Brielle started working with Expert Admissions when she was in tenth grade. They first gave Brielle an overview of the admissions process so that she would understand the goal that she and her counselor would be working toward over the next few years. To start, they helped Brielle pick the best courses for the following year, focus her extracurricular activities, select an SAT tutor, and get things in order so that junior and senior year went as smoothly as possible. Brielle didn’t know exactly what she was interested in, but involvement with the school yearbook led to a journalism internship, which then led to a part-time editorial job; her counselor also worked with Brielle on applications to a summer journalism program, to which Brielle was accepted. The summer experience proved extremely helpful: Brielle realized she loved newspaper, not yearbook, and she realized that the university she did the program at (which was at the top of Brielle’s college list at the time) wasn’t for her.
During junior year, her counselor worked with Brielle to further refine her college list. Expert Admissions helped Brielle decide which schools to visit and how to stay on track academically; they also got a head start on application work. Though Brielle’s tutoring yielded improvement from her PSAT scores, she still was unable to break 1100 on the Critical Reading and Math sections of the SAT; her courses and grades were solid, but she wasn’t a top student at her competitive high school. Expert Admissions worked with Brielle to help her stand out amongst the many students vying for admission.
While finalizing her list of schools, Brielle decided that a strong journalism/communications program was important to her and she set her sights on Syracuse University’s highly selective Newhouse School as her reach. Brielle was admitted to Syracuse’s Newhouse School, as well as to American University, College of Charleston, Emerson, Ithaca College, Oxford College of Emory University, and University of Tampa. She chose Syracuse, and has found it to be a great fit in every respect.