Almost all of the college prep products offered in China rely on the expertise of recent college graduates or teachers who have never actually taught at a university. In spite of their elite-sounding names, the success rate at such companies is low and the cost high. While such counselors can make some difference to a student’s success, the staff is limited by its experience and familiarity with a wide range of excellent universities.
ExecuTutor’s Dr. Jeffrey Neil prepares middle school and high school students to apply and get accepted at American, British, and Canadian universities. He will get to know a student’s gifts early on. Then he will guide them in taking the right steps to develop their talents and prepare a dossier to showcase them. Dr. Neil will analyze grades and suggest which standardized tests to take and how to prepare. When it is time to apply, he is able to identify and target the best schools suited to their talents, abilities, and temperaments—not just generic “top schools.” Dr. Neil has taught critical thinking for years and writing at the university level to help students write stand-out essays. As a university lecturer, published writer, and two-time national writing award winner, he is well-prepared to guide students in producing creative and polished essays.
ExecuTutor will:
Identify the unique gifts of each student
Outline a plan to develop a “portfolio of talents”
Analyze test results and build a tutorial plan to raise scores
Draw up a Perfect Match List: unique list to optimize student’s acceptance rate
Choose schools where the student will thrive
Research school departments and offerings to target applications
Direct brainstorming exercises for essays
Oversee the writing of drafts and edit statements and short essays
Refine conversational skills for interviews
The ExecuTutor Difference
Experience with Asian students and parents. Dr. Neil has been working with students from China and other parts of Asia since 2003. He understands the specific cultural contexts and educational challenges of Chinese students.
Connections in Higher Education. Dr. Neil has worked with administrators and professors at the top universities in the world. He is familiar with the policies and distinct cultures of these schools.
A Higher Education Professor. Dr. Neil is unique in China for offering the expertise of a former university lecturer and award-winning writer for your college essays.
Intercultural Trainer. Dr. Neil coaches Google foreign executives in pronunciation, conversation, and writing. ExecuTutor’s focus on language fluency differentiates it from other college prep courses that turn out students with low-level skills in written and spoken English. He teaches students to present themselves with aplomb and refinement.
Opportunities for Agents
China’s many international, private, bilingual, and public schools provide a vast number of opportunities to host a boot camp. Because courses are short and effective, agents have the opportunity to frequently book ExecuTutor’s one-month courses all year long. Tmodel course is designed to be four weeks. However, they can be as short as a weekend, a week, two weeks, or three weeks.
College Boot Camp for Applicants
4 weeks/10 Students
This boot camp is for students in their junior year of high school, the summer before their senior year, or for the autumn of senior year.
Group classes (60 hours)
Brainstorm for essays
Think creatively about personal biography
Learn to assess your strengths and weaknesses
Survey a varieties of universities and colleges
Write and edit your essays
Tutorials (10 hours per student)
Select 6-10 schools for applications
Meet with your parents to discuss your strengths and weaknesses
Create a Perfect Match List between your talents and a school’s resources
Research school departments, extracurricular offerings, and internships
Brainstorm for essay writing
Guide you through writing exercises and the drafting process
Edit your essays
College Prep Boot Camp
for Middle School to High School
Group Classes (60 hours)
Learn the fundamentals of short essay writing
Prepare for the SAT Verbal and Writing sections
Target and develop your talents
Plan your extracurricular and athletics portfolio
Assess and keep track of your grade performance and improvement
Learn to building a unique college list
Develop and strengthen relationships with teachers
Use literature, art, and biography to explore yourself
Practice standard American English pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
Tutorials (10 hours/student)
Learn pronunciation, grammar, and conversational standard American English
Choose which exams to take
Outline an exam study schedule
Practice English writing and editing
Identify your talents and outline a plan for developing them
Success Stories
Each student’s path is going to be—and should be—very different. A college counselor needs to have experience, wisdom, knowledge, compassion, and patience. Dr. Neil has never coached a student, who went through the counseling process with him, whom he did not consider a success. They all got into the best possible school to match their talents, personalities, and educational goals. More importantly, they attended schools where they would thrive.
Dr. Neil has worked with high school students and college students. He has also helped graduates with significant work experience return to graduate school. His students have entered traditional four-year universities in conventional majors such as Economics or Biology. He has been equally successful getting students into art school, graduate school, and even aviation academy. Read a few of the student success stories:
Joy had extensive volunteer experience with developmentally-disabled children and with seniors. Her grades were average. Her parents wanted her to attend a U.C., where acceptance is based on GPA and standardized test scores. However, U.C.’s don’t have undergraduate Education majors, so in spite of their reputation, they would be poor choices for Joy. Joy was lucky to know what she loved already. Dr. Neil researched the best Education and Psychology programs and found ones that specifically focused on early childhood development and teaching children with developmental disorders. He helped Joy focus her essays on her volunteer experience in these areas and her relevant life stories. She demonstrated in the essays how she was prepared to study psychology and education. Although her grades and scores were at or below the average for most of the universities on her list, she was accepted early decision to New York University, her first choice. Joy’s story demonstrates the importance of focusing on a student’s passions and strengths, rather than just looking at a school’s prestige. She ended up at a “better” school than if she had just applied with an eye for the ranking of the university.
