The Gold Package

Includes ALL of the services

• Administration and interpretation of our customized “School Match 4U Updated Questionnaire for students and parents.”
• Follow up to the completed questionnaire designed to understand the optimal educational conditions that students and parents are looking for to discern what college environment your student will thrive in.
• Recommendation and interpretation of multiple different college major tests for your student to confirm his/her college major/career interests.
• Examination of all academic records, teacher comments, testing and activities for Your student
• Recommendation of at least 15 colleges initially that match your student’s academic profile and interests.
• Verbal communication and a thorough explanation explaining why the schools recommended were selected. Our college coaches can also answer any student or parent’s questions to explain why certain other schools were not selected.
• Assistance in paring down these 15+ schools to a manageable level of schools that match what students and parents are looking for should your student decide to apply to less schools.
• Delivery of verbal “A Strengths and Weakness assessment” that explains how your student will be viewed by admissions officers that utilize either numerical admissions, or holistic admissions as their method of evaluating your student.
• Interview prep (one mock interview) with explicit interview feedback should your student have any college admission interviews.
• Three 60-minute Spanish tutoring sessions designed to either strengthen Your student Spanish skills, give your student an introduction to the language or go over a plan for your student to master the Spanish language. Mark Stucker’s daughter, Karis Stucker has a degree in Spanish, and she is a Spanish high school teacher at a private school in Atlanta. She is a professional Spanish tutor who has her own company (see steadysupporttutoring.com to learn more). We will pay her to work with your student for three sessions should this be of interest to Your student.
• Three forty-five-minute sessions with Mark’s other daughter, Joy Stucker. Joy has her master’s degree in clinic mental health counseling and she is a licensed mental health professional in private practice in Raleigh, NC. Wellness coaching can help your student with any of the following areas: stress, tension in any relationship, depression, anxiety, perfectionism, difficulty in transitioning to new environments, or just ensuring that your student is functioning at his peak performance in school, athletic activities or in his commitments. Think of the Gold Plan as a smorgasbord, some services will be appealing and some you will not be interested in, but the Gold Plan is very comprehensive. These counseling sessions are entirely optional, but available if your student is interested.
• Strategic advice about how your student can utilize powerful questions to impress counselors with his intelligence and preparation.
• Advice about what to include to showcase your student’s strengths in his written application and in any interview.
• Assist your student with course selection so he/she can develop the right balance between academic rigor and involvement in other areas where he has interests. Course selection is highly correlated to admission decisions at many schools.
• Help Your student in planning and developing an effective strategy for college visits.
• Specific advice about what your student should do on any college visits, including post-visit debriefing and consultation.
• Strategic advice throughout the admission process; this advice can be done through phone calls, Zoom video sessions or text messages. We will sometimes request these meetings, but you can request them at any time. Note, the strategic advice is customized advice to each school on Your student college list. The advice can vary drastically from one school to another.
• Strategic advice on how your student can utilize the college visits that admission officers take to his school, visits to local venues and fairs, to create a positive impression of him as an applicant.
• Consult with your student and parents to help everyone to understand how your student’s SAT or ACT scores will be perceived by the various colleges on his/her college list. Consultation involves guidance as to whether your student should apply and submit his/her test scores or whether she/he will apply as a test-optional applicant, to the schools that accept test-optional applicants.
• Communicate with your test prep professional to see how your student is progressing. This only applies if you are working with someone to assist you with the test prep process and if they welcome such communication. If your student is doing self-prep, we can communicate with your student directory.
• Advice about the best test prep strategy to ensure that your student gets the highest test scores.
• Assistance with which applications to use for specific colleges or universities.
• Assistance with how to maximize your student’s effectiveness in working with his school counselor.
• Assistance with the Personal Statement, college-specific questions and short answer questions, scholarship essays, summer program applications and resumes. Assistance involves brainstorming and idea generation, assistance with outlining content edits, constructive criticism, and proof reading, but in no way shape or form will we write the essays on Your student behalf.
• Assistance with writing involves having our professional grammarian, who exclusively does edit and proofreads for authors and for writers, work with us on your student’s major essays. She will read grammar, syntax and spelling any school-specific essays, scholarship, Honors Program or Summer programs for any essay that your content writing coach helped you work on. Our writing content specialist will give feedback from an admission content perspective, and when we have everything in good shape, you will pass it over to Margarita Martinez (our grammarian) for any final revisions. It is essential to know that we will maintain the student voice and the student writing style, which is essential.
• Gap year counseling should your student decide to take a gap year.
• Advice about athletic recruitment should your student decide to play a varsity sport in college.
• Verbal advocacy or written advocacy directly to college admissions counselors is considered inappropriate for a private college coach but we may recommend you connect with certain people at certain times who work for or have attended various colleges of interest.
