
Brandon Pae
5.0
(10)
Columbia CS → BCG | Undergrad & Consulting Admissions
Studied at Columbia University
Works at Boston Consulting Group
Successful clients at
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
Brandon's Coaching Offerings
Custom hourly · $95/hr
Get help with Application Strategy, Editing, and .
Brandon’s College Qualifications
10+ people coached for College
I'm Brandon, a recent Columbia Engineering grad (Computer Science + Entrepreneurship, 3.985 GPA) who just finished navigating college apps and MBB recruiting. I know what it actually takes to translate a technical background into a story that resonates, because I had to figure it out myself. In high school, I landed offers from Columbia, Cornell, UPenn, Berkeley, Rice, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and UIUC. At Columbia, I landed a BCG full-time offer through my own outreach strategy (not on-campus recruiting). And I've spent the past four years mentoring 15+ students from my hometown, my high school network, and my church community into top schools - working through their essays and positioning with them one-on-one. What I bring to coaching is a fresh perspective from someone who just went through it. If you're a STEM student who doesn't know how to make your resume "tell a story," or an applicant trying to figure out how to stand out, I've been in that exact spot. I can help you audit where you are, figure out what's actually compelling about your background, and turn that into something that clicks with college admissions committees or MBB interviewers. Happy to chat - no fluff, just honest feedback.
Brandon can help with:
Application Strategy
Editing
Essays
Financial Aid & Scholarships
General Exploration
Interviews
Recommendations
Resume
School Selection
Secondary Review
Supplementary Materials
Testing & Assessments
Waitlist Strategy
Work Experience

Claude Builder Ambassador
Anthropic
September 2025 - December 2025
Built Claude Builder Club to 150+ members; led six campus demos and workshops with Anthropic engineers Organized 75-student hackathon; teams built AI prototypes addressing real campus challenges, including a class registration tool

Associate
Boston Consulting Group
June 2025 - Present
Built and automated Excel-based financial models tracking EBITDA and OWC across workstreams for an industrial goods client; scoped AI automation opportunity under ambiguity, presented recommendations to senior client leadership Interned at BCG in Summer 2025 and returning full-time in August 2026

Teaching Assistant
Columbia Engineering
January 2025 - May 2026
Mentored 25 students per semester building full-stack apps (Flask, jQuery); introduced Figma-first workflow reducing development time by 50% Extended impact beyond direct section to 600+ students through office hours and grading support

Research Assistant
Columbia Engineering
January 2025 - May 2025
Modernized autonomous drone firmware (C/C++) to integrate with ROS 2 stack; validated through real-world flight tests and contributed to IROS conference paper submission

Software Engineer
FluidityIQ
June 2024 - September 2024
Deployed patent search vectorizer via Azure CI/CD; cut API latency 6x and resolved 75% of bugs through structured testing Built LLM patent summarizer using LangChain with modular model-swapping; redesigned chat to support multiple concurrent users, reaching initial customer base of IP lawyers

Software Engineering Intern
Capco
June 2023 - August 2023
Fixed 66% of bugs in a major U.S. bank’s permissions service and automated test data creation; presented results to 30+ executives, with work integrated into client systems

Director
Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs
September 2022 - December 2024
Admissions Committee
Directed Almaworks Accelerator; mentored 30+ founders and led five Demo Days (100+ attendees) with Bain Capital Ventures. Redesigned mentor matching to reach 100% attendance; connected Columbia-Cornell founders and hosted Microsoft & Perplexity speakers Also led Partnerships in the CORE executive board, enabling collaboration between Columbia and Cornell founders, organizing speaker events with Microsoft and Perplexity, and inspiring new students to join CORE

Machine Learning Intern
Arrow Electronics
August 2021 - August 2022
Ran 200+ experiments (Optuna, ClearML) to forecast electronics lifecycle metrics; improved forecasting accuracy by 68%
Education

Columbia University
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
2022 - 2026
GPA: 3.985 Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Minor in Entrepreneurship Activities and societies: Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (Director of Almaworks Accelerator), Columbia Daily Spectator (Head of Product)

Horace Mann School
High School Diploma, Computer Science
2019 - 2022
GPA: 3.97 UW, 4.48 W; SAT: 1570
10 Reviews
Overall Rating
5.0
Brandon has helped Leland clients get into Rice University