doe, Co-founder of Top Tier Admissions.

What to Look for When Visiting College Campuses –And How to Get the Most Out Of It
When making a decision on the college you attend, you’re going to want to visit the school first. While there are lots of things you can learn about a college online, you have to see it in person to make your final decisions between a handful of schools. We talked to Mimi Doe, Co-founder of Top Tier Admissions to get an expert’s view of the process…

Poets & Quants for Undergrads

Is Hiring A College Admissions Consultant Worth It?
“The goal is not necessarily to pinpoint a college major, but rather two areas of interest,” says Kristen Willmott, the director of Boston-based Top Tier Admissions. “As an admissions consultant — who also brings the lens of a parent — my goal with high school students is to help them pinpoint a main academic interest and often a secondary academic interest. That then becomes the theme to an application, meaning crafting scholarly summers, considering the main essay for the Common App, and more.”

Quartz

If you want to get into an elite college, you might consider moving to one of these states
An unqualified student is not going to get in, no matter where they live,” said Michele Hernandez, co-founder and co-president of Top Tier Admissions consulting firm. “There are other factors that count more than geographic diversity…

Reuters

Abortion bans force U.S. students to rethink college plans
Kristen Willmott, a counselor with Top Tier Admissions in Massachusetts, said students she works with have told her they are taking some top schools in Texas, Florida and Tennessee off their application lists due to their restrictive abortion laws.

San Francisco Chronicle

In the college admissions game, even the legal kind, money has always mattered
The ultra-rich have an additional advantage in their ability to donate large sums of money to universities, which can boost their kids’ chances of acceptance, said Maria Laskaris, former dean of admissions at Dartmouth College and now senior admissions counselor at Top Tier Admissions.

“It’s not a guarantee of admissions for sure, but it is certainly something you’re made aware of,” she said. “Colleges are always in fundraising mode.”

Seattle

What Activities Help You Get Into Elite Colleges?
Success in being admitted to elite colleges isn’t contingent upon one single factor. Elite colleges are looking for well-rounded students who are ready to make positive contributions…

Slate

Sports Recruiting Is the Real College Admissions Scam
“I am stunned,” said Mimi Doe, a college admissions consultant and co-author of Don’t Worry, You’ll Get In. “You can see the dark underbelly [of college admissions], and it’s so beyond belief.” She compared getting into an elite college to procuring a ticket to a movie theater: It might seem like there are 500 available seats, but in fact many are roped off and reserved for special categories of people, among them “legacy” applicants and athletes.

Smart Money

Michele Hernandez puts it even more succinctly, “That essay is not going to surprise me unless the child dies on the trip.”

Sunday New York Times

Michele Hernandez sent a shock wave through college admissions offices across the country a few months ago. Unlike most counselors, Ms. Hernandez deals exclusively with Ivy-bound clients. She was assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth from 1992-1997 and used that experienced to write a book, A is for Admission. “Ironically you want to look unpackaged and raw — someone like me can be behind the scenes and make someone look raw without over-packaging them.”…

The Atlantic

A Scandal Fit for a Win-at-All Costs Society
Maria Laskaris, former dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth College, says that many parents seem to hold the belief that if their children don’t enroll at their dream school, it will ruin their life. “And I think we all can realistically step back from that and say that the very best students make the most of whatever opportunities are afforded to them,” she said.

“There are plenty of examples of young people who go to all kinds of different schools who lead very successful and fulfilling lives, regardless of the name on their diploma,” says Laskaris.

College Sports Are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students
As Harvard’s admission policies go through the ringer, college sports has largely evaded scrutiny, even among the plaintiffs accusing the school of discrimination. “People are complaining about minority students,” says Hernandez, “but athletes are taking up almost a fifth of the class [at Harvard], and they’re lowering the academic standards quite a bit.”

The Reasoning Behind the SAT’s New ‘Disadvantage’ Score
The college-preparation agency Top Tier Admissions says that it is “not convinced the College Board has anything besides its own business interests in mind.”

