Rachelle Johnsson Chiang, DrPH

I have supported students in the college and graduate school admissions process for over fifteen years on the side. It started as a passion project, as I was a first-generation college student of immigrant parents and navigated everything on my own. It evolved to supporting many of my friends’ children and my children’s friends. I understand what it feels like to be lost as a student and want to accompany others in the process. I worked in admissions during my undergraduate years and learned an incredible amount about prospective students and their families. I also have a doctorate from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin for a few years, where I taught a senior-level writing course. At UT, I mentored students, assisted them with graduate school applications, and served on undergraduate scholarship committees, reading hundreds of essays. Over the last five years, I have used that essay reader experience to help many mediocre personal statements become standouts. Most importantly, these experiences uniquely positioned me to support my own three children through their college application process (2020-2026). So much has changed in the last few years! Each of them taught me a tremendous amount – one college athlete who opted to go to a small D3 liberal arts college in the northeast to study finance, one who went to a small school in the south with a full scholarship, and then went through the transfer process to a large state school in Texas to study interior design, and a third who is going to an out-of-state flagship for engineering. Each received significant scholarships, but it wasn’t without a collaboration between me as the admissions consultant and them as the student. Even though I was the in-house expert, I was also mom, so it was not without friction! As a result, my goal is to reduce that friction for other families. I truly love working with students through this discovery process and aim to reduce the anxiety that often accompanies it. I focus on holistic fit of the student with the university's academic opportunities and culture. While I have had an entirely different career in public health, this is what I love to do in my spare time. So much so that I am finishing up a Certificate for College Counseling from UC San Diego.