CollegeStrategy

"Vicki was super supportive and clicked with our daughter. Junior year was a stressful time and it was helpful to have a confident and understanding third person to guide Sophia. We were very pleased with the support."

"I highly recommend Vicki and her team. We appreciated her philosophy of ensuring that students are in the driver’s seat and able to tell authentic stories about themselves. In the process, they taught my son about what sets a great essay apart from a good one, a lesson that will serve him well in college itself. The team established very clear and achievable deadlines, which helped my son feel confident and under control throughout the process. Vicki is a positive, delightful, and generous person; she was quick to respond to any of our questions and concerns about college applications with answers that made sense to us and put us at ease. Applying to college can be stressful, but having Vicki’s team at my son’s side mitigated those challenges. My son received an embarrassment of riches of college offers to choose from. Hiring College Strategies was money very well spent."

"I would highly recommend working with Vicki! I worked on my college essays with Vicki and Laurie, and their feedback was meaningfully constructive and truly helped me become a better and more compelling writer. I could notice that I was internalizing their advice into all of my writing because by the end of my application process, I was able to write the same high-quality essays in fewer drafts than I was originally. Their support stretched throughout the whole process - from the very beginning stages of brainstorming ideas to putting the final touches on an essay or trimming off a few words strategically to meet a word limit. Furthermore, Vicki was always there to answer questions about the college application process as they came up. The whole process can be confusing and hectic, but being able to work with Vicki helped me stay organized and feel supported throughout the entire process."

"I worked with Vicki in my college application process and she has been nothing but wonderful. She knows exactly what she's talking about and makes sure to have your choices and opinions in mind. I requested an abroad college and she went out of her way to research and provide new options for me. She's very on top of all the deadlines and very politely and efficiently makes sure you are too. Even after my process was done, I continued to reach out to her with occasional miscellaneous college questions, and she answered quickly and thoroughly every time! Vicki's been a huge help and I'm very thankful I had her to help me through the chaos of college applications!"

"Our family highly recommends Vicki Ross at College Strategy because of our incredibly positive experience with her this past year. We have used other college counselors for our older daughter and our experience was not in any way as positive and successful as our experience with Vicki. Our son had a very easy time with his essays, applications and working up his college list of schools with Vicki. She is very organized, very professional, and knows a lot of strategies and insights into schools and the admission process. She is very good at empowering students to take control of the process and work independently with her on the applications, which was wonderful for me! Most importantly, she understand and likes teenagers and is fun and easy for them to work with. She was available to me for support for any concerns or issues that came up during the process. Vicki stayed engaged with our son, via texting (the only way to reach him!), by sending information and ideas to him to ensure his success. Vicki also has the ability to work with different kinds of kids with different needs and different working styles. We know of other friends who have used her and each kid, though they were very different "types" of kids, was extremely happy and very successful working with her. Our son really enjoyed working with her and we are thrilled with the experience and with the results! We cannot recommend Vicki more highly! She's the best college counselor we've seen in Austin and we have worked with 4 other counselors for college application support."