College readiness coaching · Lincolnshire, IL
College Consultant for Adlai E. Stevenson High School Families — Engineer-Led, One Student at a Time
Private college readiness coaching for Stevenson students and families across Lincolnshire, Buffalo Grove, Long Grove, Vernon Hills, and Prairie View. Every session is remote, by video call, and with the same person — a UC Berkeley engineer who spent eight years building production software at Amazon and has placed 80+ students at top-20 universities.
At a school where most of the class is already taking AP courses, rigor is the baseline — not the thing that separates one application from another.
- Serving
- Lincolnshire and 4 nearby communities
- District
- Township High School District 125
- Best starting point
- Sophomore spring to junior fall
What is actually true at Stevenson
Stevenson is one of the largest high schools in Illinois, serving Lincolnshire, Buffalo Grove, Long Grove, Vernon Hills and Prairie View through Township High School District 125 — roughly 4,758 students as of the 2024-25 school year.
AP participation runs near 74%. That figure is worth sitting with, because of what it implies: a transcript full of Advanced Placement courses describes most of the Stevenson cohort. It is the room, not a position in it.
So the question by sophomore spring is not "how do we add more rigor." It is "what makes this application legible as one specific student, when the reader has already seen four hundred transcripts that look like this one."
Usually that is a test score, a coherent through-line in the activities, and an essay that could only have been written by this person.
Why Stevenson families supplement — and why it is not a criticism of the school
A counseling department at a school this size does serious work at a caseload arithmetic alone makes impersonal. Families who add outside support are not compensating for a weak school — they are buying attention no ratio of this kind can supply. We work alongside the counselor, never around them.
What the coaching covers
One founder-led engagement across the application arc. Not a marketplace tutor, and not a rotating team.
A college list built for this student
Not a tier chart. A list reasoned from what your student actually wants, what the record supports, and what the cohort they are read within looks like — written down so the family can push back on it.
The application arc, held weekly
Testing decisions, course selection, the summer plan, recommendation requests, essay drafts, and deadlines — each with a date against it and a weekly check on whether it moved.
Essays the student can defend
Brainstorming and structural feedback on work the student wrote. Every draft traces to their own notes, which is both the honest way and the version that survives an admissions reader.
A study system the student keeps
A mistake log, session-prep routine, and verification checklist the student builds and owns as files — usable after the engagement ends, and portable to whatever tools come next.
How AI is used here — and where the line is
Students build a study system they own and can read: a log of their own mistakes, the instructions they wrote for how they want to be helped, and a checklist for verifying an answer before trusting it. The system is a set of files the student keeps and can take anywhere. It does not know your child, and it does not remember them between sessions — what persists is what the student wrote down.
The limit belongs next to the benefit: a model can be confident and wrong, which is exactly why verification is taught as part of the method rather than mentioned at the end of it.
Questions Stevenson families ask
Also serving nearby North Shore schools
- College consultant for New Trier Township High School — Winnetka, IL →
- College consultant for Glenbrook North High School — Northbrook, IL →
- College consultant for Glenbrook South High School — Glenview, IL →
- College consultant for Vernon Hills High School — Vernon Hills, IL →
- College consultant serving Northbrook and the North Shore →
Start with a consultation
We will look at where your Stevenson student actually is, what the next twelve months should hold, and whether this is the right fit. If it is not, we will say so.