Overview: CollegeAdvisor.com Client Success Stories
Each of our CollegeAdvisor students experiences their own unique journey through the college application process. In our Client Success Stories, we spotlight the achievements of students who have made it through this challenging time with our support. By offering personalized advising, expert resources, meticulous essay editing, and more, we help students from all backgrounds realize their college dreams.
The road to college can be overwhelming, spanning years of preparation. At CollegeAdvisor, our mission is clear: to alleviate stress and empower students to maximize their potential. While we cannot guarantee outcomes, our goal is for every student to submit their applications confidently, knowing they’ve presented their best selves.
By showcasing real-life experiences, our Client Success Stories reveal how CollegeAdvisor transforms college aspirations into tangible achievements. From crafting tailored college lists to refining essays to leveraging our robust support network, each story reflects our dedication to guiding students toward success.
For this article, we interviewed Kaelyn McGhie, a future Revolutionary headed to George Washington University in the fall.
Getting to Know Kaelyn
Kaelyn McGhie was born in New Zealand. Because of her dad’s work in international business retail, her family relocated to Illinois in 2019.
Kaelyn’s global background strongly influenced her career and academic goals. “A lot of my favorite classes were definitely world language focused and international affairs,” Kaelyn said. “I think part of that is that I grew up in a country that’s very built on its international connections.”
Her passion for languages led her to win the Outstanding Senior in the World Language Department Award. “I took Chinese, Spanish, and German my senior year,” Kaelyn explained. She also loved social studies classes and AP World History. Extracurricularly, Kaelyn participated in the speech team, student council, and other honors societies.
Outside of school, Kaelyn keeps busy with athletics. When she was growing up in New Zealand, Kaelyn was a competitive swimmer. Now, she spends more time riding. “When I moved to America, I got really into horseback riding, and I’m an equestrian now.” But that doesn’t mean she gave up her love of swimming.
Alongside her other extracurriculars, Kaelyn runs her own swim instruction company. “I do independent contracting, so I go where the families need me,” she said. “Whether it’s a neighborhood pool, the pool at their house,” Kaelyn said. “I’m also a lifeguard at the YMCA near me.”
Since she was a kid, Kaelyn knew she wanted to go to college. As a driven student and individual, she started working towards that goal well before her senior year.
What kind of support was Kaelyn looking for?
When it came to the college application process, Kaelyn was self-motivated. She started early, already researching college advising programs during her sophomore year. Since she was confident in her own preparedness, Kaelyn was looking for a personalized experience that she could customize to her liking.
“A lot of the websites and the other companies I looked at, it was more of a program you had to follow,” said Kaelyn. “I loved how CollegeAdvisor worked with you on what you needed, and it was as you needed it. It wasn’t a set program.”
Since Kaelyn was already confident in her resume and extracurriculars, she wanted assistance with the actual application: essay editing, building her extracurricular activities descriptions, and some test preparation.
“I think I met with four different companies to try and evaluate,” Kaelyn said. “And I liked how customizable CollegeAdvisor was.”
Getting started with CollegeAdvisor
Kaelyn had her first meeting with an advisor the summer before her junior year. At first, she and her adviser didn’t meet very often. “It was more every couple of months, check-in: ‘Hey, how’s test prep going? How’s extracurricular stuff?’” Kaelyn said. “Kind of getting the ball rolling.”
After about a year, Kaelyn was assigned a new advisor after her first one left the company. Once Kaelyn started working with Bria Bourgeois, her college application process kicked into gear. “She was amazing,” said Kaelyn. “She was always reaching out.”
Kaelyn appreciated that Bria expressed a genuine interest and investment in her success. “She truly made CollegeAdvisor not just a company…it was an experience working with her.”
Bria and Kaelyn met about every two weeks for an hour, but the process was customized to Kaelyn’s needs. “I was always able to schedule a meeting with her for however long I wanted,” Kaelyn said.
How Kaelyn’s advisor helped her stay organized and motivated
Even though Kaelyn started the college process early, she worked with Bria to establish a timeline for all her applications. With countless details and numerous supplemental essays to keep track of, staying organized with a document or spreadsheet can be extremely helpful.
With Bria, she built a system for keeping track of her applications, organizing them by deadline and other useful information. “We broke down, okay, here’s the name, location, average ACT, average SAT, cost, does it have the specific things I’m looking for,” said Kaelyn. “One of which was an equestrian team.”
