A writer, a teacher, and a counselor who has been inside the schools.

I am Zelda Thomas. For more than twenty years I have worked with students as a teacher, editor, and college counselor, drawing out what is real and specific in their thinking and helping them shape it into something an admissions reader will want to read.

I hold an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University, and am finishing my College Counseling certification at the University of San Diego. Before counseling full time, I taught high school English at The Blake School in Minneapolis and Stamford High School in Connecticut.

I attended Sarah Lawrence and Columbia, spent summers at Harvard, lived inside Yale and Williams for stretches of time, and have built real relationships with admissions officers at schools across the country. I am a member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), and the Midwest Association for College Admission Counseling (MACAC).

Born in Mexico and shaped by a life lived across continents, I bring a globally minded perspective to every student I work with. After a year in Milan, I now serve families in Europe applying to American universities, American families drawn to the rich landscape of English-taught programs across Europe, and students from anywhere in the world navigating an increasingly international set of choices.

I am also the mother of three. I have walked the college process twice already, once to Columbia and once to the Savannah College of Art and Design, and I am now in it again with my eighth grader, who is doing everything he can to be himself in an authentic way and building independent pursuits over his summers. I know this road from the inside, as a parent as well as a counselor.