Hailey initially wanted to go to fashion design school. After talking to her a number of times, Hailey demonstrated little knowledge of designers, textiles, fashion history, or industry trends. She had no portfolio to speak of. Her parents did not want her to live far from home, and most of the best fashion design schools are out-of-state. After a great deal of soul-searching self-assessment, Hailey realized that although she liked the idea of being a fashion designer, in actuality her passion was illustrating. Dr. Neil and Hailey found a number of programs in-state with excellent teaching reputations and internship opportunities for illustrators. Although she had struggled to figure out which major to apply for, Hailey ultimately decided on a major that was a good fit. She got into her second choice art school. In the process, she had moved one big step in her maturity by taking an active part in shaping her future.
Caroline was a devout Christian, an athlete of limited ability who nevertheless loved sports, a nature lover, and passionate about geriatric medicine. Her parents wanted her to attend a big, private school in a massive city, like USC in Los Angeles or Rice in Houston. This would mean that she could not play competitive sports; she would not be part of a faith community; and she would find herself in an urban jungle, not a bucolic campus. Her grades and scores were above average, but not exceptional. She was, however, clear about what she wanted to study, what she liked to do, and where she wanted to be. Dr. Neil researched and found Christian colleges with exceptional placement rates for medical school. They were traditional campuses with sporting opportunities for average athletes. Her parents still wanted her to attend a school with name recognition, so Dr. Neil found colleges that matched all those criteria. She wrote back a year later that she is playing sports and doing well in the pre-med program of Pepperdine University, a respected Christian university in idyllic Malibu, CA.
After starting her studies in China, Maggie received two BA’s from second-tier colleges in Canada. Her grades were at the lower end of average. However, she had ten years of early and mid-level management experience at major companies in Canada, where she received high performance evaluations. Then she returned to China to be closer to her parents. In Canada, relevant work experience and recommendations are more important than university ranking and the class of degree received. After returning to China, Maggie had a hard time getting a job because corporations looked down on the ranking of her undergraduate institutions. Given the importance of degree-ranking in China, Dr. Neil researched certificate programs that would get her foot in the door at a top-ranking school. She would then have a chance of getting into schools with a strict GPA cut-off. During the time she completed her coursework, Dr. Neil coached her on strategies for building relationships with professors and the fundamentals of writing project reports. Maggie is now well-positioned to apply to a degree program at a first tier graduate or professional school.
about dr. jeffrey neil
I attended a boarding school in Connecticut, called Hotchkiss, before applying to universities. Previously, I had jumped from one school to another, attending a different school each year in three different countries. I found myself in possession of three languages, none of which I commanded—in much the same position as any foreign student. At Hotchkiss, I was able to develop my talents, and by my senior year, I received a number of national writing awards, including the Presidential Scholar in the Arts award—a distinction given to fewer than 200 of the 3 million high school graduates that year. I was accepted into every college to which I applied, including Yale, Columbia, Brown, Amherst, Williams, and New York University. Later, when I applied to graduate school, I was accepted at Cornell, Cambridge, Columbia, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine.
When I arrived at Hotchkiss, I was starting from the bottom of the class in terms of preparation and skills. Luckily, I met some great teachers in every subject who mentored me and coached me. Thanks to their efforts, I graduated with the Charles E. Lord Prize for the most improved student. I coach my students to keep looking for their talents and then to develop them. It is remarkable how much can be accomplished in a short period of time with the proper focus.
I started working with Chinese students in 2006, while I was teaching at U.C. Berkeley. Almost all came with high-level intellectual abilities, but very poor language skills. They had done well in their exams to get into UC Berkeley. However, they had a difficult time thinking creatively and analytically to write papers, and their grammar was a serious obstacle to their writing. After years of teaching Chinese undergraduates at UC Berkeley and UC Davis; tutoring middle school and high school students from the Far East; coaching Chinese executives; and teaching in Beijing, I really know how to teach Chinese students. I understand the educational philosophy and cultural norms they have experienced. Students who have studied with me become more eloquent, think creatively, and present themselves a professional manner. I achieve results for clients in terms of university acceptance, getting better grades in college, and landing a job after college or mid-career.