The Berkshire Eagle

Williams College among schools in investigation into early decision practices
Maria Laskaris, former dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth College, said that at one time, sharing lists of students admitted through early decision was a common practice to try to ensure that students were only using the program for their top-choice schools.

The Choice

Tips for First-Generation College Applicants
If you’re among those who are applying to college as a first-generation student (meaning your parents never attended college) and you’re hesitant to talk about your parents’ educational attainment, you’re not alone. Thirty percent of entering freshmen…

The Dartmouth

Regular decision application numbers set record high
“I think the recruitment effort, the extensive travel effort of the admissions department … paid off,” Doe said. “I think that it outweighed the bad press surrounding the [recent sexual harassment lawsuit].”

College receives 22,005 total applications for Class of 2022
“The new normal is, ‘I’m applying to college. I need to be ready by November 1st,’” Doe said, explaining why many colleges like Dartmouth are now filling up about half of their incoming classes with early decision applicants.

Early decision students to comprise 47 percent of class
The 555 students accepted early decision for the Dartmouth Class of 2021 are expected to form around 47 percent of the incoming class, the highest level of the past 17 years of classes…

AACE files civil rights complaint
The Asian American Coalition for Education, a group consisting of more than 130 Asian American organizations, announced the filing of civil rights violation complaints against Dartmouth College, Yale University and Brown University…

I Can Teach You, But I’ll Have to Charge
With preparation books for every standardized test imaginable, application fees that stop you from adding that one last safety school to your list and pricey volumes with oddly specific titles…

The Economist

Why legacy places should be abolished
Legacies take places that might go to poorer people: Mimi Doe of Top Tier Admissions points out that half of places at top universities are fenced off by racial, athletic and legacy preferences. “For students who don’t have any interesting ‘hooks’ on their cvs, acceptance rates of 10% of applicants come down to more like 5%.”

The Globe and Mail

Canadian universities see rise in U.S. applicants
Increasingly, students in the United States are also applying earlier, hoping to improve their chances of getting into their first-choice universities. For example, Harvard’s average acceptance rate is 5 per cent but rises to 14 per cent for those students who apply by November, said Mimi Doe, the president and co-founder of Top Tier Admissions.

The Grad Cafe

Four Ways to Boost Your Grad School Admissions Odds
Graduate school can be an immensely rewarding experience advancing your career, expanding your horizons, building valuable networks, and raising your earning potential throughout your career track. Here are four key ways to boost your grad admissions odds.

The Jennifer Bukowsky Show

The College Admissions Bribery Scandal
Mimi Doe, a co-founder of Top Tier Admissions and Harvard grad, gives her thoughts on the college admissions scandal.

The New York Post

The book tries to debunk the myths,” said Michele Hernandez. “It tries to explain the process, exactly what goes on and how it works. The book is about everything that happens — the good, bad and the ugly.

The Oregonian

The Oregonian’s “Monday Profile” on Michele Hernandez.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

More elite medical schools have joined Penn in saying no to the U.S. News rankings. Here’s what students and physicians are saying.
Dr. Kristen Willmott gives her thoughts on medical school rankings.

The Pittsburgh Tribune

States’ varying laws on reproductive rights impacting college decisions for some Pa. students
Dr. Kristen Willmott shares her thoughts on how the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision will impact the state in which students choose to enroll.

The Spoke

The Business of College
Former Dartmouth College Admissions Officer and current admissions consultant, Dr. Michele Hernandez states that there is a method behind college…

The Stanford Daily

Elite college counseling: A legal, prohibitively expensive pay-to-win game in admissions
“Given the recent scandal, I’d also add that we [at Top Tier Admissions] put ethics first and never write things FOR the student or do anything that is not above the board,” Doe wrote.

