Services/Prices

Full Service 10-School Package

(The UC application counts as one school.)

Blue Stars takes care of it all! This package is for clients who would like maximum assistance with the college admissions process. Dr. M guides students and their families from beginning to end with careful attention paid to each student’s unique needs. Sign up before March 1, and the 10-School Package includes assistance with three 11th-grade summer-program and internship applications!

The 10-School Admissions Package includes:

• Scheduled face-to-face meetings (either in person or via Skype, Google Chat and Docs, iChat, etc.). Meetings are determined on an as-needed basis. If a student needs a three-hour block to work on a complicated essay, this is arranged. If s/he needs to check in for a half hour or chat on the phone, this will be arranged as well.
• Extensive interview with student to assess his or her admissions profile from an academic, professional, and personal perspective. Dr. M gets to know her students very well.
• Suggestions for supplemental reading or research on subjects relating to professional aspirations or major.
• School research and school selection.
• Assistance with the counselor’s report in order to secure the best letters of recommendation possible.
• Step-by-step, closely guided assistance with admissions essays: brainstorming, strategizing, editing, reducing to word/character count, etc.
• Offline editing of student essays.
• Contacting individual universities and colleges for information specific to that school.
• Final check of each entire application.
• Assistance with wait list letters.
• Interview coaching.

Packages for Planning + Critical Reading and Writing Coaching, 8th-11th Grade

Admissions officers look for students who have a solid profile that shows steady and growing commitment to passions and interests over a long period of time. That is why it is so important to begin careful planning as early as possible, ideally in 8th grade. Avoid hopping around from school club to school club! This will not help your admissions case. Instead, to be truly competitive, create an independent research or community project, and you will appear much more impressive to an admissions officer than someone who is the president of a school club (unless that club is nationally competitive). Stand apart from the rest and become truly engaged in your future with Dr. M!

Services include:

• Discussion with family and record-keeping of student profile.
• Guidance with finding the most unique extracurricular, research, and community engagement activities in line with the students interests and aspirations for the future.
• Research and detailed report for best summer opportunities.
• Assistance with 3 applications for summer programs/volunteer work.
• Schedule for standardized test-taking with guidance on selecting AP and SAT II exams.
• Class selection for high school.
• Customized tutorials in critical reading and writing.

Art Portfolio Consultation

• For high school students submitting a supplemental art portfolio
• For fine arts students applying to art school at the undergraduate level
• For fine arts students applying to art school at the graduate level
  

Blue Stars is a multimedia admissions consulting service! Dr. M provides assistance for art students and students with strong involvement in the arts. Possessing an MFA in multimedia art, she is well-versed in portfolio requirements, the proper documentation of art, and video/audio production. Dr. M can help you get your portfolio in shape from start to finish! Services include:

• Exhaustive studio visit with assessment of the strength of student work plus guidance on improving work, pursuing opportunities to strengthen portfolio, achieving conceptual coherence, and filling in needed work for portfolio requirements.
• Assistance with presentation and production of portfolio in accordance with each school’s guidelines.

Graduate and Professional School Admissions

By the time you are ready to apply to graduate or a professional school, you have accumulated a storehouse full of accomplishments, experiences, insights, and advanced knowledge of your subject matter. It’s like having a closet full of stuff that has not been organized, or rather formed in the appropriate way. Well, I’m your closet organizer!

If you are a graduate or professional school applicant, I will sift through your “stuff” with you, target what is most relevant, interesting, and impressive and form this material into a focused personal statement or statements. If you are a graduate school applicant pursuing a particular field of study, I can help you focus your thoughts and narrate what you have accomplished, how it is leading you to further study, and why this study holds promise for your chosen field.

Graduate-level services include:

• Brainstorming
• Pre-writing exercises
• Strategizing
• Writing coaching from draft to polished, finished product within the word- or page count
• Final check of each entire application

Artist Statement Coaching

Most artists, no matter how good or promising their work is, have difficulty with their own artist statement. It is often the case that an artist is so close to his or her artwork, that the work and practice have essentially become a part of this person, it is hard to gain enough distance to assess one’s own work intellectually and analytically. Many artists may also have an aversion to writing in a formal, mainstream, and, shall I say, institutional manner.

Because I am both an artist and an academic (who, yes, can still write institutionally), I believe I am well poised to guide you in crafting an engaging and authoritative artist statement that negotiates the line between your artistic voice and vision and the protocols of formal academic writing.

My art school application service includes an extended studio visit (either in person or remotely), guidance in further research or reflection for your statement, and writing coaching. The studio visit consists of a comprehensive conversation about your body of work, during which I ask questions, engage in conversation about your influences, guiding ideas, projects in process, future plans, or anything else that is related to your art practice. Based on this visit (which can take some time: warning!), we will then collaboratively strategize on crafting your artist statement and I will design pre-writing exercises in preparation for initial drafting. We will then continue to revise, polish, and edit your unique and professional artist statement down to the page count.

Essay Coaching for Competitive Fellowships

What do President Bill Clinton, Senator David Vitter, Kris Kristofferson, and Rachel Maddow have in common? Each is a Rhodes scholar! (Yes, Kris Kristofferson, if you have any idea who he is, is a Rhodes Scholar—1968, graduated from Pomona College).

The Rhodes Scholarship, which offers an advanced degree from Oxford University, is one of the most prestigious academic scholarships for students who are just graduating college. There are a variety of these highly competitive fellowships. Some of them are open to students of any discipline, and some of them are targeted at students who aspire toward scientific research (the Goldwater) or a career in public service (the Truman). Some take you to foreign countries (the Fulbright).

The application process for prestigious national fellowships is, to say the least, rigorous and multifaceted. Selection committees often require more than one essay. For some, you will need to write a policy paper or abstract of your research. You might need to conduct research to further expand your command over your study of choice. Whatever the case, the packet you submit must be not only stellar, but absolutely perfect.

Most universities these days have a national fellowship office. If you are interested in such opportunities, you should visit that office as early as possible in your academic career. This way you can strategically plan your undergraduate study and activities in order to be most competitive, come application time.

When it is time to write your essays, I will be able to help you articulate your thoughts, accomplishments, and experiences in the most winning and persuasive way possible. Before we even begin to write, I will guide you in research (if need be) and brainstorming for your presentation. You will be given pre-writing exercises and coached throughout the entire essay-writing process. If ever there were a blue star, it is the national fellowship winner.

The price for national fellowship application coaching depends on the scope and rigor of each application process. For example, an application for a Truman Scholarship, which requires a two-page original policy proposal in addition to an array of short essays, would be more expensive than an application that requires something more along the lines of a single personal statement. To determine the price, I will first review the requirements of each scholarship application and discuss the price with you during our introductory conversation.