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A privacy position

Why you will not see our students’ faces.

Every counselling website you have visited has a wall of smiling students in university hoodies. This one does not, and will not. Three reasons, and then what we publish instead.

The reasons

Three of them

Not on this website.

  1. 01

    They are children, and then they are young adults with careers ahead

    Most of our students are fifteen to eighteen when the work happens. Their application, their essay, their grades and their admit letter are private records. Putting a seventeen-year-old's face and university on a sales page, to be found by a future employer or a curious classmate, is a trade they cannot meaningfully consent to. We do not ask them to.

  2. 02

    Every application is different, so another student's face tells you nothing

    A student admitted to Dartmouth had a particular transcript, a particular pillar, particular essays and a particular financial situation. None of that transfers. A photo wall invites you to imagine that outcome as yours; it is closer to a lottery advertisement than to evidence. What transfers is the method, so that is what we show.

  3. 03

    The admit is theirs

    Our students write every essay, run every project, sit every exam. When they are admitted, it is because of their work, read by an admissions office we do not control. Claiming that admit as our result, with a logo and a face, overstates what any counsellor does. We claim the process and report outcomes in aggregate.

Questions

About this position

Can I speak to a past student or parent before engaging?

Yes, with their consent, privately. We arrange a call with a family whose situation resembles yours. What we will not do is put their name, face or admit letter on a web page.

How do I know the outcomes on this site are real?

They are reported with a stated method on the results page: which years, how counted, and what we do not claim. On the first call you can ask about any of them in detail. Ask any counsellor for the same, and ask for the denominator.

Will you ever publish a student's story?

Only as an anonymised case with details changed, and only with the family's written consent after the student has enrolled. Never as marketing during the application cycle.

Judge the thinking, not the photography.

A written profile review, free, before you decide anything.