How we can work with your family
With Trailblaze, you get an experienced, collaborative mentor
focused on charting a unique pathway to your student's ideal college experience. Our conversations will focus on curiosity, community engagement, and a student’s sense of belonging. Together, we’ll travel through topics of:
•Personal awareness
•Academic planning
•Career and college selection
We meet regularly to traverse each stage of the college planning process until the applications are complete. Our goal? To empower you and your student so that by the time your student graduates, they will land where they will thrive.
Let’s go!
Launch
for 9th & 10th Graders
If you're the parent of an early high schooler, you may be wondering: Do we have to start this whole college thing right now? I’ve got two answers for you. The first is: No! The transition to high school is a big one and there’s no “thing” to do right now for college applications. But at Trailblaze, we take a whole-person approach to the process, meaning it’s never too early to help your student develop the tools to more easily navigate the terrain of high school. When we work with 9th and 10th graders, we help them develop a relationship with their goals and dreams, guide them to reflect on decisions of all kinds, and counsel them as they explore their interests and discover their own preferences.
9th grade focus:
•Course selection, including APs and honors
•Exploring possibilities and setting expectations
•Summer opportunities
•How to align your time with your interests and goals
•Volunteer & community work
$900
10th grade focus:
•Aligning academic journey with goals and abilities
•Imagining and realizing what’s possible
•Transcript review
•Discussion of character strengths and the activities
that can highlight and develop them
•Summer opportunities, including shadowing and internships
•Planning initial college visits
Expedition
for 11th Graders
Junior year is when things really start heating up for students planning to go to college. It's when they get busy diving into school and community activities, and juggling all the expectations and hidden (or not so hidden) stresses that come with the “getting into college” process. To keep your student on track without added stress, we take everything step-by-step and make sure to build in plenty of processing and reflection time.
What we’ll focus on:
•Exploring your student’s interests and motivations
•Encouraging self-reflection
•Making sure their academic trajectory is in alignment with their goals and abilities
•Transcript check ins
•Refining and deepening extracurricular commitments
•Forging relationships with mentors
•Self-care
•Learning and managing executive functioning skills
•Creating a thoughtful list of 6-8 schools
Summit
for 12th Graders
It’s Senior year, a time for celebrating how far your student has come while keeping the focus on the last leg of the journey to college. While we’ll be with you every step of the way—as your student gets that acceptance packet in the mail and as they prepare to launch—this is really their time to shine. And if they’ve completed the prep work in the previous years, they’ll be well prepared. We’ll spend this year refining their college list and then working on their applications and essays.
What we’ll focus on:
•Application strategy
•Creating their personal narrative
•Curating their Activities and Honors List
•Developing their essay topic
•Crafting supplementary essays and short answer responses
•Building a final list of schools (max 12)
•Organizing their application timeline to stay on track
•Collaborating at every step of the way to make sure their work is polished and authentic
•Discussing strategy for EA, ED and RD decisions
•Completing all applications on time
$4,900
Book a call to learn more
Ready to do this wonderful journey together?
Let’s get on a Zoom to chat about what you and your student need and how we can help.