Deciding your top schools
From there, Kaelyn tried to rank the schools based on how much she wanted to go there. But nothing was set in stone. “The rankings changed like 20 million times because new information kept coming up,” Kaelyn said. “I would tour and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love this one.’ Or, ‘Nope, I’m not going there.’”
Even though most of Kaelyn’s list ended up staying the same, she still made use of CollegeAdvisor’s resources. She sent her list to the College List Team and got feedback. “Just to make sure that we had all our bases covered,” Kaelyn said. Kaelyn also collaborated with Bria on schools to potentially add to her list.
Having this collaboration when building a college list is important to ultimately find the right fit. Even though students come in with an idea of what they’d like in a college, looking at new places and going on tours can be really eye-opening.
“It’s actually quite ironic, because the whole time I was looking at applying, I said, ‘I don’t want to be in a city, but I don’t want to be in a suburb. I want to be about 20 minutes outside the heart of the city so I can still have the campus feel.” Every college on Kaelyn’s list had that quality—except for one. And that’s the one she ended up choosing.
Tackling a high volume of college essays
Even though Kaelyn started essay prep early, it was still a challenge to keep up with all of her college essays.
Kaelyn began working on her personal statement the summer before her senior year. “I got my Common App essay done before I even started school,” she said. “Which was great, because that was the biggest one I had to write, and having that one done and not having to worry about that was really helpful.”
However, she still had a lot to tackle with each school’s supplements. “I applied to 10 colleges, and I think I ended up doing about 46 supplementals,” she said. “Which was crazy.”
Every time Kaelyn and Bria met, they would go over some of her essays. Kaelyn would take a couple of weeks to write more supplements, and when they met, Bria would give Kaelyn feedback to incorporate. “We’d edit them together, make them perfect, essentially, at least in my eyes, and then send them on their way,” said Kaelyn. “And then I’d work on a couple more, and we’d meet again in two weeks and go over them.”
Kaelyn read essay guides and learned tips and tricks to maximize her essay writing. Bria also gave her an especially good tip on essay brainstorming: “Bring a notebook.”
Carrying her notebook around, Kaelyn would jot down ideas when she was out shopping or running errands. “When you sit down to write, you have the notebook, and you can open it to see, okay, this is what I was thinking,” Kaelyn said. “It allowed me to stay in the moment with the writing.”
Maximizing SAT and ACT scores
In addition to working with Bria, Kaelyn also took advantage of College Advisor’s tips on SAT/ACT prep. She worked with Method Test Prep to maximize her scores. “They had practice tests that I could take for the SAT or the ACT.”
Since Kaelyn’s high school was very SAT-focused, she hadn’t interacted much with the ACT. She took the ACT for the first time in the fall of her Junior year but wasn’t sure where to go from there. With Method, Kaelyn took a variety of practice tests: full tests and individual sections so she could work on different skills separately.
“It also said ‘Here’s the areas you’re weaker in.’ It was very dynamic in that sense,” Kaelyn said. “I could go in and just practice units.”
Similar to the support she sought out with CollegeAdvisor, Kaelyn could tailor her ACT prep to her liking. “It’s like, ‘Okay, today, I’m working on Math and it’s going to be algebra, trig, and then a little bit of pre-calculus.’”
However, even after preparing and taking the test a couple of times, Kaelyn was still struggling with the math sections. Bria recommended Kaelyn a different online tutoring service, unaffiliated with CollegeAdvisor, that could provide more specialized math tutoring. “My math score ended up going up like 11 points in four months,” Kaelyn said. “Which was incredible.”
Throughout the process, Kaelyn was able to rely on her advisor to provide her with a breadth of information, ensuring Kaelyn got all of the support she needed.
What was Kaelyn’s biggest challenge?
For Kaelyn, the most challenging part of the application process was navigating so many essays. However, it wasn’t so much the writing as it was the brainstorming, planning, and strategizing.
“You’re trying to market yourself without marketing yourself, right?” said Kaelyn. “So that was probably the hardest part for me.”
This is a common hurdle students face in their applications. Many students are overwhelmed by the volume of essays, and the idea of trying to come up with exactly the right topic, and the right way to say it. “It was the ‘what do I want to write about, and how am I going to write about it’ that was probably the hardest part,” Kaelyn said.
But through brainstorming tricks like keeping a journal with her and meticulous organization, Kaelyn and Bria tackled all 40+ of Kaelyn’s essays. “We hyperlinked all my individual Google Docs to a general document,” said Kaelyn. “That allowed us to say, ‘Okay, I’ve done this college. I’m halfway through this one’s supplementals. Let me click this one and see what I wrote.”
