Frequently asked questions

Admit Path helps people at every stage of life become well educated, productive and able to make a difference. We provide evidence-based guidance for education through the lifespan: choosing a high school, applying to college and to MBA, law and medical school, launching and changing careers, and learning in later life. We combine evidence from real outcomes with independent human review. Admit Path is an initiative of the Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation Inc.

Admissions matters, and we help with it. But an acceptance letter isn’t the goal. We measure success by what comes after: whether people keep growing, find meaningful work and contribute to their communities. That shapes every recommendation we make, from which schools fit a student to which credential is worth an adult’s time.

Admit Path is an initiative of the Rouben Malian Memorial Foundation Inc. That puts our mission, making education accessible, transparent and equitable at every stage of life, ahead of revenue. In practice, it means a free Lite assessment for everyone, sliding-scale pricing from $0, funding free access for people who need it, and an annual impact report. Learn about the Foundation.

No. We work with families choosing a high school, high school and college students, graduate school applicants, and adults at any stage, including people finishing a degree, changing careers or learning in retirement. See every stage.

No. We’re designed to complement them as an independent second opinion. Counselors and consultants can also use Admit Exchange to see a one-page summary of your profile, with your permission, so their time with you goes further.

Four reasons. We’re available when advisors are busiest, right before deadlines. Our reports are detailed, while free consultations rarely go deep. School counselors must serve their whole student population, whereas we focus on you. And our services cost a fraction of the hundreds or thousands of dollars private consultants charge, with insights grounded in real outcome data.

We don’t predict admissions. No one can, because no one can know who else will apply next season. You’ll never see us claim a “54% chance.” Instead, we compare your profile with students who were actually admitted. Admit Preparation places you on a scale from “lower extreme” to “upper extreme”. Application Review expresses your probability as a multiple of the average applicant (for example, 5.2×), and every result comes with an explanation.

It’s our framework for combining two kinds of evidence. The theory-based model captures what schools say they value, from published criteria, research and interviews with admissions professionals. The practice-based model captures what actually correlates with admission in real outcomes. A factor becomes part of the Unified Model only when the evidence supports it. Read more about how it works.

We look at hundreds of data points per admitted profile to identify which factors are most associated with admission, and by how much. We look at the population overall and along the dimensions admissions committees commonly consider. Admit Preparation uses one model to give a high-level estimate. Application Review, which has far more information about you, combines several models with independent committee scores to produce a more specific metric.

From published sources, such as Common Data Sets, public datasets like IPEDS, academic research and admissions office publications. Also from interviews with admissions professionals and from applicants who choose to share their anonymized outcomes with us (our give-to-get model). We don’t build our model by scraping people’s personal profiles. Contributed data is stripped of personal identifiers before it enters the model, and integrity checks remove duplicates and unreliable entries.

Both. AI handles fast, consistent analysis, such as essay structure or how your metrics compare. Independent trained readers handle the judgment calls: they score essays, recommendations and mock interviews using committee-style rubrics. Sensitive topics are always escalated to a human. Whenever a recommendation has been human-verified, you’ll see it marked.

High school admissions (independent, boarding, Catholic and selective public schools), college admissions, business school (MBA), law school (JD), medical school (MD and DO), career preparation and lifelong learning. Our practice-based statistical modeling focuses on college, MBA, law and medical admissions, where hundreds of students are admitted to each program every year. For high school admissions and lifelong learning, our guidance combines published criteria with expert review, and we always tell you which approach a recommendation is based on. We don’t advise on programs with only a handful of admits per year, such as many science PhD programs, because any assessment would be unreliable.

Use Admit Preparation 6–12 months before your application deadline, so there’s time to act on the recommendations, and repeat it every 6–12 months as your profile grows. Use Application Review in the final months, once your essays and materials are drafted. Career Preparation is recommended once a year.

Admit Preparation is early-stage strategy: your strengths and weaknesses, which schools are realistic and a good fit, and what to work on. Application Review is late-stage polish: once you know where you’re applying, we review your actual draft application and tell you whether to apply now, apply with changes, apply later or reconsider.

Never. We help you brainstorm, review your drafts and give candid feedback, but every word you submit must be yours. Ghostwriting is unethical, and it also makes essays worse.

For loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2026, Grad PLUS is no longer available to new borrowers, and federal loans have firm limits: $50,000 a year and $200,000 in total for professional students such as law and medicine, and $20,500 a year and $100,000 in total for most other graduate students, including MBA students. We help you factor cost and funding into your school list from the start. Read our funding guide.

Yes. Our free cost and borrowing planner estimates how much federal loans can cover each year under the July 2026 rules, including Parent PLUS and graduate and professional limits, and shows any remaining gap. It runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you enter is sent to us.

No. The free assessment, the cost planner and all of our guides work without one. A free account lets you save assessment snapshots and cost plans, get email reminders before key dates, see the status of your requests and message our team. There are no passwords: sign in with a secure link we email to you.

Only the ones you ask for: sign-in links, confirmations when you send us a request, copies of results you choose to email yourself, replies from our team, and, if you turn them on, deadline reminders and occasional updates. Updates are double opt-in with one-click unsubscribe, and you can manage everything in your account settings.

Yes, if you’re applying to U.S. high schools, colleges or MBA, law or medical programs. Everything is delivered online, and we build visa steps such as the I-20, SEVIS fee and visa interview into your timeline. We don’t prepare immigration filings or give legal advice. Your school’s international office handles those. Our international students guide explains F-1 vs. J-1 status, OPT and STEM OPT.

Yes. We help students and families plan accommodation requests around testing and application deadlines, find schools with strong learning support and disability services, and think through whether and how to share their experience in applications. We don’t diagnose or decide eligibility. Learning differences & accommodations.

Yes. We help families applying to independent day schools, boarding schools, Catholic schools and selective public or magnet high schools with school fit, testing plans, interviews, essays and financial aid. High school admissions.

Absolutely. Whether you’re finishing a degree, changing careers, pursuing graduate study while working or learning in retirement, we help you choose the right program, plan funding and get credit for what you already know. Lifelong learning.

The Lite assessment is free. Admit Preparation is $495 per assessment and Career Preparation is $495 per year at full price. Human review add-ons start at $100, and the full Mock Committee starts at $1,500. All are discounted on our sliding scale. See pricing.

Your price depends on household income relative to the Federal Poverty Guidelines: free below 100%, $99 between 100–200%, $249 between 200–300%, $395 between 300–400%, and $495 above that. We verify with simple proxies, such as free or reduced-price lunch or Pell Grant eligibility, or a short self-attestation. We never need tax returns.

If our insights don’t help you, contact us within 120 days of purchase for a full refund. We guarantee your satisfaction, never an admission decision, because no one can honestly guarantee that.

Yes. To assess your application well, we need personal information, and you should feel safe sharing it. We do not reveal the existence of any client relationship without your consent or a court order. We never sell your data, and you can ask us to delete it at any time. Read our privacy policy.

Through Admit Exchange, our platform for school counselors, independent consultants and institutions. It’s currently in early access. Request an invitation.