TESTIMONIALS

Alison’s guidance was invaluable during my son’s application process. We were new to the world of elite east coast boarding schools, and Alison provided meaningful insight during every step of the lengthy process. Her experience and wisdom made a true impact in how we prepared our application, and I believe ultimately helped my son get into his dream schools. I highly recommend her services to anyone who is serious about being competitive during this challenging process. 

We all really enjoy working with you and you have been a game changer for my boys. The college process is stressful, but you have a way of making it manageable and somehow pull the best out of my boys. Thank you! We happily and enthusiastically recommend you to our friends!

I highly recommend working with Alison Cody, who brings the perfect combination of expertise, positive energy, and skill in working with teens. Alison was with us every step of the way - guiding us in selecting schools, developing the student profile, editing essays, prepping for the interviews, and helping our family decide between many acceptances! Our child loved working with Alison, and she gave us excellent advice, patiently answered a broad range of questions, and was a pleasure to work with. We could not be more thrilled with the process and results.

Our family is so fortunate to have worked with Alison on boarding school applications. She was an incredible guide on the process and gave sage advice, input, and support from beginning to end. She was truly committed to making the experience positive for our daughter and us, bringing out the best in our child by creating an enjoyable, calm environment and liaising with us parents with understanding and deep expertise.

Alison has deep knowledge of boarding schools, personally, as a parent, and an advisor. She helped us create a portfolio of schools well suited to our child, guided us on testing, inspired and edited terrific essays, and coached us on how to support our daughter in her ultimate decision - and we were thrilled that she had a number of top choices. In the end, the school that resonated most with our daughter for its culture and peer group differed from that which we as parents would have selected based on the statistics - rankings, resources, college placement, etc. Alison really encouraged us to follow our daughter's lead, put us in touch with other parents whose students had attended the school our daughter liked, and assured us that our child would do best where she was most motivated to go. That could not have been more true. Our daughter grew in indescribable ways at the school she selected, academically and as a leader, and is now attending an Ivy League for college. Alison is incredible and we could not recommend her more highly.

We are so grateful to have worked with Alison for our boarding school application process. From start to finish, it was seamless. Alison took the time to get to know my daughter well, and that made her comfortable, at ease, and excited to take on the application process. From putting her list together, to brainstorming essay ideas to organizing and motivating her, Alison was a full partner every step of the way. Not only did our daughter get into her first choice school, but she actually enjoyed the process…making us all calm and happy!

Working with Alison was an absolute joy. In brief, if you want to work with a professional who really understands the landscape, is going to get the best out of your child, and produce a great outcome, you should hire Alison (if you can get her). ! I will focus in on three primary reasons:
1. Customized solution. Most importantly, Alison will take the time to get to know your child. She will not force a cookie cutter solution and instead will figure out what is going to optimize the outcome for your child. My daughter really enjoyed her time with Alison. This is not normal for high schoolers to enjoy their time in the college application process! But Alison was able to pull the best out of her so my daughter was proud of the result.
2. Focus. Organized and methodical. Alison gets started early, makes sure that the focus is on the child (and not us meddling parents) and kept the train moving in a very orderly fashion. I was amazed at the work product she was able to extract from my child.
3. Knowledge and experience. Alison is extremely knowledgeable about a surprisingly large number of schools. Not just surface level spouting of statistics but an actual view of the student body, what type of person would thrive at that school.

We feel so fortunate to have found and worked with Alison to help guide us through the boarding school application process. Not only did she provide thoughtful and helpful insight into each of the boarding schools we were considering, but she was also able to deftly and calmly guide our son through the essay writing process with little to no drama - no small feat! Her talents as an editor also ensured that our son’s voice came through his applications, allowing the boarding schools to truly get to know and understand who our son is and what he has to offer to a school. With her guidance, our son is headed to his first choice school this fall.  We highly recommend Alison!

We are very grateful for Alison's consistent and invaluable guidance in our son's application process. I can hardly imagine how we could manage the applications without her help and support.

From the start, you gave us such incredible advice and encouragement to empower our daughter to pick the high school where she felt most excited and for us as parents to not direct the choice based on rankings, resources, college placement etc. I really don't think she would have ended up where she did had you not shared your experiences and perspective, and she had the best three years there. Her happiness translated into experiences, an education, and friendships that have helped her grow so much and opened opportunities - including Harvard, where she is a Freshman.  Really appreciate your sage advice!