I work with a small number of families each year on college admissions and standardized test preparation. Every session, every draft, and every conversation comes from me.

I came to this work from inside the institutions that families hire me to navigate. As an undergraduate admissions officer at Duke University for three years, I read applications and sat in the committee rooms where decisions are made. As a Duke professor, I taught the students those decisions produced. My own education runs through Brown University, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and Duke, where I earned my doctorate.

I still sit the SAT three times each year — and score a perfect 1600 each time — because an advisor should practice the discipline he teaches. Away from this work, I write about architectural history (especially in the Middle Ages).