The Telegraph (UK)

New private jet service for ultra-rich prospective students has noses out of joint
The college tour is something of a tradition for American families. Parents drive their teenagers from campus to campus hoping to find the ideal academic institution. But for the ultra-rich, there is an alternative to spending hours on the American highways…

The Tufts Daily

Gray Areas Matter: Athletic preference in college admissions
According to former Dartmouth admissions officer Michele Hernandez, approximately 40% of first-year classes are reserved for what are called “hooked students” — i.e. minorities, legacies and athletes. Half of those reservations are for athletes, making it the largest group of hooked students by a wide margin.

The Worcester Telegram

ACT essay scores causing uproar
Many students are in an uproar over a change to the ACT that has yielded what they call inexplicably low scores on the essay section of the nation’s most widely used college admission test…

Teen Vogue

Racist Social Media Posts From Students Are Forcing Colleges to Respond
Mimi Doe, cofounder of Top Tier Admissions, a college admissions consulting firm, told Teen Vogue that colleges and universities “can and absolutely will” rescind acceptances because of online content that violates their standards. The First Amendment argument, in her opinion, is a “smoke screen.”

How College Rankings Can Perpetuate Inequality
“Prestige is something that matters to college administrators,” Maria Laskaris told Teen Vogue. Laskaris, a former director of admissions at Dartmouth College and now a senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, said while the rankings aren’t anywhere near perfect, students often use them to build their lists of prospective schools.

Time

Who Needs Harvard?
So how do private consultants fit into all this? As many as 1 in 5 applicants to private four-year colleges get some kind of independent coaching, which can range in price from $469 for Kaplan’s three-hour consultation by webcam to $36,000 for four years of hand holding offered by superconsultant Michele Hernandez… “Some of them are very helpful and are helping students learn how to tell us about themselves,” says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania…

Times Higher Education

US parents flex power in campus confrontations
While administrators, faculty, students and police get main attention in protests, those paying the bills – especially in wealthier families – pursue more decisive roles.

As college admissions deans deliver their final batch of thick or thin envelopes this month to high school seniors, admissions counselors are gearing up for what is perhaps their most unpleasant task each year: the “Why R” calls from parents. “Why R as in, why was my child rejected?” says Michele Hernandez, a college counselor who dreaded those calls when she worked in admissions at Dartmouth College.

USA Today Cover Story

This Harvard grad has made millions on U.S. college admissions for international students
“Others in the college advisement business have more stringent standards. Collegewise and Top Tier Admissions, two national advisement companies, base their success rate on whether the students get into one of their top three universities.”

U.S. News

How to Write a College Essay
College application essays are where you can demonstrate your writing skills and let your unique voice shine.

“They’re such an amazing and crucial opportunity to really shape how admissions officers perceive you beyond just the numbers and the accolades,” says Liz Doe Stone, president of admissions consulting firm Top Tier Admissions. “Ideally, it can also showcase what excites you, what you love to learn about, your enthusiasm for a particular subject or an experience.”

When Should High School Students Start Their Scholarship Search?
Many school counselors and college preparation offices have extensive lists of scholarship opportunities and can help you match with scholarships, says Maria Laskaris, senior private counselor for admissions consulting firm Top Tier Admissions.

Some websites, which may cost a fee, also help students identify applicable scholarships.

“Early in the junior year, begin to go through those resources and look for scholarship opportunities whose criteria align with things that match your interests, your background and your college aspirations,” Laskaris says.

6 Study Tips for College-Bound Teens
“Students might arrive at college with little to no experience meeting with their instructors outside of classes, yet faculty office hours are one of the best resources you’ll have as a college student to excel in your classes, figure out your academic path and forge connections that will help you down the line in the form of grad school or employment recommendations,” Tina Brooks, a senior private counselor for admissions consulting firm Top Tier Admissions, wrote in an email.

“Even if it’s not common at your (high) school to meet with your teachers, try to arrive early or stay a few minutes after class to ask a question. Or, if your teachers do have open hours, use them to ask your teachers about something discussed in class.”