• A willingness to give general advice on all financial matters; this may involve the FAFSA, CSS PROFILE, IDOC or any institutional aid form requests. This will not apply if you are not applying for financial aid. Our partnership with College Aid Pro can help with more complex financial matters (Included)
• Help with college visits, including when to visit, which schools to visit and what to do on a college visit.
• Assistance with interpreting communication from colleges, including recruitment correspondence and interpretation of aid awards.
• Multiple texts and emails for advice anytime (after 5 pm on weekdays for meetings, anytime on Saturday and after 11 am on Sunday) We put this in bold because this has been invaluable for other clients. This is something that Gold Plan clients love, and it is the only plan that includes this.
• Up to 60 minutes a week of Zoom meetings or phone calls. Note, Your student usually won’t need 60-minutes a week but during peak application season, these 60 minutes will be very helpful. The 60 minutes do not rollover to become two hours if they are not used in any week. A week is regarded as Sunday-Saturday. Your student can have up to two 30-minute meetings a week, 30 minutes is the standard length for our meetings with the one exception being the college list rollout meeting, that meeting is 60 minutes.
• Multiple revisions of college-specific essays, Personal Statements, Summer Program, Honors College and/or scholarship essays by both your writing content specialist and by Margarita. Margarita is our grammarian and you can read about her bio here: https://schoolmatch4u.com/margarita-martinez-team/This is something that Gold Plan clients love, and only The Gold and Platinum plans includes this. For the colleges on your list that require these college-specific essays and questions, they are extremely important in their evaluation. Paying for these essays a la carte, with each essay coming with as many revisions along with the two copies of each finalized essay by our grammarian, (one copy is a proofed copy where you can see the tracking changes she recommends, and the other copy is a clean copy) would cost several thousand more dollars.
• To prevent the freedom of this plan leading to one client dominating the calendar of the college coach, the maximum meeting time per month with a School Match 4U college coach is three hours per month. The maximum number of meetings per week is two meetings, and these two meetings must be on different days of the week. The maximum number of meetings is per family and not per student, so if a parent had their own meeting and the student had their own meeting that would complete the maximum number of meetings for the week. If the three-hour maximum meetings per month are not used in a month, they do not roll over to the next month. The 12 months on the calendar will be used for tracking monthly activity. If a student started their service Agreement on January 15^th, their first month would be Jan 15-31^st and not January 15^th-February 15^th, so tracking can be simply done with the calendar months. Emails, texts and the research a college coach does is not included in these three hours maximum meeting time per month. Sometimes these meetings will be with the whole family and sometimes just with parents, but normally they are only with Your student and the School Match 4U college coach your student is working with. The student or parent is expected to take the initiative and book the meetings directly with your student’s college coach. (Included)
• Access our professional college counseling software which will be immensely helpful for students and parents in this college admission journey. We have a paid membership with College Planner Pro counseling software. It is a resource that significantly improves our ability to serve your child. This College Research Portal will be very helpful for your student for research, organization, and communication. (Included)
• A College Kickstart 15+ page report. College Kickstart allows us to compare a student’s academic profile to other applicants at selected colleges with the most up-to-date data available. This tool enables us to ensure students have a balanced college list, assists in evaluating early admissions opportunities, tracks key application requirements, and has the ability to factor in affordability as part of the application plan for those who are hoping to target scholarship dollars for college. (included)
• Assistance with getting the best financial aid offer. This involves developing a scholarship strategy and game plan should this be of interest to you. The scholarship strategy will involve both an institutional scholarship strategy as well as an outside scholarship strategy. (Included)
• Advice about how to handle any waitlists or deferrals that your student may receive from any college. (Included)
• Access to our subscription to College Aid Pro. This will be very helpful when it comes to understanding the financial side of paying for college
• Advice about what steps should be taken after the enrollment contract has been submitted to ensure a smooth transition occurs when your student matriculates to the college he selects. (Included)
• Openness to do research if you ask us a question about something that we do not know (Included)
• Help identify which scholarships are the best ones for your student to apply to, should this be of interest to your student, or to you as parents
• Help with any application, whether it is the Common App, the Coalition, The UC App, Apply Texas, institutional applications, or any other application that your student would need to complete to apply to any college.
• Advice about how to utilize college fairs for your student to present her/his authentic self in the most favorable and winsome way (Included)
• Share a School Match 4U Action plan so your student does not have to be the one to figure out what he should be doing at any given time.
• Help with breaking down the School Match 4U Action plan into bite size doses by giving your student a short list of “to do’s” that will help her/him to complete quality applications well before any deadlines.
• Advice about how to confirm that the college your student is considering is the right college major for him. (Included)
• Authentic genuine and straightforward and honest communication always about all issues (Included)
• Passion and enthusiasm throughout the process. We love helping students with the college process and you will feel our energy and positive attitude.

