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.