Curtis holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Williams College and a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University. He also earned a Diploma in Law from Oxford University as well as a Master’s of Science in Information Science. Currently, Curtis is completing his doctoral studies in Management, Education, and Technology. He funded his education through full-ride scholarships, including the prestigious Bill Gates Millennium Scholarship and Coca-Cola Scholarship. He was also named both a Pickering and Fulbright Fellow by the United States Department of State, which has given him the experience of having lived and worked on five continents. Over the past decade, Curtis has evaluated thousands of applications, conducted admissions interviews for Harvard, and made final decisions for the University of North Texas. He has additionally provided application assessments for elite institutions such as Harvard, NYU, Boston University, and the University of California system. His students have earned acceptances at highly selective schools, including Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Rice, Duke, UPenn, Dartmouth, and Vanderbilt.

With over a decade of extensive counseling expertise and profound knowledge of what propels admissions success across various institutions, Curtis has guided more than 750 students through the admissions process to reach their target colleges. Seeing students transform throughout the admissions process as they gain clarity on their goals and find the right college fit motivates Curtis as a coach. He finds joy in guiding applicants to reflect deeply and articulate their unique stories compellingly to acquire acceptance to their dream schools.

Curtis excels at collaborating one-on-one to develop customized strategies aligned with each student’s profile and institutional priorities. His enthusiasm for the counseling process shines through as he guides applicants to demonstrate themselves positively. Curtis takes a meticulous, thorough approach to advising and demystifies what happens behind the scenes after applicants hit submit. He creates structured plans to manage tasks and timelines effectively. By helping students identify and specify their objectives, he prepares them for every step, especially critical interviews.

When he isn’t coaching, Curtis enjoys spending time with family, traveling, and taking long walks in parks with his dogs.

Curtis’ Pro Tip?

Supplemental essays allow applicants to showcase deep alignment with a school’s values and community. Admissions committees design custom questions to reveal applicants' fit and potential contributions at their institution specifically. Insightful, well-researched responses can make or break an application during final reviews.

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Dan is a graduate of Stanford University, where he obtained his MBA. He has several years of professional experience in the education sector as an admissions coach, technologist, and teacher. Dan spent 6 years on Google’s education team, where he built tools used by thousands of schools across the country.

Dan also has extensive experience helping college candidates get into their dream schools. Dan likes to use the power of coactive coaching to help Quad applicants uncover their top strengths so they can craft engaging stories that highlight those strengths in a compelling way. He is a big appreciator of the value of authenticity and helps students reflect, turning seemingly small moments into memorable anecdotes. Above all, Dan is focused on using the problem-action-impact framework to make every word of students’ application materials count.

Candidates that Dan has recently coached have been accepted to Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, among other top schools.

With a passion for continuous learning, Dan finds himself glued to ‘The Great Courses’ when he isn't coaching students. He is also an outdoor enthusiast, regularly running, hiking, mountain biking, and camping.

Dan’s Pro Tip?

Sometimes it seems counterintuitive, but a humble awareness of your shortcomings can be one of your most endearing traits.

Darryl acquired nearly 20 years of experience working in college admissions before leading a successful college counseling office for an independent secondary school for the past 12 years. Previously Darryl was Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Tufts University, where he gained valuable insight into the world of highly selective college admissions. Darryl began his career at Union College (NY), his alma mater, in 1992, where he started as an admissions counselor and rose to the leadership role of Associate Dean.

Darryl has nationally recognized expertise and industry insights in every aspect of the college admission process. He has been featured in several admissions publications throughout his career, including the NY Times best-selling book, “Who Gets in and Why.” Darryl has an extensive network of college admissions professionals with whom he continually collaborates.

He has sat in on admissions selection for various highly selective institutions, including colleges in the Ivy League and NESCAC, like Dartmouth College and Middlebury College. Darryl has also served on selection committees for prestigious scholarships at Davidson College and Lafayette College. He regularly trains new admissions professionals and conducts presentations and workshops for organizations, including The College Board and the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

At Quad, Darryl is passionate about sharing his knowledge to make the college admission process more accessible and less mysterious. He has a special interest in how the admission process is perceived from the student and parent perspective and is known for putting families at ease.

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David is a former admissions officer at Brown University who is currently based in South Carolina. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University with a dual concentration in History and Biomedical Ethics. David has had a long and successful career both in and outside the admissions world. After working for a large law firm in Washington DC for a year, he attended Cornell Law School graduating with a Juris Doctor in Public Law. Following his graduation from law school, David served in the United States Navy as a Judge Advocate for three years on active duty while stationed in Great Lakes, Illinois, and Newport, Rhode Island. David worked as an attorney for the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service following his military service. After that, he practiced immigration law for over ten years.