Even though Kaelyn ended up repurposing a few of her essays, she always made sure to inject each essay with something unique. “I didn’t want to use the same one for different things,” Kaelyn explained. This is important: re-using the bones of an essay on a similar topic is a good hack, but each supplemental essay should be specific to the school you’re sending it to.
What was Kaelyn’s favorite part about working with CollegeAdvisor?
Out of all of the ways that Kaelyn felt supported by CollegeAdvisor, there was one specific experience that stood out: the energy that Bria, Kaelyn’s advisor, brought to every meeting.
“Whether it was 9 am on a Saturday morning or it was 7 pm on a Wednesday night, she always brought the same level of enthusiasm,” said Kaelyn.
The college process is a lot. Writing essays, figuring out which schools you want to apply to, and handling that on top of your academics and extracurriculars is enough to give anyone anxiety. Sometimes, you need someone else who’s excited about your future to remind you that you’re excited, too.
“It’s a big next step,” said Kaelyn. “And sometimes you lose the excitement in the stress.” Bria helped Kaelyn stay grounded in the potential and the opportunities ahead of her. “She helped me realize the fun in it too.”
Funnily enough, Kaelyn ended up choosing the same school that Bria went to! So after the college process had finished, Bria was still supporting Kaelyn: they have planned to catch up once Kaelyn gets to campus. “For her to go out of her way really showed me that she didn’t just view it as a job,” said Kaelyn. “She took it personally, she genuinely developed an interest in who I was, what I was doing.”
Kaelyn’s admissions results and the road ahead
Of the ten schools she applied to, Kaelyn got into six: George Washington University, Northeastern University, American University, Indiana University, University of South Carolina, and University of Tennessee.
With several great schools to choose from, Bria helped Kaelyn make her ultimate college decision. After Kaelyn got her acceptances, she met with Bria three more times so that they could weigh the pros and cons together. “She was not at all trying to influence me,” said Kaelyn, “but she was providing me the tools with which I could make the most informed decision.”
Kaelyn will be attending George Washington University. She says she’s “absolutely thrilled” with her experience and where she’s going.
Even though the location wasn’t what she thought she’d like—Kaelyn was initially looking at campuses a little more outside the city center—once she toured, Kaelyn fell in love with GW. “I truly felt like there was such a buzz on campus,” she said.
“It was unlike anything else, because it had a campus, in a city. And it felt very safe,” she said. “And I was like, oh my gosh, I actually really like this…I love this.”
What will Kaelyn major in?
Inspired by her international background and her love of language, Kaelyn will be majoring in International Affairs. Within her major, she plans to concentrate on International Economics.
And she’s not stopping there. “Then I’m looking at doing a double major in International Business.”
GW’s international affairs and business programs are highly ranked, rigorous programs. For someone like Kaelyn who put her all into both her academics and extracurriculars, GW seems like a perfect fit.
Kaelyn’s advice to future applicants
When we asked Kaelyn what advice she’d give other students, she gave us some practical advice. “Start your essays in the summer before you start your senior year,” Kaelyn said.
If you save your Common App essay for the fall, it can be hard to work on that alongside supplemental essays and schoolwork. “Get the ball rolling, get started with it, and it helps ease a lot of the stress,” Kaelyn said.
Kaelyn also gave this piece of advice for maximizing your test score: “Take the SAT once, the ACT once. Figure out which format you like better.”
“For me, I’m not as strong in math,” she said. “So having the four levels of math instead of five was great in the ACT. From there, focus on the test you like better, study, and take it at least one or two more times…And do that during your junior year.”
Why CollegeAdvisor?
“I just want to reiterate once again, I had a great journey with CollegeAdvisor,” said Kaelyn at the end of our interview. “I felt like it was exactly what I needed in my college application process.”
For Kaelyn, one of the most important aspects of her journey with CollegeAdvisor was the confidence it gave her. “It helped give me that security blanket,” she said. “Which is exactly what you want in a very uncertain time in your life.”
If you’re interested in taking advantage of CollegeAdvisor’s webinars, guides, one-on-one counseling, test preparation, scholarship assistance, or other programming, don’t hesitate to reach out. Whoever you are, wherever you are in your college journey, we’ve got what you need.
Take it from Kaelyn: “Whether it was with my essays, my college lists, my scholarships, whatever I needed. CollegeAdvisor was always here with some form of tool to help me.”
This article was written by advisor, Rachel Kahn. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.
