I am thrilled to recommend DC College Counseling to anyone who is considering a college counselor for their student! The professionalism and attention to detail, combined with the genuine care Colleen and her staff pour into each student and family is outstanding. Colleen and her staff have a way of putting students and parents at ease during the often stressful college application process. That ease for families comes from Colleen's experience with students, high schools, colleges and everything in between. The way she helps students organize their thoughts and helps them follow through with necessary tasks is remarkable. We were not certain we were in need of a college counselor as our daughter did not desire to be admitted to a "prestigious" college. But after talking with Colleen and her staff we immediately understood the value she could provide in helping us with the entire process. DC College Counseling was instrumental in helping our daughter find schools that were well suited to her strengths and desires. She was ultimately admitted to several schools to which she applied and is thrilled to be attending her top choice university this Fall. Colleen and her staff love what they do and it shows. I'm looking forward to working with DC College counseling in a few years with our youngest son!

I cannot say enough about the overall experience with Colleen. Her guidance, insight, and knowledge were invaluable during the crazy college application process. I didn’t think it possible, but Colleen helped us embrace this journey! Colleen knows how to present students in the best possible light. She helped identify each of our children’s individual strengths, and showcased their uniqueness. Colleen was honest and direct about their chances at each school, so they went into application season with a clear plan and eyes wide open. Having a resource like Colleen on our side took the stress out of the process, and we are thrilled with the results! Both of our children are attending their first-choice schools.

We scheduled an emergency strategy session with Colleen several days before Christmas after we learned that our daughter was rejected from her early decision school. We would like to have an independent review and second opinion of our daughter’s application package and to seek candid suggestions of strategies for the next application round. A friend who was using Colleen’s consultation recommended her and we made an appointment right away. During the 2-hour meeting, Colleen helped us to understand what may have gone wrong and how our daughter needed to approach the process differently during the next application round. We were very impressed by Colleen’s rich experience, attention to details and insightful analysis. Colleen also emphasized the importance of selecting an ED2 option from the remaining schools of high interest and told us which she thought would be the best fit. Finally, she went through the application package and essays line-by-line to explain exactly what needed to be improved before submitting any other applications.  With Colleen’s help, our daughter’s application had a more focused theme and well-defined persona. We also followed up with several hours of emergency essay assistance from Staci during the holidays to make sure that everything was perfect and cohesive, even on Christmas Eve. Just over a month later we learned the great news that our daughter was accepted by Tufts University via ED2! We greatly appreciate Colleen and Staci’s advice and help with the application process, especially during the Christmas holiday season! We have already followed up with Colleen to start the college consulting process sooner for our younger daughter and look forward to working with her again.

Colleen - You are a counselor EXTRAORDINAIRE! Your knowledge, your thoroughness, your organization skills, your attention to detail, your invaluable advice on so many topics, and most importantly your patience has been nothing short of stellar. You were there steadfast and strong through the entire journey, even if it meant spoiling a Sunday afternoon! It has been only a pleasure working with you - you are a rock-solid pillar for us parents who take your advice to heart, and don't have to second guess it because your work ethics makes it easy for us to believe in you. I am so very appreciative of you listening, understanding everything exactly as we needed you to, and then following up with strong pointed advice. Thank you!

Colleen has done a lot of research concerning college admissions. I was surprised that she knew each college and their likes and dislikes, and would recommend her services because she has a lot of knowledge: she constantly visits colleges and knows admissions well.Colleen fit my daughter in at the end of August when she was already completely booked up. We appreciated the help with the essays and applications. She advised my daughter to retake the ACT and advised her where to go to raise her ACT score. Success! My daughter is a Sophomore at Notre Dame. She was also offered scholarships at Tulane and Bucknell.

Colleen Ganjian and her team at DC College Counseling are amazing. They are experienced, professional, friendly and very knowledgeable about the college process. They were extremely helpful to our entire family. They helped our son through the college application process and helped his parents to say sane!Our son is an excellent student but is also a typical teenage boy who likes to leave everything to the last minute. That was not how his parents wanted to do the college process. In addition, writing essays is not his favorite pastime so getting him to sit down and write was like pulling teeth. We really did not want to spend months reminding him to do his applications. Thus, we were so happy when we heard about DC College Counseling through a friend who raved about how they helped her daughter.Colleen understands extremely well the college admissions scene and was able to give us a realistic picture our son’s chances of acceptance to his target schools. She also suggested other schools that he may want to apply to that were also considered good schools for his major and where he had a good chance to be accepted. She pointed out the challenges to some of his reach schools but also worked with him to develop strategies to highlight his skills and experiences to enhance his chances of acceptance.We were not aiming for Ivy League schools but our son’s first choice was the Engineering School at Virginia Tech, which everyone had told us was very selective and hard to get into. Colleen advised our son to apply Early Decision, which could give him an advantage to admission. Colleen and her team put our son on a schedule that included twice weekly sessions with essay coaches to work on essays and a weekly meeting with Colleen to review final essays and to go over the application information including his activities lists, personal information etc. They were flexible when we needed to change appointments and fit us in during early morning and evening hours.Colleen went over those applications with our son very carefully to ensure he had it all done well. I am so grateful that I did not have to do that as I am sure that many parent-son arguments would have ensued! One of the unexpected, and bonus, benefits of working with Colleen and her team is that our son learned a great deal about writing from the essay coaches. They helped him to dig deep and find topics that truly represented who he is and what he cares out. For example, he wrote essays about our family and his diverse background, which we had not realized was so important to him. Our son commented to us that he had learned many new writing skills from the essay coaches and felt more confident about his writing abilities.In the end our son applied to 10 schools and had to write twice that many essays and short answers. Colleen and her team kept him on track and he was able to submit all of his applications ahead of the November 1 early deadline. I really don’t think we could have done it without the help of DC College Counseling.When we first considered working with them, we were concerned about the cost. But then we considered that if they could help our son to get into in-state Virginia Tech, we would save a lot of money over the long term. We feel that they were worth every penny. So our happy ending is that our son was accepted to Virginia Tech Early Decision. We were informed by December 15 so we were able to celebrate early and enjoy our holidays! We are all extremely happy with our experience with DC College Counseling and highly recommend their services.

Colleen is awesome!

Working with Colleen was the best decision our family made in navigating the college application process. She kept our daughter organized and focused, allowing her to get the bulk of the work finished before senior year began. Colleen's expertise and professionalism also helped to make an inherently stressful time much less so for our daughter. We are extremely grateful for her help and could not be happier with the outcome - our daughter's acceptance into her first-choice school. I highly recommend her to anyone interested in applying to colleges.

It's hard to come up with just one favorite part of working with Colleen, but overall, I would say her demeanor. I found her to be very down to earth, honest and so easy to work with. My daughter enjoyed working with Colleen as well, and I really felt that Colleen understood her temperament and helped ease her anxieties while coaching her through the process. Colleen understands college admissions and helped guide us through the process of realistically narrowing down prospective colleges. In terms of the applications themselves, I think Colleen helped my daughter present herself in the best possible light and helped frame the different pieces of her academic and non-academic life together in a cohesive manner. I personally appreciated the fact that as a parent, I was able to remove myself as much as I did from the process, as Colleen kept my daughter on task and focused.