After a long legal career, David transitioned into his true passion: higher education to help undergraduate students find engaging internships and post-graduation positions and assist them with applications to top colleges. He started at Northeastern University, heading the pre-law office, where he made decisions on which pre-law students to admit and helped them get accepted at top law schools. In addition, he taught hundreds of international students in a professionalism and career readiness course designed to prepare them for working in the United States.

Following his work at the illustrious Northeastern University admissions office, David ran a program for student veterans at the University of Massachusetts Boston, helping students prepare and gain admittance to highly selective colleges. Having found his niche in providing one-on-one advising to students, David returned to his Alma Mater to work as an Admission Specialist for the Brown University admission office. At Brown, David was responsible for evaluating thousands of applications and making admissions committee recommendations. In addition, he was also responsible for all merit scholarship reviews and has an in-depth understanding of what highly selective schools such as Brown are looking for when making scholarship decisions.

Outside of work, David tries to keep up with his three amazing children, the oldest in graduate school in Shark Biology and youngest attending college in Film Studies.  He often spends weekends exploring the Carolina Lowlands and nearby Islands for unique beaches and foods. Originally from the Boston area, David is a lifelong Red Sox fan and continues to follow the team closely. David is currently trying his hand at starting a small orchard with the hopes of someday making small-batch jams and wines.

David has a Bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a Master's degree from Washington University in St Louis. As a coach, David is extremely goal-oriented and receives great satisfaction in seeing students succeed. He believes in the college admissions application process's transformative nature and educational value as discrete from classroom education. The college application process is a tremendous opportunity to discover vital aspects of students' interests and ambitions. The more rigorously one engages and commits to the college admissions process, the more rewards one yields in self-discovery.

David's greatest strengths as a coach include his extreme acuity to detail and fierce command of language. With a keen focus on his candidates' holistic profiles, David can quickly identify their strengths and determine the best ways to form a compelling and persuasive case for each applicant's respective candidacies. Additionally, David is extraordinarily adaptable, works well under pressure, and can synthesize elements of a candidate's background into guiding approaches to college application documents. 

Applicants David has recently coached have gotten accepted into Columbia University, The University of Chicago, The University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Georgetown University, Washington University in St. Louis, New York University, and The University of Virginia.

David is a major foodie, and when he's not reading or working on a manuscript, he loves to survey new or exciting restaurants, bars, and cafes in Saint Louis or New York.

David's Pro Tip?

Admissions officers must be clearly guided toward a candidate's most persuasive strengths in the application; strong candidacy alone does not create successful candidacy. Rather, a cogent presentation of one's strengths is essential.

David earned a BA from Emory University, a JD from Cardozo School of Law, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. David has extensive experience in higher education admissions. As an alumnus of Emory, David went through interview training and joined the Alumni Interview Program. He regularly performed three to six interviews for several years each admissions cycle. While at the University of Chicago, David participated in the Dean's Student Admissions Committee as an application reader and subsequently as an interviewer. He continued as an alumni interviewer for nearly ten years upon graduation. Students he has coached have been accepted to prestigious institutions such as Emory, Duke, UNC, Chicago Booth, NYU, and Columbia.

David's passion for coaching stems from his belief that this is a crucial stage in a student's life. Most have enough experience in the classroom, through extra-curricular activities, and in the community that they can begin to assess their interests, strengths, and weaknesses. As a coach for students of this age, David recognizes that he may be one of the first people with whom they have gone through this deeply personal, introspective process. Thus, David is passionate about ensuring this process empowers students to reveal their passions, strengths, and potential. 

David’s greatest learning from his experience serving on admissions committees is that authenticity is the most important part of the process – in candidate essays and interviews. Applicants should understand why they want to attend the school to which they are applying – meaning the academic, social, career-related, and community-related opportunities that they want to enjoy – and students should have some idea of how adding these opportunities to their current skill set will allow them to achieve something great (as they see it). 

As a coach, David excels at helping candidates display this authenticity. He believes the application process should be introspective; he asks personal questions regarding motivations, likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses because sharing these qualities with the admissions committee through essays/interviews not only has the potential to highlight a candidate's maturity, honesty and humility, but it also reveals aspects of an applicant's personality that make them more interesting and more memorable.

Outside of work, David is an NHL hockey fan. He enjoys cooking and recently learned how to be a dog owner.

