Erika, Former Student of Palisades Charter High

Attending UC Berkeley in the Fall 2016

Though college application season is supposed to be the most stressful time of our lives thus far, my whole process went smoothly thanks to Kathryn’s help. Though I was mentally stressed at times, I never worried about not finishing things on time or not having a good application.

When we first started out, Kathryn advised me with my classes and activities, urging me to pursue challenges I would simultaneously be passionate about and would be huge additions to my college apps. When time came to making my college list, I looked into factors such as competitiveness, location, academic and social offerings, and the overall environments of the schools. Kathryn looked over my final list and predicted my chances for each school. Needless to say she was accurate. I got into all 9 of the schools she was confident I would and half of the ones she said could go either way!

The key for me to having a good college app season was to stay on track and organized. Over the summer before my senior year, I made a master list of all of the supplements I would have to write and created schedule to complete and edit them before their respective deadlines. The schedule had me writing around 2 supplements a week in addition to editing and revisiting my common app essay over the weekend. I also learned to revise certain pieces to fit multiple prompts for different schools. This way, I never had too much work to do at a time and I actually kind of enjoyed writing all of those essays!

College apps definitely don’t have to be as hard as all the horror stories say. Despite all of the stress and hard work, the vast majority of people I know are extremely happy with where they are going. Personally, I’m really excited to go to UC Berkeley, my #1 choice since sophomore year, and couldn’t be happier with how things turned out!