Here are six reasons why you should choose Command Education:
Near Peer Mentorship
At Command Education, our mentors are all full-time recent graduates of top schools, meaning they are closer in age to their students and can therefore relate better to them. Our students truly view their mentors as mentors, not as counselors or teachers. In addition to establishing a non-parental relationship through near-peer mentorship, we match each student to a mentor based on their academic and professional goals and interests, personalities, strengths and dream colleges. Each of our students (and their parents!) complete a detailed questionnaire before being assigned a mentor. Carefully matching students to mentors enables students and mentors to build strong, productive relationships.
Our mentors can speak to the qualities crucial for success in college and beyond, and help foster these skills in their students. Colleges want to admit students they believe will succeed in the face of adversity and who they believe will rise to the challenge, playing on their strengths to produce elite level work. Mentors teach their students how to recognize their strengths and how to take advantage of them. Our mentors have successfully completed rigorous academic courses at their respective colleges and universities, and equip their students with the studying and time management skills necessary for success at higher level institutions.
Small student to mentor ratio
Command Education is a boutique firm, which allows our team to provide high level strategy and individualized mentoring to each student. We intentionally limit the number of students each of our mentors works with in order to ensure that mentors can devote their undivided attention to their students. Our firm works with a limited number of students per grade level, and each of our mentors works with under twelve students. Mentors customize each part of the mentoring process, building out personalized roadmaps for each of their students in accordance with their strengths, weaknesses, and goals.
While other firms may hire part time or contracted mentors, each and every one of our mentors works full time, ensuring incredibly fast response rates and allows us to offer flexible meeting times.
Emotionally Intelligent Mentoring
Each of our mentors are trained in Emotional Intelligence, and incorporate this philosophy into their mentoring. During his time at Yale, Command Education’s founder and CEO, Christopher Rim, conducted research under Dr. Marc Brackett, the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. There, he helped to conduct a survey of high school students, which found that 75% of the words they used to describe how they feel at school were negative. The most common words? “Tired,” “Stressed,” and “Bored.” Students want to achieve the mindset that will lead to success, but they need help—and that’s where Command Education comes in. Our near-peer mentors are trained to inspire, empower, and support students to discover what they are truly excited and passionate about.
Once our students have reduced their stress and refocused their energy on their passions, we often hear from their parents with these words: “I have never seen my child so motivated.” With our mentors supporting and encouraging them, 100% our students feel empowered to pursue their passions and feel proud of their accomplishments.
Passion-focused growth
While strong academics and standardized test scores lay at the foundation of a strong college application, our mentoring approach focuses on growing the student holistically. We place incredible emphasis on students exploring their passions through participation in extracurriculars and building individual passion projects. At the heart of our emotionally intelligent approach is helping students authentically identify the passions and interests that drive them. We spend time getting to know our students, what motivates them, and how each of them are uniquely positioned to give back to their communities and make an impact. Not only do our students focus on giving back, these projects help them stand out among the thousands of other applicants to top schools. We’ve seen our students start non-profits and become entrepreneurs. In exploring their passions, students also work with our full-service in-house marketing team, which includes designers and a web developer. This team helps students expand their projects by building a website, developing branding and social media strategy, and recruiting press for student accomplishments. The team has helped students learn how to develop websites, magazines, publications, brochures, and much more.
Our Mentors Are Graduates of Elite Colleges
Our mentors are all graduates of Ivy League and top tier institutions. Knowing that their mentors recently succeeded in the college admissions process gives our students confidence that we understand the current landscape and can help them focus on what really matters. Our mentors are not hired on degree alone – we carefully assess each candidate to ensure they can connect with and motivate their students. Once hired, mentors go through an intensive initial training period with the Senior Director of Mentoring and Director of Mentoring along with on-going monthly team meetings to stay up to date on current admissions trends and higher education updates.
We believe hiring recent graduates ensures that we can stay up to date with current admissions trends. Advice that may have held true 15-20 years ago is now outdated. Our recent college graduates keep up with current admissions trends, and find innovative ways to ensure students can authentically deliver what top schools are looking for.
Unlimited Mentoring From Any Location
Unlike some other college consulting companies, we offer flexibility when it comes to scheduling with our students, as we know high school coursework and extracurriculars can be very demanding. Our mentors are not on a 9-5; they are available to meet with students 7 days a week, at their students’ convenience. We have worked successfully via remote meetings, even before Covid. No matter where our students are located in the world, we work with students on their time to allow them to make the most of their mentoring year round.
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