Start Here

If this is your very first visit to CollegePrepExpress.com, you’re in the right place! I’m Dr. Michael Youmans, aka Dr. Yo, founder and director of CPE; please allow me to welcome you and also to congratulate you on following directions 😀. I’m honored to have you as part of our college admissions community. 

The purpose of this Start Here page is threefold:

1. It seeks to explain the nature and mission of CollegePrepExpress, how it’s unique in the college admissions services industry from its very mission statement to its highly successful, individualized strategies and recommendations for helping students create an almost limitless range of rewarding high school careers that vary with each student’s academic interests, talents, personality, passions, and goals for college—all of which can play very well in today’s college admissions game.
2. It seeks to explain how it is these very differences in our approach, from counseling students and working with them in carefully targeted areas to the work and missions of dedicated test prep companies and academic tutors and college admissions consultants that have dominated the space for nearly a century, that accounts for our tremendous success in helping students get into colleges on their own lists of favorite schools, even in today’s much more competitive college admissions game.
3. It offers examples of various ways students can use the range of our college admissions services and explains the rationale behind the rest of this site’s organization offers advice on how students at each grade level, 9-12, can use the substantial college admissions intel freely available on the rest of this site to maximize its value.

That’s a lot, and to do justice to each of these requires a level of detail that makes for a longer introduction to CPE than I, and very likely you, would like. Having said that, it’s been my experience that the students and families with whom we generally work value hearing about the details of something so important as their approach to high school in the context of today’s college admissions standards. Moreover, if you choose to continue reading the whole page, and we hope you will, you’ll only have to do it this once. But for those of you losing patience because you’ve had to read to this much already and prefer an executive summary, here you go:

Executive Summary

How is CollegePrepExpress Unique?

So if you’re still reading, I’m delighted to have this chance to describe the unique features of CPE—our secret sauce—that distinguish it in the college prep services industry in ways that empower students at every level to realize their college dreams. My most professionally gratifying moments of my life have come when students shared news they were accepted to a dream school they might not have even dared apply to without encouragement and that their lives as they had previously known them were suddenly set on a whole new track. CPE’s unique features and overall approach to coaching and working with high school students, which grew out of my nearly 30 years of experience as a high school teacher, guidance counselor, Ph.D. in Secondary Curriculum and Instruction, private tutor, and college admissions consultant, pave the way for such moments and account for our students’ unparalleled acceptance rates, even at a time when some college admission rates have dropped to the unprecedented low single digits.

CPE’s Holistic Approach

Based on consistent feedback from families across three decades, CollegePrepExpress is very likely a much different kind of college prep business than you might think or even ever have heard of.  (Sidebar: therein lies my marketing nightmare since CPE’s inception). Clients who’ve been referred here by friends, neighbors, and colleagues for, say, an SAT or ACT test prep class are often surprised to hear we also offer private and small-group tutoring in most high school subjects, study skills, and writing across the curriculum. And families who’ve engaged us for academic tutoring or test prep are frequently surprised to learn we offer a wide array of services directly related to the admissions process—from long-term planning consultations during freshman year to CommonApp Boot Camps during senior year. Likewise, many clients are often surprised to learn we run free weekly mindfulness-based academic stress and test anxiety workshops to address the considerable pressure today’s high school students often experience as they navigate the academic, social, athletic, extracurricular, and community service demands the increasingly competitive admissions process entails. 

Most college prep companies focus on one or two aspects of the college admissions game, such as standardized test prep or academic tutoring or assembling a good list of colleges or advice about how to get it. Some tutors and consultants are even more narrowly focused, specializing only in math tutoring, for instance, or just helping students write their personal essays for their applications. In a college prep environment where such specialists are the norm, many people just don’t see CPE coming with its unique, comprehensive, and holistic approach to college admissions.

Of course, we are delighted to work with students in one or two areas in much the same way as the specialists; we have a great track record of success helping students raise SAT scores, for example, or get a 4 or 5 on an AP exam, or tutor them in how to write an effective research paper, or prep them for college visits and interviews. Sometimes we meet students and families in the fall or winter of senior year and still help them achieve their college admissions goals. But where CPE adds tremendous value that few other companies or consultants can claim, and where our track record is truly outstanding even in today’s uber-competitive admissions game—here comes the secret sauce—is when students and families work with us to create and implement highly individualized admissions strategies throughout high school: from course selection to activities to athletics to standardized test planning and preparation to community service to jobs and internships to summer experiences to idiosyncratic hobbies. When students enroll in a test prep class at CPE, we, like dedicated test prep companies, still want to help them raise their scores as much as possible, but always with an eye toward the larger goal of getting into schools that require or consider entrance exam scores. I often ask students, if you knew you were going to get into the top schools on your list, would you care at all what score you get on the SAT or ACT? Conversely, a rocket-high test score is of no value whatsoever if you don’t ultimately get into those schools, right?

