Students can begin in any grade. Select yours to see what applies to you.
We first set up consultations between you and potential advisors — current or recent students from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley — wherever you are interested in applying. After this process, you select your primary advisor.
Though you may think you know your target school, it's important not to make decisions based on prestige alone. Getting accepted is just the beginning — what you make of your time there matters far more.
Consultations give applicants a much richer understanding of whether they would actually thrive at a school. Students come in with assumptions. They often leave with a different first choice.
For students in 9th through 11th grade, primary advisors work with you to develop a niche activity profile. Our advisors are selected for their creativity in this space. Interested in psychology? Secure a summer research internship with a professor at a school you're considering. Requires leg work — but what doesn't? Interested in entrepreneurship? Apply for a patent, seek out an incubator, start manufacturing.
Your primary advisor works with you end-to-end on your personal statement. It's a real risk to hire an older essay advisor whose writing voice is no longer that of an 18-year-old. Each Sophos advisor has their own flair that mirrors what their school is interested in seeing.
The personal statement starts the summer before senior year. Students who begin earlier have more time to find the real story.
Your primary advisor coordinates with secondary advisors at each of your target schools. Together, you tailor your essays to each school's archetype. Students can — and often do — submit a different personal statement to each school.
Your primary advisor shares everything you've built together with secondary advisors at each of your other target schools. Then you meet individually with those advisors to adapt your personal statement and supplementals — not just to sound school-specific, but to genuinely reflect each school's archetype.
The supplementals are written with guidance from your secondary advisors, who know from experience what each school's admissions team actually reads for. Yes, this takes a lot of work. So does getting in.