The Gold Package is recommended for:

• Families who want a minimum of 1.5 hours a month of assistance with Zoom calls, phone calls, emails, essays, application assistance, scholarship strategy, test prep/test score strategy, visit strategy, communication with college strategy, overall strategy, question-and-answer sessions, working on “to do’s” in an application Action Plan, or help with any other component of the process. We use the word minimum because if you want two hours of any of these activities, this plan will pay for itself.
• Paying for 1.5 hours a month is $450/month, so this is the more affordable option
• Families that want the option to be able to send emails and texts to get prompt answers to quick questions without having caps put on this type of communication like the Silver plan has. The Bronze plan and hourly plans do not include built-in emails and texts.
• Families that are applying to selective schools that require a lot of college-specific essays and short-answer questions. Those essays and questions require hours and hours of work, and multiple content revisions of drafts of those essays will be provided by your School Match 4U college coach. Margarita, our very talented grammarian, will produce both a proofed copy and a clean copy of all essays that are 120 words or more. It is a big money saver for the client not to have to pay for this à la carte.

COST: $375-$415/month (depending on how many months you are committing to):

Gold plan for 12-15 months is $415 a month. You do NOT pay monthly. You pay for how many months you are committing to upfront, unless you select one of our three plans that allow you to pay between two months and ten months.

Examples

• 12 months is 12 x $415 or $4980 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 13 months is 13 x $415 or $5395 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 14 months is 14 s $415 or $5810 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 15 months is 15 x $415 or $6225 is what you pay if you are paying upfront

If after the number of months, you sign up for expires, , and you want to add one or two months, you can add more full service (up to 3 hours a month) for months for $465 ($50 surcharge) or you can pay for individual sessions at $150 for 30, $225 for 45 or $300 for 60 minutes. The extra $50 per month after your months expires accounts for inflation.

If you need a Gold Plan for 16-25 months, it is $375 a month. You get a discount if you sign up for 16 to 25 months because there is not as much work to do in the 10th grade as there is in the 11th and 12th grade. You do NOT pay monthly. You pay for how many months you are committing to upfront.

• 16 months x $375=$6000 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 17 months is $6375 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 18 months is $6750 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 19 months is $7125 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 20 months is $7500 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 21 months is $7875 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 22 months is $8250 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 23 months is $8625 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 24 months is $9000 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 25 months is $9375 is what you pay if you are paying upfront
• 26 months is $9750 is what you pay if you are paying upfront

If after the number of months, you sign up for expires, , and you want to add one or two months, you can add more full service months (up to 3 hours a month) for $425 ($50 surcharge) or you can pay for individual sessions at $150 for 30, $225 for 45 or $300 for 60 minutes. The extra $50 per month after your months expires accounts for inflation.

If you need more than 26 months than the Platinum Plan makes the most sense because it is $9995, and it gives you coverage for up to 36 months

I need a payment plan, what are my options?

• Option 1: Pay in full (see amounts listed above) – paid in full upon contract signing. Savings of $500.
• Option 2: $200 surcharge to the amount listed above – 50% of the fee paid upon contract signing. The balance (50%) is to be paid within 60 days. Savings of $300.
• Option 3: $400 surcharge to the amount listed above – a large deposit is due upon contract signing. The amount you pay will depend on how many months you are signing up for. The balance ($2,500) will be made in monthly $500 payments over the next five months. Postdated checks are written for the same day of the month and mailed. Savings of $100.
• Option 4: $500 surcharge to the amount listed above – fees paid over ten months in equal payments. The amount you are paying will depend on the number of months you are signing up for. The first payment is to be made electronically and then postdated checks are written for the same day of the month and mailed.

Compare packages here.

Payment can be remitted using any of the following:

1. Venmo, (@Mark-Stucker is Mark’s ID or 404-664-4340), and you will see Mark Stucker’s photo. You can also request that Mark friend you on Venmo. Do not select Goods or Services when paying with Venmo, or a 2% fee is added to your fees because this is what Venmo charges us, if you select Goods or Services. There is no charge if you pay as a friend.
2. The Cash App ($MarkStucker11 is Mark’s ID or 404-664-4340). You will see Mark’s photo.
3. Zelle (404-664-4340)
4. For PayPal, use mark@schoolmatch4u.com to send payment. There is a 4% fee for this option.

What if I need the Gold Package for more than the number of months I originally commit to?

Option 1

• You can extend Gold Plan benefits on a month-by-month basis for $425 a month if you originally sign up for 16 or more months and, and you will receive the exact same services that are recounted above in the Gold Plan. You can extend Gold Plan benefits on a month-by-month basis for $465 a month if you originally sign up for 12-15 months, and you will receive the exact same services that are recounted above in the Gold Plan.

Option 2

• You can add hours on an “as needed” basis for $300 per hour or $150 for thirty-minute sessions. Billing will be done in five-minute increments if you meet for a time other than 30 minutes or 60 minutes. Single sessions are a minimum of $150, so you can’t sign up for less than 30-minutes and pay less.

Option 3

• Convert your current plan to a Platinum Plan and you get up to 36 months for one flat fee of $10,495. The Platinum Plan fee is $9995 but there is a $500 fee to convert from a Gold Plan to a Platinum Plan.