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I’m Elle, founder of Ivy Roadmap.

There are two kinds of people advising families right now.

People who got into a good school. And people who decided who got in. 

Those are not the same job. Getting in tells you what worked once, for one person, under conditions nobody can reproduce. Reviewing thousands of files tells you what works, what's invisible, and what a reader is actually weighing. 

I spent 15 years on the second side of that at some of the most competitive universities (Columbia, NYU, UC San Diego). I've also built and led college counseling departments at two high schools, and I hold licensure as a certified school counselor.

My experience has taught me the students who get into these top schools are ones who can answer a question most of their peers can't: What do you actually care about? 

I'm interdisciplinary by instinct — I'll connect a violinist to neuroscience, a speedcuber to systems design, a debater to public health policy — because the through line is almost never inside one box. I find what a student is good at, what they actually care about, and help them build the story from there.

 What I'm not

  • My main role is not to keep your student on schedule, and call that application strategy. Deadlines are the easy part. 
  • I don't believe that the answer to top admissions is to do more. More competitions, more science fairs, one more nonprofit. Ninety percent of applicants to top schools have a nonprofit. It stopped meaning anything years ago.
  •  I care about a student's mental health and the pressure they are experiencing. Your student will get specific, actionable steps from me while instinctually knowing when to push and when to ease off.
  • What I do is slower, more laborious but much more satisfying for families. I find what your kid actually cares about — usually before they can name it — and build everything backward from there.

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