We at McMillan Education are steeped in the belief that a healthy, enriching and successful educational planning process involves personal reflection, meaningful experiential engagement, and quality task completion every step of the way. So our faithful mascot inspired us to create the W.I.S.E. Method of Educational Planning, where your personalized search with traverse each of the following phases to reach your best fit educational environment:
School Planning Phases: Wonder, Initiate, Schedule, Execute
College Planning Phases: Wonder, Investigate, Seek, Endeavor
The goal of our in-depth first meeting is to learn about the nuances of your child’s personality and passions.
Generally, we spend time with your whole family, as well as individual time with both your child and you the parents.
The initial meeting results in us pulling together the facets of the student profile that will inform a highly Personalized Educational Plan, which is our launchpad for the meaningful step-by-step action that will align our deepening knowledge of the student’s unique qualities with the calendared tasks designed to culminate in the realization of his or her best fit goals.
We continue to get to know you better throughout the process, strengthening our execution of your personalized plan in our formal meetings and informal touch points that cover every element involved in developing your profile and refining and evaluating your list of schools, colleges and programs along our shared journey.
We utilize the most interactive and cutting edge technology in the educational consulting field in the form of our online interactive platform, The Owl’s Nest, in which we break your planning journey into four distinctive phases we call our W.I.S.E. Method of Educational Planning. Each letter in the acronym W.I.S.E. aligns with the reflective exercises and meaningful action we guide you through to ensure a purposeful and successful search process.
On a practical level, The Owl’s Nest is where you interact with your counselor-guided personal task assignments, planning calendar, rich resources and timely correspondences to keep you seamlessly informed, facilitate your assessment of schools and colleges, and ensure you execute a high quality application process with less stress and greater confidence.
Our relational style means we develop an ongoing dialogue with you, staying in contact in between scheduled meetings through phone calls, texting, FaceTime, Zoom, and chatting on our interactive online platform, The Owl’s Nest.
You’ll receive notifications of focused news and correspondences posted in The Owl’s Nest regularly throughout the process that highlight timely events related to testing, course planning, campus visits, and other key events in the planning process.
We offer you the full support of our team by sharing notes, expertise, essay reviews, and school or college lists at regular staff and supervisory meetings.
Often the most time-intensive portion of the entire process revolves around completion of applications that tap into your special qualities effectively and present you the candidate in the best possible light.
As former writing teachers who know how to “coach” writers to present their distinctive narrative “voice,” we guide you through the essay process by providing extensive feedback over the course of multiple essay drafts of what is often dozens of essays.
We counsel students to get the most out of presenting their extracurricular activities by optimizing the format of particular applications.
Our goal is for you to have a range of choices.
We counsel you on how to best evaluate your choices.
We advise you on navigating waitlists.
We follow you right through to the point where you make your final decision and land in a setting where you will thrive.
Because you take the time to get to know them personally, my sons feel more confident in their directions and decisions. They have a sounding board who relates to them, speaks their language, is knowledgeable, and provides suggestions we may not have found. Best of all, I am still very involved in their journey—in a manner that is more collaborative than I had imagined. With a wise advisor, the big decisions are easier and I believe my sons will make more prudent choices.
We both met {School Admissions Director}. I did mention to him that we are working with you. He was so happy that you had recommended {school} for {my daughter}. He mentioned that he knows your firm’s work and has the highest regard for your group…. Everywhere we went, we were told that we were in good hands under your guidance! So thank you for that.
