Private middle and high school admissions.
For families applying to competitive private middle and high schools, including Harker and Menlo. We help your child show genuine curiosity, in a way that still sounds like a kid.
What admissions reads for
Grades get an application read. With far more qualified families than seats, what decides it happens outside the classroom.
Genuine curiosity
A child who wonders about something and goes looking for the answer.
Initiative they can explain
In the interview, the work has to come out in the child's own words, as something they chose and did.
Where applications go wrong
The most common mistake is doing too much.
A parent's story in a child's voice
Narratives like "she fails, then she perseveres" are true and lovingly meant, and they read as a script. Readers have seen it hundreds of times.
Filling every slot
Ten spaces on the form do not need ten entries. Leaving things out is often what makes the rest believable.
Projects a parent could have built
If a parent works in tech, a polished app from a ten-year-old raises one question for the reader. It cannot look engineered.
College-level research at age ten
It is the fastest route to a rejection. The project should match the age of the student doing it.
What we do
- Profile pruning. One or two sessions deciding what to feature, what to drop, and which single thread ties the application together.
- A small, honest project. We start from something the child already loves. A volleyball player might film school games on an iPad and measure whether crowd noise changes reaction time. One question, real data, a simple chart.
- Light guidance. The student does the work. Dr. Brah keeps it pointed the right way, and asks parents to resist the urge to polish it.
- Supplements, parent statements and interviews. A short project summary for the supplemental upload, help with the parent essays, a mentor letter where there is room, and practice explaining the work out loud.
- After decisions. For younger students we check in about once a quarter, to keep the trajectory good and make sure they still enjoy school. Many families stay with us through college.
The mentor
Dr. Harman Brah is a physician and a judge at the California Science & Engineering Fair. He mentors our research students himself, from a fifth grader's first real question to state-level competitors. We work only with STEM and pre-med families.
Dr. Brah judging at the California Science & Engineering Fair, and two of our research students receiving an award and presenting their project.
How sessions run
Weekly sessions with the student, 40 minutes to an hour depending on their focus. A parent sits in on the early sessions, in the background, which helps a lot at this age.
Packages start at $4,000. Research mentorship and every admissions program start there.
Request a consultation
Families we have advised have been admitted to Harker and Menlo.
Fill out the short form below. Dr. Brah or one of our physician advisors will reach out within 24 hours.