Everything we do at CPE is aimed at fulfilling our very simple but uncommon mission, which often includes the narrower missions of admissions specialists, tutors, and consultants, but always in a way that keeps an eye on the ultimate prize: admission to students’ dream schools.

How Do Colleges See You?

There are many ways admissions committees measure success and, consequently, there are many ways for students to feel successful. Scores can help, but they don’t mean everything. By the same token, one important extracurricular versus five isn’t always a tipping point for admissions committees. Just do you. CPE can help you package this in the best way possible; thereby enabling students to feel more successful and less stressed out during high school both in and out of the classroom. 

As important as it is for you to have interests outside of academics, at the end of the day, you are applying to a school. CPE helps in developing students’ academic enthusiasm wherever it lies by sharing a love of learning. Getting students fired up for the awesome intellectual and personal growth experiences that await them on any college campus on which they may ultimately find themselves is a priority for CPE. 

Your dream school is not always out of reach. CPE empowers students to apply to dream schools they may have at some point thought completely out of reach—the technical term we use in the game is “Reaches” and I like to see at least two on every CommonApp. High school guidance counselors who rely too much on the numbers and tell students it’s a waste of time to apply to a school because their GPA is .2 points too low or their ACT is 2 points lower than the college’s average or you lie just outside the comfort zone of Naviance’s scatter plot simply do not understand or appreciate the value of a well-conceived and well-written application. All things are not equal in the college admissions game and you have every right to apply to the schools of dreams. No one is guaranteed an acceptance letter before they apply.

Getting into college isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. CPE helps students think through, assess, and develop their interests, talents, and skills both to generate possible admissions strategies and to consider possible paths through college once they’re accepted.

How Does CPE Use the Holistic Approach to Help You?

To offer one specific example of how our approach can result in very effective advice far different from what you’d almost assuredly hear from a test prep teacher or academic tutor or even a high priced educational consultant, largely because they don’t take a holistic approach and don’t often collect any information outside their narrow niches and goals. Say you want to go to college with a strong psychology department, perhaps with an option to stay a fifth year to earn a master’s degree, en route to setting up your own private practice. You always wanted to have your own child psychology practice and that journey will formally begin in college. You have high interpersonal intelligence and excellent verbal skills; your keenest academic interests, highest level courses, and best grades consistently come in English and History , as well as electives—like AP Psychology—that draw on these particular strengths and interests. You might have one or two SAT Subject Tests and/or AP exams in subjects that corroborate this picture of you. Math classes, and the dreaded Math sections on standardized tests, on the other hand, have been more your foe than your friend in high school, and other than required statistics to support your psychology major, you’re looking forward to completing the last math class of your life before you graduate from high school. Like the your transcript of courses and grades, your SAT and/or ACT scores would likely reflect these interests and talents, or lack thereof ;-), with higher scores in reading, writing, and grammar than in math. Say your first SAT scores were 650 Reading and Writing and 500 Math.

Most test prep teachers and tutors would tell you to strengthen the chain at its weakest link and to focus primarily on raising you math score, which also has more room for improvement. And that would’ve been good advice in the era of the smart, well-rounded kid. But in today’s era of the passionate, focused kid who demonstrates depth rather than breadth, I’d give almost the opposite advice: while it would take substantial time and effort (and maybe even tears) to raise your math score 100 points given your lack of interest and mediocre performance in every high school math class, and ultimately it would be for precious little gain: even if you do manage to raise your math score to the same ballpark as your Reading and Writing score, it’s not like you’re suddenly going to make a case for your future study of math. You’re still going to make a case for studying psychology by showcasing your interpersonal and verbal strengths in as many ways as you can. In fact, you would be better served trying to raise your Reading and Writing score 50 points to hit the historically magical 700 bench mark, which admissions officers would immediately recognize as outstanding and would help your particular case and boost your overall chances for admissions more than a 100-pt increase in Math would. Not to mention you’d enjoy it more.

Many individualized strategies like this, i.e., those that emanate from a holistic approach to the admissions game, are very different from conventional strategies offered by specialists who rarely see beyond their specialty. We might encourage a young budding psychologist, for example, to demonstrate passion as well as academic preparedness by choosing clubs, activities, community service, and/or summer experiences that have a psychology tie-in. All this sets the stage for a coherent and convincing CommonApp, in which specific academic interests are demonstrated in strong grades and test scores and choice of senior year classes, and then colored in and deepened in a complementary Activities list.

