Jessie's Blog

Picking up where we left off: the courage to engage the "other" points to the humanities as our starting point.

A college degree has become largely transactional in the pursuit of a first-job guarantee. This leads large swaths of our young potential into fields that don't align with fulfilling lives, where they can discover who they are and what they came here to do.

In Excellent Sheep, the 2014 book by former Yale professor and now full-time writer, William Deresiewicz, he wrote pointedly a…

I recently started reading the novel March, by Geraldine Brooks, on a three-legged flight back from Denver to Burlington. I came to a particularly graphic scene at Clement’s Mine, a fictitious Virginia plantation set in the 1840s, and realized this was not the first time I had read this very passage.

A few years back, this scene curdled my stomach. I had put the book down, telling myself I'd pick it back up another time. Each time I saw the spine on one of my next-to-read piles, my eyes jumped …

How and When? 

Acronyms are confusing when you are unfamiliar with them. Families today are already busy with work and life. Handling the college application process alone is akin to taking on a “part-time job.”  Considering there are dozens of application platforms, variations on demonstrated interest, and choices of application types (Rolling, EA, ED1, ED2, Regular Decision, etc.), the process is understandably overwhelming. 

Click the PDF below to download the guide.

PDF - Infographic - Ho…

Why limit thanksgivings to November? 

Yes, you are correct: this November newsletter is landing in your inbox in December. Of course, I had every intention of sending this out on Thanksgiving, then on Black Friday, and then over the weekend. But life, as it does, intervened: a delightful Thanksgiving proper at my sister-in-law’s in Pennsylvania with three out of four of our children in attendance, followed by a swift drive up the NY Thruway to visit with our daughter, son-in-law, and three-mont…

What new couples don’t realize (how could they?) is that you’ll end up having the same argument—about the same core thing—for years, sometimes decades.

For Dave and me, that argument is usually about whether I’ve told him something. Just last week, I mentioned that I was going to book club Tuesday evening. He insisted I hadn’t told him. I was 98% certain that yes, I had told him. (I could even picture where we were standing in the kitchen, me scrubbing the broiler pan.) This verbal volley went …

Everyone is back to school and getting used to the new academic calendar. We wish you an engaging, healthy, and successful school year!

In the meantime, the college application process marches on. October 1, 2025, was the first day that any U.S. citizen or eligible non-citizen who expects to apply for need-based financial aid can access, complete, and submit the FAFSA and CSS Profile.

Invariably, a whole host of questions arise. "How do I actually apply for financial aid?" "What do the acronym…

Click the link below to download the Elevated Admissions resource graphic. 

EA - Four-year plan - College to Internship/Job.pdf

Of the talented, hard-working, and how-in-the-world-did-you-manage-to-do-ALL-OF-THIS-in-four-years-of-high-school students that I worked with in the Elevated Admissions Class of ‘25, two stand out. Yes, they stand out on merit alone. However, they also stand out because their admissions journeys forced me to reckon with some hard truths regarding the state of admissions (and, ultimately, the supporting role that I play).

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the landscape used to be that if you were in the t…

Hello !

This month's newsletter targets students who love their winter sports and want to continue participating in them once they get to college. The Elevated Admissions College Athletics Winter Sports Guide details both NCAA and USCSA programs across the United States. We have focused on Alpine, Freeski, Nordic, and Snowboarding programs.   

Click here to access the guide. 

Stay warm, and if you love winter sports, enjoy the season!

Axios recently published an article by April Rubin and Thomas Oide that explores the "why" behind SEC schools' recent surge in popularity with students hailing from the Northeast. The graphic below shows the shift over the last nine years. The article's opening line states, "Warm weather, affordability, and politics have prompted a teenage migration from the Northeast to the South." 

Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen, but understanding the trends can help you manage the colleg…