The Cure for the Common Application

Picture this: you walk into the operating room and your surgeon tells you it's her first operation. You wouldn't be thrilled about that, would you? At Passport, we believe in the value of experience in helping students achieve their goals. Our senior advisors have worked in admissions advising for an average of 16 years. Our junior advisors have worked in admissions advising for an average of 5 years.

Our guarantee is that if you're not happy with where you get in, we work with you to transfer for free. This isn't usually a problem, since 95% of our students get into either a reach or match school, but it's nice to know it's there.

All advisors have gone through extensive training and have years of advising experience. Regular advisors are trained to work primarily with traditional students. Senior advisors specialize in working with non-traditional applicants in order to offer more guidance throughout the process. All advisors provide the utmost support in students' applications.

It's never too early (well, okay, we know some parents get admissions consulting for their toddlers, so yeah, there is such a thing as TOO EARLY). But seriously, it can't hurt to meet us and ask that question. We would rather tell you to wait a year or two before working with us than to have you sign up too late and for us not to have enough time to make a difference with you.

Usually during junior year or the summer before senior year.

Passport's personalized school selection process is more than just GPA and test scores. It's about understanding a fit between your preferences and personality and the schools and programs to which you're applying. Though we've collected gobs of data on the various programs we help our students apply to, we help you choose schools by understanding your hopes and aspirations and finding a range of programs that match.

Yes! It doesn't make sense to us to pay for something up front if you're going to use it over several months or even years. We will even waive the interest if you enroll within two week of your intro meeting!

We deliberately limit the number of students we work with so that: a) we can deliver better service, and b) so we don't get too busy during the busiest times of the admissions calendar.

Admissions consulting is like coaching: you have to listen to the coach in order to improve and achieve your goals. So we at Passport are fundamentally looking for people who will follow our advice and give their all to achieving their goals. We believe that at its best, the admissions process is a journey of self-discovery. We love to help students who see it the same way. You don't have to be thrilled about writing essays to work with Passport, but you have to be willing to put in the work. At the end of the day, we're looking for students who trust us: to have your best interest at heart, to guide you to the best of our ability, to give you honest feedback that will help you improve. And in the end, we want what you want: for you to get in to the school(s) of your dreams.

At most admissions companies, you never meet your editor. You send them your work and a few days later you get to try to decipher their comments on your document. Rinse, repeat. At Passport, we believe in helping our students become better writers. That starts with live sessions with editors so that they can: a) teach the art of better writing b) preserve the student's voice, and c) understand the student's ideas in full, to edit both the meaning and the grammar. And sure, in a pinch, we also edit for grammar asynchronously. But by that point, you already know your editor well.

We meet as often as we need. For our students who are right up against an application deadline, we might meet two to three times per week. For our longer-term students, we might only meet once per month.