Why I Started Accepted Consulting
As I sat in the second row of Dr. Kyle Mays’ course on Afro-Indigenous History at UCLA, I was struck by the brilliance of the scholar that stood before me. He was young, energetic, and inspiring beyond measure. As I looked around me, I felt surrounded by this sense of impossibility. How was it even possible I was sitting in this room but, secondly:
How is it that one even became an academic?
Both my mother and father had been community college educated, like myself, and only my father had gone on to receive a BA. My brother opted out of college and everyone around me seemed to have no guidance for how to navigate the academic world as someone who was not naturally gifted as a student. As I began embarking on my own academic journey from community college, transferring to UCLA, etc.
I discovered that there was so much about the academic world and the admissions process which was hidden and that gatekeeping was status quo — which is why I chose to begin sharing my findings.
As a young girl growing up in the Bay Area, I was already at a significant advantage but I never understood the academic admissions process. My parents had no clue how to write college essays, my counselors were condescending and confusing, and the information online all said that you had to be the perfect 4.0+ student in order to go to college. I felt hopeless as a high school student with a 2.9 GPA and ultimately decided not to go to college at 18. Several years later, however, I found myself back in the classroom, this time as a community college student who had wracked up 10 withdrawals, several Cs, and an overall GPA which was nothing stellar. I felt like a failure — yet again. I had spent 4 years in and out of community college courses, trying to figure out how to improve my grades and study habits. I began reading every book I could get my hands on about college admissions, study skills, memorization hacks, etc. and somewhere along the way I discovered a love — or rather, obsession — with higher education, admissions processes, and how committees select students even when the applicant’s transcript was less than perfect.
By the time I began my studies at UCLA I had already begun preparing for the possibility of graduate school. I asked professors, administrators, and graduate students everything I wanted to know about the process and spent countless hours reading anything I could find online about what made the ideal graduate school candidate — spoiler alert: there wasn’t much.
It was during my senior year, while applying to Oxford, that I discovered several strategies for writing graduate admissions essays and how to best appeal to a variety of committees. That was around the time that I committed to the idea of starting a YouTube Channel. As I discovered through my own research, information online was limited and I thought that if I could make videos about the process, then perhaps others might benefit. It wasn’t until I was at Oxford when I discovered just how many students out there were like me and who were actively seeking out assistance.
It was those first few comments and emails from viewers which gave me the idea to start an academic consultancy.
What began as free calls and essay reviews soon bloomed into a full-blown business between March and December 2020. While I began with 1-2 clients per month, I soon had a growing list of clients which exceeded 400 by the end of the year! From assisting Transfer students get into schools like Columbia, UCLA or Berkeley, to supporting countless students applying for Oxford, Cambridge, U.Chicago, NYU, etc. I feel truly blessed to play even a small part in my clients’ journeys. From a passion for understanding higher education to now managing a team of 7 consultants, Accepted Consulting has been the symbol of my dedication to providing more access to information and to continuing the mission of helping others navigate the complex world of academia. Beyond that, my goal has been to provide students who doubt their own abilities with the opportunities and confidence to apply to their dream programs! I was never a perfect student and yet I have now made it from CC to UCLA, Oxford, and now Yale. If I can do it, so can you!
