We hired Susan from Riley Baker to help both of our kids prepare for and apply to college. She…read morebegan working with the kids when they were early in their high school career. She helped both kids identify a career path and ultimately what they wanted our of their college experience. The biggest benefit of working with the kids this early was that they understood what was required in order to get into their top choice schools. She constantly gave them ideas for unique and relevant extracurricular activities, volunteer opportunities and other resume builders. Susan also showed the kids how to start researching and evaluating schools, which can be overwhelming for high school students. She encouraged the kids to visit schools and discussed their feedback afterward. Finally, Susan helped the kids write all of their essays (countless rounds of edits), as well as actually apply to colleges. She showed them how to fill out the applications properly, double checked their work, help them describe their activities properly, etc. . Ultimately, both of our children got into their first choice school. Susan emphasizes more than just rankings and images - she encourages the kids to really want to go to their top choices for the right reasons. She is patient but firm with the teenagers and always keeps the parents involved. While it is large financial and time committment to work with a counselor from Riley Baker, it is worth the investment. I would highly recommend Susan and Riley Baker to anyone.

We worked with Kim at Riley Baker to help both of our kids with the college admissions process, and…read morewe couldn't be happier with the service we received. Our kids couldn't be more different, and she tailored her services to them both beautifully. Our son was first, and he had really no idea where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. Kim helped him work out a process of elimination where he eventually narrowed down a list of qualities that were important to him in a school. From there, she helped identify schools to meet those criteria, and worked with him through the process. Kim was especially helpful with his essay. Our daughter this past year was quite the opposite experience. She knew what she wanted to study and had a good idea where she wanted to go. Kim was instrumental in helping her narrow the search down to a manageable number of contenders, and was again very helpful in the construction and editing of the essay. We were especially impressed at how Kim adapted to work with my daughter who is persuing the performing arts, something she hadn't encountered much before. Overall we couldn't be happier. We've recommended Riley Baker (and Kim specifically) to several friends who've been happy as well.