5 Ways to Make Your Scholarship Essay Stand Out
“A scholarship can mean the difference between graduating debt-free or accumulating substantial student loans,” says Liz Doe Stone, president of Top Tier Admissions, an admissions consulting company. “The financial relief can also provide more freedom in choosing a career path without the pressure of loan repayments and open up other professional opportunities, since (scholarships) look great on a resume and may facilitate networking opportunities.”

Attending an Online High School: What to Consider
Many students choose the online high school path because it allows them to create a schedule that fits with the demands of sports or other activities that they’ve chosen to pursue and potentially make a career out of, Brennan Hall says. For these students, being in school during traditional school hours isn’t feasible.

For example, when she was associate director of admissions at Brown University in Rhode Island, Brennan Hall says she often screened applications from tennis recruits who earned their high school diploma online. An online pathway allowed them to spend the majority of their days training at an elite level while completing school work on their own time.

How to Select an Online College or University
If students sense that a program will lack rigor and be “easy,” that may be a sign to avoid it, says Kristen Willmott, a senior private counselor and graduate school admissions director at admissions consulting firm Top Tier Admissions.

“If you’re going to go through the trouble of working on your application and paying that application fee and ultimately diving forward with an online program, you want to make sure that the one you select jives with what you’re actually hoping to accomplish,” she says.

14 Tips for an Effective College Visit
“The more that you can do ahead of time to get to know the campus culture so that you can ask good questions to current students, that’s another great way to get a more authentic sense of what’s going on or what it would be like to be a student there,” says Dr. Liz Doe Stone, President at Top Tier Admissions.

Can I Apply to College After the Deadline?
Students apply to a college late for various reasons, such as academic struggles, low standardized test scores, financial considerations or family needs. While some schools are less likely than others to accept late applications, experts say both students and schools can benefit from some flexibility.

For example, students who weren’t quite ready to apply to college within the traditional timeline may have made progress academically late in their senior year, says Liz Doe Stone, Senior Private Counselor at Top Tier Admissions consulting company.

Here’s What Graduate Schools Think About Your College
For some students, a graduate school program that is prestigious or has a high acceptance rate might not be the best choice for their career goals, Willmott says.

“We want students to land at universities that are the best possible fit for them, that jive with what they’re seeking when it comes to their academic niche, their scholarly pursuits, their research interests, their community experiences that they want to have on campus, and their geographic location preferences,” Willmott says.

How to Find Admissions Statistics for College
Regardless of how much information a college makes available, prospective students will likely find useful data points that will help them compare their academic profile to prior classes and understand their odds of admission. Experts say that using admissions statistics can help students shape their college search.

“I think as students are starting to look at colleges, they should be thinking about ‘is this a school where I have a reasonable chance of admission?’ And that’s going to vary depending on the school,” says Maria Laskaris, senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions.

How to Identify Safety Schools in College Admissions
Hernandez advises prospective students to apply during both early and regular decision deadlines. “The best advice is to leverage the early round if you can, by combining early decision and early action,” she says.

Understand What’s a Good SAT Score for College Admissions
“It kind of depends on your background,” says Michele Hernandez, co-founder and co-president of Top Tier Admissions, which helps prospective college students around the globe with test preparation. Admissions teams, she says, “factor a socioeconomic kind of calculation in their head.”

6 Tips From College Admissions Pros on Standing Out
For many of them, there’s a certain sameness to the applications they read, so when prospective students carve out their own opportunities, colleges notice, says Maria Laskaris, former dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth College and now a senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, a company focused on helping applicants navigate the admissions process. “We tell students to push beyond what the school offers,” Laskaris says.

How to Write a College Essay
When reviewing a first essay draft, students should make sure their writing is showing, not telling, Doe says. This means students should aim to show their readers examples that prove they embody certain traits or beliefs, as opposed to just stating that they do.