Demi has a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science & Policy with a Minor in Political Science from Duke University. She has also earned a JD from The University of North Carolina School of Law. Professionally, Demi has worked closely with the Academic Advising office at Emory School of Law. Her most significant learning from this experience is that there is no perfect candidate alone; each candidate comes together with the incoming student body to form a great class. Some candidates had more experience while others had a better academic record, but the incoming class was always whole.

Demi's passion for coaching stemmed from the help she received when applying to college herself. Based on her environment and situation, she did not have the resources to go to college. However, she had mentors who helped her at every step; they encouraged her to participate in pre-college programs she wasn't sure she qualified for, and they encouraged her to sign up for competitions she never dreamed of. Most importantly, her mentors believed there was no limit to what she could do and were willing to get her where she needed to go. Demi understands the difficulties of applying to college, and her goal is to help applicants have options on where they go to college and beyond.

Demi's greatest strengths as a coach include helping Quad applicants look through their experiences in a non-intrusive way to see the best version of themselves and articulate it in their application materials. She is also a great listener and takes extra steps to ensure the entire family feels involved and comfortable during the process.

When Demi isn't coaching, she enjoys drinking international teas, gardening, hiking, and spending time with her husband and cat.

Dominique has served on the admissions team at Dartmouth College. She is also a graduate of Dartmouth, where she studied Anthropology and Hispanic Studies. In the past, Dominique has worked with the Dartmouth admissions office on initiatives to give insights to prospective students and families insight into the opportunities available at the school and what the campus culture was like. She has also served as an interviewer for the college, conducting interviews of undergraduate applicants and then rating students, submitting reports about their character, academic and extracurricular engagement, and overall professionalism, as part of the Admissions Committee's assessments.

Through her work in admissions, Dominique realized the importance of telling a compelling story in the personal statement and developed a solid understanding of all of the important notes that the essay should hit to score highly in all of the different buckets that admissions committees use to score it.

Dominique is deeply passionate about education and has four years of teaching experience. After completing her undergraduate studies at Dartmouth, she was selected for the prestigious Teach for America program.

During her time as a teacher, Dominique also has extensive mentorship experience. She had an advisory group of students that she coached through all four years of high school, helping them choose classes/extracurriculars that make sense for their goals, in addition to helping with SAT prep and editing essays and scholarship applications. She also mentored them on how to choose the best school to attend based on award letters, prestige, major-specific programming, and school culture fit. Dominique enjoys hiking, snowboarding, traveling, and attending concerts in her free time.

Eli completed his Bachelor’s degree at Columbia University. Following his degree, he acted as Columbia’s Dean’s Assistant and Interview Program Coordinator. In this position, he oversaw the interview process and provided training sessions for new and returning interviewers. He was also involved with special scholar programs, meeting prospective students and their families. With his extensive experience as a coach and admissions officer, he has helped his students gain admission into their dream colleges.

Eli has always been passionate about higher education and the college experience, which drives him to share his knowledge with prospective students. His passion drives him to help his students achieve their academic goals by coaching them through their college application timeline and ultimately building an impactful application. As a coach, Elie understands the significance of a holistic application. He ensures that his students are well-organized and equipped to manage and ace each part of the application process. He excels at identifying what qualities make a student shine through during the application process beyond the numbers.

When Eli isn’t coaching, he enjoys travelling, reading, and playing music.

Eli’s Pro Tip?

Making sure you’re organized early in the admissions process will allow you to develop a better idea and understanding of your end goals and make the most of your college experience.

Ellen graduated Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University. Having personally gone through the college application and transfer process, Ellen brings a unique perspective on the challenges students face and how to overcome them. Professionally, she has served as a Communications Executive at BNY Mellon and an Investment Banking Analyst at J.P. Morgan. 

Ellen's active listening skills and passion for learning about applicants enable her to help students shape their stories meaningfully and authentically. She understands the immense pressure that applicants and their families experience and is committed to making the process as smooth and memorable as possible.

Ellen's coaching approach is centered on tailoring her guidance to meet the individual needs of each applicant. Her strong organizational skills and time management abilities ensure that the process remains transparent and on track, despite the many demands on students' time.

As an expert in written responses, Ellen takes great care to ensure that every submission is of the highest standard. She is a skilled brainstormer and is always eager to help students showcase their best selves through writing. Her encouraging and optimistic personality makes her an ideal partner and cheerleader throughout the college application journey.

Ellen is committed to supporting students and their families throughout this process and takes their trust in her very seriously. Her goal is to help each applicant shine and achieve their college dreams. 

Outside of coaching, Ellen enjoys spending time with her dog Ava, practicing yoga and Pilates, attending ballet performances, and improving her culinary skills.