PrepNow Tutor - Steve E.
“I really love helping students and their parents consider a slate of schools that they have not considered up to that point,” says admissions counselor Steve E. With twenty years’ experience working with students, Steve knows how to help students identify possibilities and create their best applications.
After graduating from Columbia University with a degree in Chinese and Japanese studies, Steve served five years as a U.S. Navy Intelligence officer based in Japan. As a military liaison officer, he also routinely visited China’s port cities. When he left the Navy, he earned his MBA from UCLA and began a long and successful career in business.
Steve started doing applicant interviews for Columbia the year after he graduated, and started in admissions counseling in Japan the year after that. Over the years he has worked with many Chinese and Japanese students who have gotten into top U.S. schools. He has also helped young men and women apply to all of the U.S. military service academies. “It has been really fulfilling that more than half of those clients got accepted and matriculated,” he says. “I have helped children of U.S. veterans apply and receive local, state, and national veterans’ groups scholarships.”
Steve is also proud of his track record of helping students with Asperger’s apply and get accepted to their top-choice schools. People with Asperger’s often have difficulty with social cues and may not make eye contact – behavior that can disadvantage them in interviews. Steve says, “I help parents to be persistent if the initial interviews don’t go well and coach them to request a follow-up with an allowance for the parents, a social worker or school counselor to attend.” His favorite success story was a student with Asperger’s who not only got accepted, but became an honors student at the University of Arizona. “He had a poor interview,” Steve explains, “but I challenged the admissions director to conduct a second interview himself. Being diligent and persistent can work!”