CPE’s holistic approach to admissions is, I’m sure, the main reason why our college acceptance rates have been many, many, many times higher than the national averages year after year.

Our ideal client, then, the student whom we can best help get into the colleges on their list, is one who comes with his or her parents for an initial long-term planning consultation either right before or at the very beginning of ninth grade to discuss viable academic, testing, athletic, extracurricular, and community service strategies and devise an initial overall game plan that makes sense for each particular student. Even if your rising freshman’s head is consumed with transitioning to high school and all the drama that entails (it’s a very big deal in a young teen’s life) and miles away from any thoughts about college or college admissions, make her come anyway–she and you will be glad to have the admissions intel sooner rather than later. Then, at the beginning of sophomore through senior years, or sometimes once a semester, we reconvene to review progress, make changes based on changing interests, goals, and performance, and begin to discuss the student’s hopes and dreams for college and what a college experience might actually look like. Such discussions prove tremendously helpful in the following:

1. devising effective individualized strategies to get into the best schools where those hopes and dreams can be realized
2. enabling the student to articulate a compelling narrative about how his or her specific high school career helped shape and develop those hopes and dreams, particularly in the structured spaces of the CommonApp
3.  helping students begin to wrap their brains around college in a way that will help them get the most out of it once they’re accepted.

Students who start early in high school can avail themselves of the full range of advice we offer, which many students and parents regret to learn later in the game, often when it’s too late to follow. Of course, we can still help students improve their admissions prospects at any point in the game, even well into senior year, with our classes, workshops, tutoring, bootcamps, and consultations—much as other specialized companies do full-time—but history demonstrates that the earlier students devise and start to implement (or at least acknowledge) an overall game plan, the more successful they’ll be in the college admissions game. 

As a nice bonus, when I get to know students well from some combination of consultations, classes, and targeted tutoring in one or more subjects throughout high school, the better equipped I become to help brainstorm and make more specific suggestions for their applications and correspondence with college representatives. For example, I was recently helping a senior with whom I’ve worked closely since the summer before her sophomore year compose a letter of intent to Georgetown; when she wanted to articulate some of her specific areas of interest she wants to study as a Global Healthcare major, I was reminded of an essay we worked on together for her 10th grade Human Ecology class that she was very excited about. “Oh yeah…”

CommonApp Boot Camps

In just six years, CPE’s 15-hour comprehensive application planning and writing camps have become the crowned jewel of all our offerings and are, as measured by students’ bottomline acceptances to colleges of their choice, the biggest bang for your buck in the college admissions industry. I get so much professional satisfaction and sense of real humility from the privilege of guiding and watching a student grow throughout high school as a result of strategic planning and working together on targeted areas in classes, private sessions, and/or workshops and pulling it all together in five hard-working days during the summer before senior year. And nothing of a comparable time or financial investment gives students a bigger overall boost in the admissions game. A well-conceived and well-written application is the unsung hero of the college admissions game. Students with identical profiles can have vastly different acceptance scorecards when the game is over simply because of the way they presented themselves on their applications. And that makes perfect sense given the applications themselves are the primary (and often only) way admissions committees get to know applicants. Based on years of experience and acceptance rates that simply blow away those listed by any college to which CPE students apply, Dr. Yo’s CommonApp Boot Camps help you devise your own most effective way to package yourself and then walk you through every item on every form of the CommonApp to tell a cohesive, convincing, and compelling story. If your budget allows for only one CPE class, this should be it. For six years in a row and among the 100+ students who’ve taken it, I’m not aware of a single student who didn’t get into one of his or her top three schools. 

(For students who cannot attend any of the summertime boot camps can take a modified, 4-weekend CommonApp: Getting It Done workshop in the fall in which, unlike the boot camps that have nearly twice the class time hours to complete all the necessary work, students will have assignments between sessions.)

Where do I go Next?

The rest of this website is intended to serve two main purposes: 

1. To offer current, effective, and free intel on the whole range of college admissions topics in the form of blog posts, short videos, podcasts, webcasts, and PowerPoint presentations. 
2. To offer detailed descriptions, typical results, dates and times, and online registration for CPE’s offerings, from private consultations to academic or test prep tutoring to small group (“semi-private’) tutoring for students with a common goal to mindfulness based academic stress and Test Anxiety Reduction Workshops to private application consultations amd CommonApp Boot camp and workshops to special talks and presentations. 

