02/08/2024
Thanks for all of the support and page likes! For those of you who don't know me, here is my bio:
With over 20 years of experience in education, Erica is bringing her thoughtful, student-centered approach towards the college admission process to being an educational consultant. Having worked on both sides of the desk in college admissions and college counseling, she has built relationships with many admission officers and college counselors around the world.
After graduating from Fordham University in the late 1990’s, she began her career working as an admission counselor in their Office of Undergraduate Admission. Her experience working there was not just limited to her alma mater. Being part of a larger network of Jesuit colleges and universities helped her learn and grow to understand the importance of relationships in the college admission world. Getting to travel around the US and visit hundreds of high schools every year helped her grow and expand her knowledge about the college search and college admission process as a whole. Working with the tour guide program at Fordham helped her become an expert on what students and parents were looking for in a college visit, and she often led panels and discussions on how to help a college build a better tour guide and student visitation program.
Her quest for knowledge and a different perspective led her to pursue a position on the “other side of the desk” in college counseling. She spent five years working at a boarding school in Rhode Island where she helped hundreds of US and International students navigate the college search and admission process. The students and parents she worked with appreciated her behind-the-scenes knowledge of how an admission office would read and evaluate applications for admission. This led her and her colleagues to create an annual “Mock Application Workshop” for students at her school and a neighboring boarding school a few towns away. Deans and Directors of some of the most prestigious universities in the US would drive or fly-in to participate in this workshop. Each Dean and Director would lead a small break-out group, and help their group read and review five student applications and present their cases to the admission committee. This annual workshop was instrumental in helping students understand the process, and how to present their best self in their own college application. Her students applied to and enrolled at a wide variety of different schools across the globe, but what mattered the most was that all of her students found a home, a place where they could grow and become the best version of themselves.
Most recently, as a seasonal application reader at a large research university in the Mid-West, she has seen first-hand how universities post-COVID are relying less on the SAT/ACT, and aims to help her students navigate an always changing college admission landscape by keeping up to date on college admission trends and practices.
Over her career, Erica has traveled to hundreds of different colleges and universities around the country and has enjoyed the opportunity to tour and see different college campuses first-hand. As a mom of four, with her eldest daughter currently in ninth grade, she can empathize with parents as she is about ready to go through this process for the first time as a parent. She aims to help her daughter build a strong academic foundation in her early high school years, all while exploring new things and going beyond her comfort zone. She encourages all students to have a growth mindset and use the college admission process as a path of self-discovery.