Transferring Colleges: 10 Frequently Asked Questions
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to transfer, says Mimi Doe, co-founder of Top Tier Admissions advising firm. But don’t transfer out for the wrong reasons, Doe says. If you’re homesick, frustrated by a long-distance relationship or just trying to get admitted to an Ivy League school, really consider whether making the change is necessary.

What’s a Good SAT Score
“It kind of depends on your background,” says Michele Hernandez Bayliss, co-founder and co-president of Top Tier Admissions, which helps prospective college students around the globe with test preparation. Admissions teams, she says, “factor a socioeconomic kind of calculation in their head.” The SAT score expectations might be higher, for example, for a privileged white high schooler than a teen from inner-city Harlem, says Bayliss, who previously worked on the admissions team at Dartmouth College.

3 Ways to Make Your College Application a Winner
Getting a jump on your college prep is a key way to grab the advantage in a field that’s more competitive than ever. The average number of applications per college went up 60 percent between 2002 and 2011, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

A Former Admissions Officer Assesses ‘Admission’
In “Admission” Tina Fey plays an Princeton admissions officer whose world is shaken by the revelation one of the prospective applicants may be her son. To be sure, there’s plenty of comedy, romance and maternal stirrings. But, loosely based on a book of the same title by an “outside reader” at the Princeton admissions office, “Admission” offers a view—albeit it fictionalized—into the crazed world of top-tier college entrance offices…

Can Facebook Posts Lead to College Rejections?
‘Tis the season. Colleges have sent out their admissions decisions, with prospective students eagerly sorting through acceptances and rejections. This week’s question from Derrick L. in New York, N.Y. tackles the question of whether an applicant’s social media activity…

Vermont Public Radio (VPR)

Meritocracy And Money: College Admissions Under The Microscope

Vox

The outrageously expensive world of college counseling services, explained
Top Tier Admissions, a Massachusetts-based college consulting firm, charges $18,000 for its four-day college application boot camp. “Students sign up their sophomore year and they get our guidance and counseling from sophomore year until they show up at our boot camp the summer before senior year,” Top Tier co-founder Mimi Doe told me.

Wall Street Journal

Why More U.S. Students are Going Abroad for College
As the cost of college in the U.S. soars to record levels, American students in growing numbers are enrolling in schools abroad, where tuition fees are substantially lower—and in some cases nonexistent…

Washington Post

‘Read Me!’: Students race to craft forceful college essays as deadlines near
“The equity problem is serious,” Hernández said. “College consultants are not the problem. It starts way lower down” — at kindergarten or earlier, she added.

Misguided Colleges Skewer Score Choice
College admissions consultants, serving nervous young clients and their parents, seem to favor Score Choice. Michele Hernández, of Hernandez College Consulting, said it “is a great help to students in terms of easing stress, letting younger students take a practice test in ninth and 10th grade and providing a risk-free attempt at taking this crazy test that won’t go on your record.” Mark Greenstein of Ivy Bound said, “The SAT requirement would not favor the rich if those who are supposed to be looking out for the non-rich did their jobs better.”…

WBUR (Radio Boston)

Fallout, Local Reaction After the College Admissions Bribery Scam
Guest: Maria Laskaris

Yale Alumni Magazine

New Directions in Admissions (Cover Story): The very difficulty of getting into a good college is making potential students more knowledgeable about the admissions maze and how to negotiate it. “Students now have to be better detectives,” says admissions consultant Michele Hernandez, a former Dartmouth admissions officer and author of a how-to-guide for students called A is for Admission. “They have access to a lot more information, and they’re making much finer distinctions among colleges.”

Your Teen Magazine for Parents

10 Must-Do College Visit Tips to Get The Most Out of Your Campus Tour
Go beyond the tour. “Try to get a sense of what it’s like to make a home on campus. Check out facilities that are important to you— the library, music, sports, dorms,” recommends Dr. Michele Hernandez.