To accomplish these goals and to make the site more user-friendly, we’ve worked hard to streamline everything besides the Home page and this Start Here page into four navigation tabs: CPE Basics, Admissions Intel, Consults and Tutoring, and Classes and Registration.

CPE BASICS 

Under this tab you’ll find all the 411 specifically relating to working with CPE, including our About Us page; Testimonials from students, parents, and colleges; our CPE Newsletter signup and archived issues, our referral rewards program, our new student contact info and goals form, FAQs, and terms. For students (and parents) who want to be sure they’re getting the latest and best intel about college admissions and working with CPE to maximize chances for acceptance to college, it makes sense to subscribe to the newsletter throughout high school. We make it easy to cancel once you’re into college with a prominent unsubscribe link. Likewise, liking us on Facebook ensure you’ll the latest announcement, blog posts, and other useful intel in the college admissions games as soon as they’re published right in your newsfeed.

FREE

• Weekly Academic Stress and Test Anxiety Reduction Workshops (come once or come every Wednesday, 7:00-8:30PM ET, in West Hartfortd or Online. Always FREE.)
• CPE-in-3-ish videos
• “Prep” Talk with CPE
• CPE Blog

ADMISSIONS INTEL

The richest single source of admissions intel can be found in our blog. Posts appear in reverse chronological order, but a search bar enables users to search for any topic of particular interest, or perhaps urgency, from how to write high scoring essays on standardized tests to how to develop effective study habits to how to get the most out of college visits to how best to study for final exams to how to approach the most commonly asked supplement essay questions on college applications. A good place for everyone to start is with Admissions 101: The Big Picture, which provides an overview of the major pieces of the college admissions puzzle. Then, for specific recommendations about key admissions intel and strategies for each of the four high school years, use the “I am (the parent of) a…freshman, sophomore, junior, senior” links under the Admissions Intel tab.

If you’re an auditory learner, you might find our podcast, “Prep Talk with CollegePrepExpress,” particularly useful. 30-min shows relating to specific admissions topics feature panels of “teen experts” sharing their study skills, test prep, and leadership secrets as well as interviews and conversations with professional in the field, from guidance counselors to authors to screenwriters sharing their expertise. Each of the 33 shows can be downloaded free from iTunes.

We also have a small collection of short, hard-hitting videos on our “CPE in 3-ish” page.

CONSULTS & TUTORING

The Consults and Tutoring page enables users to purchase individual one-hour consultations or private tutoring (for example, an annual college admissions strategy consult as outlined above, or ad hoc tutoring to study for a precalc test or brainstorm a Hamlet essay or prep for a college interview) or to purchase sessions in packs of 10, 20, and 40 (good for 12 months and for any family member) for substantial savings (for example, for regular ongoing tutoring in a given subject or standardized test PREP or to work on number of application supplement essays, or any combination of those). To facilitate scheduling, you’ll also see a link to Dr. Yo’s Schedule and CPE classes under that tab, a read-only calendar that enables students (or parents) to request meeting times that aren’t already taken, usually by text or email or phone. Dr. Yo then confirms the request(s) and adds the student’s first name and last initial to the Calendar.

CLASSES & REGISTRATION

The Classes and Registration tab contains links to our Standardized Test Prep and Registration page, our CommonApp Boot Camps (summer) and Getting It Done Workshops (fall) descriptions and registration pages, and our Academic Stress and Test Anxiety Reduction workshops, as well a monthly calendar showing all the official SAT, PSAT, and ACT and registration deadlines to help you plan which to take when. The Test Prep page is organized chronologically by exam date and shows how for each ACT and SAT throughout the year, we offer 4 classes: our flagship and most popular 6-Session prep class, a 9-Session gold-standard class for students who want to maximize chances for a success, a 3-Session Crash Course, and a Standardized Test Math Class for students who want or need to supplement a 3-, 6-, or 9-Session class with a dedicated focus on math, or for those who only need help with math sections of the ACT and/or SAT and/or Level 1 Subject Test in Math. Most students usually start with a 6- or 9-Session Class for their first entrance exam, and, for those taking both the SAT and the ACT, often follow it with a 3- or 6-session class for the other. Another popular course is to take a class and then supplement it with a small number of private sessions to address individual concerns the week or two before the exam. For students prepping for both exams, our 12-, 15-, and 18-session combo classes offer flexibility to mix and match prep classes over a full year at considerable savings.

How to Use this Site

I am the parent of a….

…middle schooler

…freshman

…sophomore

…junior

….senior

Phone: (860) 519-1000 ~ Text: (413) 329-7540

email: Info@collegeprepexpress.com