Our team of experts provides personalized and high-touch support at every stage of the college application process.
These formative years are important for building a strong foundation for success. We will assess a student’s unique strengths, passions, and goals and will design a personalized, strategic roadmap. This roadmap will cover all aspects of a student’s high school journey and we will provide guidance for executing each step of that plan.
During this critical year, we provide holistic support as a student prepares to apply to college. We provide advice on leadership building, extracurricular development, summer planning, college list building, and more. We also offer work closely with students through all aspects of preparing their applications.
Regardless of where you are with preparing your applications, we are ready to jump in! Our team are experts at identifying a student’s strengths and crafting their compelling narrative. We offer tailored suggestions and work with you to execute them, ensuring a refined application.
Through this stand alone, virtual research program, we match high school students with PhD candidates from top research universities. Students will complete the valuable process of selecting a research topic, collecting and analyzing data, and producing a final paper or project as they dive deeper into their passions.
Our team of tutors support students in preparation for the SAT and the ACT as well as all academic areas. They have the expertise to effectively guide students through all standardized testing, including AP exams, ensuring that students are maintaining their academic profiles.
Applying to graduate school is competitive so don’t leave your application to chance. We have the expertise across a wide range of graduate programs and we will work with you to discover the best programs for your goals and to craft tailored applications, geared towards each of your individual schools.
93% of our students are admitted to one of their top 3 college choices.
Working with Oriel Admissions was the best decision that I made for my son’s college applications! Rona and her team went above and beyond, offering comprehensive support that exceeded my expectations. Their holistic counseling approach empowered my son to achieve his dream of being admitted to an Ivy League college. I highly recommend Oriel Admissions!
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The earlier that you begin your engagement with Oriel Admissions, the greater impact that we can have on your child’s admissions chances. A student’s curriculum in middle school will often determine their academic profile in high school. Starting as early as 8th grade can allow us to set your student on the path for academic success.
For our long-term counseling engagements, we create a Strategic Roadmap that is personalized to each student and is designed to provide guidance for how a student spends their time in high school. We can build this roadmap for our students as early as 8th grade up to as late as the first portion of 11th grade.
However, we can also support students in the later stages of their high school experience and often engage with students who are rising into their senior year or who may need assistance improving their applications while in their senior year.
Our unique 360-degree approach to counseling is how we provide students and families with the most comprehensive level of support, allowing students to develop the skills that they need to be successful in high school, in college, and beyond.
The student will have a primary college counselor who will meet with them on a regular basis for advising sessions (8th, 9th, and 10th grade) or who will work directly with them on their application (11th and 12th grade).
In addition to their college counselor, the student will be supported by academic tutors, SAT/ACT tutors, a career coach, a writing coach, and project mentors, as needed.
Rona Aydin, the founder of Oriel Admissions, is involved with every family as well. Rona will meet quarterly with the student to check on their progress and is always available to provide support and strategic direction as needed.
We offer comprehensive advising and planning services beginning as early as 8th grade, helping students navigate every stage of their academic and personal development.
As students transition into the college application process in their junior and senior years, we provide:
Our students come from all over the country and from all around the world. Our students attend public high schools, charter high schools, and private high schools. Additionally, we are well-versed in the educational systems of the countries that commonly send their students to study in the US.
Even if we have not worked with a student from your district before, we will quickly familiarize ourselves with your school and what makes it unique. After all, there are over 20,000 institutions providing a high school education in the US and we have not yet had the opportunity to work with students from all of them!
We guide students with diverse academic backgrounds. Our students are incredibly diverse in their interests and passions. They are creative thinkers, aspiring designers, and artists eager to explore innovative fields.
Many of our students are drawn to the humanities, seeking a broad and interdisciplinary education that fosters critical thinking and a deeper understanding of the world around them. We also work with students who are passionate about STEM subjects and are driven to build quantitative skills in fields like engineering, computer science, and medicine.
What sets many of our students apart is their desire to pursue dual interests. We encourage them to use their time in high school to explore these parallel passions, crafting a unique academic narrative that reflects their individuality.
Our students apply to a wide variety of colleges and programs. From Ivy League universities and small liberal arts colleges to large public flagship institutions, they seek out schools that align with their goals and aspirations. They apply to specialized programs such as arts and design schools, engineering and computer science departments, business programs, and even competitive BS/MD programs. No matter the path, we help our students present their best selves and achieve success across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines.
Our students apply to every imaginable college in the US, Canada, the UK, and other countries throughout the world. Many of our students are targeting Ivy League and other highly selective colleges. We are equally prepared to support students with diverse goals and college preferences, tailoring our guidance to meet their unique aspirations.
We recognize that no two students are the same, and we are equally prepared to support those pursuing a variety of goals and college preferences. Our team tailors guidance to each student's unique aspirations, ensuring they find the best-fit schools where they will thrive both academically and personally.
TL;DR: Early Decision acceptance rates are two to five times higher than Regular Decision rates at every Ivy League school and most top-20 universities. At Brown, ED applicants were admitted at 16.5% compared to 3.94% for RD – a 4.2x advantage. At Vanderbilt, the gap widened to 11.9% ED vs. 2.8% RD (Vanderbilt Hustler, March … Continued
TL;DR: The Ivy League Academic Index (AI) is a 60-240 score that every applicant is assigned, calculated from unweighted GPA and SAT or ACT scores. Applicants generally need an AI above 220 to be competitive at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, while 210 to 229 is common among admitted students across the broader Ivy League (Hernandez, … Continued
TLDR: UNC Chapel Hill’s overall acceptance rate is approximately 16%, but the out-of-state rate is roughly 8% – making it comparable in selectivity to Cornell for non-NC residents (UNC CDS 2024-2025, Daily Tar Heel, 2025). A state mandate caps out-of-state enrollment at 18% of each incoming class, which structurally limits the number of OOS students … Continued
TLDR: Cornell Engineering admits roughly 8-10% of applicants, Michigan Engineering receives over 115,000 total applications with out-of-state rates near 15%, and Georgia Tech received 68,000 applications with a 15% overall rate that drops to approximately 9% for out-of-state students (institutional admissions data, 2025-2026). For STEM-focused affluent families, the choice comes down to three trade-offs: Ivy … Continued
TLDR: USC admitted 10.4% of 79,290 applicants for the Class of 2030, with an Early Action rate of 9.5% and a record-high admitted class GPA of 3.92 (USC Office of Admission, USC Annenberg Media, March 2026). Starting with the Class of 2031 (fall 2027 applicants), USC will expand Early Decision to most undergraduate programs – … Continued
TLDR: Duke (4.7% acceptance rate), Northwestern (7%), and Vanderbilt (4.7%) are the three private universities most often compared head-to-head by affluent families building competitive school lists (Duke Chronicle, Daily Northwestern, Vanderbilt Hustler, 2026). All three now rival Ivy League selectivity, fill more than half their classes through Early Decision, and produce median starting salaries above … Continued
TLDR: The most selective liberal arts colleges – Williams (8.5%), Amherst (7%), Pomona (6.6%) – are now as competitive as most Ivy League schools (institutional CDS filings, 2024-2025). They offer smaller classes, closer faculty mentorship, and disproportionately strong PhD and professional school placement rates relative to class size (NSF data). For affluent families building a … Continued
TLDR: A growing number of selective colleges now accept short unedited video introductions as an optional application component. Brown, Vanderbilt, Duke, Boston University, and Colby accept videos through Glimpse by InitialView, while the University of Chicago accepts a two-minute video introduction recorded on any platform, in lieu of the traditional interview (institutional admissions pages, 2025-2026 … Continued