What families ask us

No. Final decisions sit with the admissions committee, and any consultant who promises otherwise is misleading you. What we do guarantee is the process: we only shortlist programs where your profile is statistically competitive, and we build the strongest possible application for each one. Core Admissions and Complete Pathway carry our Strategic Process Assurance — an 80% refund if you submit a qualifying portfolio and don't receive a single offer. Full terms are below.

No. We are 100% independent. Taking commissions from universities would mean we'd be incentivised to push you toward the university that pays us the most, not the one that suits you best. Our incentives are aligned entirely with the family. The recommendations you get from us are the same recommendations we'd give a member of our own family.

You write your essays. Equedu does not draft, ghostwrite, or rewrite them. Our role is editorial: brainstorming, structural feedback, prose-level coaching, and iterative review to sharpen what's already there in your voice. You also write your own application content (extracurricular descriptions, short answers); we review and refine. We do not write or edit your letters of recommendation — those must come from the named recommender in their own voice, and universities check for authenticity. What we do with recommendations: help you choose the right people to ask and give them a clean brief.

Clear and strict, because universities now check. Permitted: brainstorming, research, grammar and spellcheck. Not permitted: AI-drafted essays, or AI-rewriting at a level that crosses our authenticity threshold. We set the specific limits conservatively to protect application integrity, and the exact thresholds are written into your engagement contract. If you use AI for anything beyond basic grammar correction, you must disclose the tool to your consultant during editorial — both so we keep your voice consistent and so we can flag any line that might trigger an authenticity review at the application stage.

Selectively. ED can meaningfully improve a candidate's odds at the right school, but it binds you to attend — so we evaluate on a per-school basis and lock the strategy at your University Master List planning session. EA is lower-risk and we use it more freely. The full strategy is part of your Strategic Roadmap.

Carefully. Test-optional does not mean test-blind — strong scores still help, particularly in competitive fields and at universities that ask for them post-admission for scholarship consideration. We decide on a per-school basis using your scores and the school's published data, and we agree the policy with you before you submit.

Not unless you tell them. We work directly with the student and family; we don't contact your school without your written permission. Whether to disclose to your school is your decision — we support whatever you choose.

Four things. Smaller scale: every engagement is supervised by the CEO directly, not handed to a junior bench. A single Lead Consultant: you work with the same person from intake through application, not a rotating cast. Fixed-fee, no commissions: we never accept money from a university for recommending it. European specialisation: we know specific universities, scholarships, and visa pathways at a depth larger US-headquartered firms cannot match.

Five things, named plainly. (1) Writing or editing your letters of recommendation. (2) One-on-one subject tutoring for SAT, ACT, or GMAT — we provide strategic planning and Quad Studio platform access, but tutoring itself is a separate Quad service. (3) Communicating with admissions committees on your behalf. (4) FAFSA or CSS Profile completion. (5) Legal immigration counsel — application support yes, legal counsel no, because we are not licensed for it. Most of these are available as ad-hoc add-ons; the legal-immigration line is firm.