When a Bay Area family reached out to Menlo Coaching for college admissions help, they were starting to feel disillusioned with the whole profession. They’d been shopping around for consultants and found that everywhere they looked, they encountered a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach—paired with exorbitant prices.
The coaches they’d spoken with weren’t able to reassure them that they could be flexible and attentive to the needs of individual clients, as opposed to going through the same checklists with everyone. Avni and Amish saw how counterproductive it would be to subject a teenager to this kind of railroading. But coach after coach failed to live up to what they needed.
To top it all off, they had to navigate this reality with not just one high school student, but twin boys with different goals, different personalities, and different needs from the coaching process.
When Avni and Amish spoke with Alice and Leslie, they immediately knew Menlo Coaching was different. The focus was on what would work for the boys, not a 20-step program to college admission.
Alice and Leslie approached the engagement by trying to understand:
It’s only with a good understanding of these factors that a college admissions coach can really provide value to a client, by designing a bespoke process that really fulfills their specific needs. This sense of care, Avni and Amish quickly realized, was what had been missing from their conversations with other consultants.
Aditya and Arjun began the coaching process early, as they were entering the second semester of the ninth grade. Starting so early made a big difference, allowing Alice and Leslie to think along with the boys about their goals well in advance of the actual application process.
Both Alice and Leslie have experience lecturing undergraduates at Stanford, and they’ve seen firsthand how even successful applicants to highly competitive schools can feel lost once they actually arrive on campus.
The Menlo Coaching process is accordingly focused on the long term: not only getting in, but thinking hard about what the client actually wants and how to help them thrive in university and beyond. An extended engagement in which the boys could really open up and think through their preferences in depth was a boon to this process.
It also allowed them to brainstorm and work on projects they wanted to undertake. The goal was again twofold: personal development opportunities that would not only boost the twins’ profiles for their eventual applications but help them explore the different paths and opportunities open to them.
Every high schooler has different needs when it comes to their college application journey, from figuring out what they want from their college experience to strategizing how to optimize their application to a specific school.
Alice describes some students as drivers—knowing what they want and highly engaged with the process—and others as passengers—more reticent or uncertain, in need of direction rather than just strategy. The difference was evident in working with the twins.
Arjun’s goal was well established from the start: He wanted to study business, and he had a strong idea of the schools he wanted to apply to. The coaching was about strategizing the best way to reach those goals, understanding which schools would be the best fit and how to put together the strongest possible application package for them.
Aditya had a less defined path, so the coaching work in his case was more about brainstorming, understanding his interests, likes and dislikes, and helping him find a place where he would thrive. Alice encouraged Aditya to reach out directly to students at different colleges to get a clear understanding of what the experience was really like.
For Avni and Amish, it was essential to have the right level of involvement in the process—having visibility on what was being discussed, worked on, and planned without needing to be involved in every conversation. The Menlo Coaching process struck the right balance: “We knew where the boys were every step of the way.”
Menlo Coaching’s project management platform offers detailed insight into current progress and planning, which provided a way for Aditya and Arjun to communicate and plan out the process with Alice and Leslie, as well as for their parents to keep track of what was going on.
Without ever constraining the boys with overly rigid schedules, Alice and Leslie laid out a roadmap from the start of the process: how regularly they would check in with the boys and their parents, what they’d be focusing on at different times, periods when the work would be more or less intensive.
Both Aditya and Arjun earned admissions results their parents describe as “phenomenal.” But the process goes beyond just acceptance: “Alice and Leslie also helped them to gain confidence along the way and think about what they wanted out of their college experience. And I think this was very important, not only for us, but for the boys.”
You can learn more about our College Admissions Consulting service here.