Working With LifeLaunchr | OUR COACHING PROCESS
Here’s What to Expect When You Work With Us
From your first session to acceptance letters and a thriving path through college into a career, here’s how the LifeLaunchr coaching process works and what you can expect every step of the way.
How Your Coaching Sessions Work
All sessions take place over Zoom and run approximately 30 minutes. After each session, your coach sends a detailed session report via our platform, Soar: a written summary of what you discussed and key to-dos between meetings. That keeps both the student and parents in the loop, and makes it easy to make progress between meetings.
Your coach is available by email between sessions for questions that come up along the way. For platform and technical support, our team is available at help@lifelaunchr.com.
Need extra time? Additional sessions are available at $112.50 per 30 minutes.
Cancellation policy: Please give at least 24 hours’ notice to cancel or reschedule. Late cancellations (except emergencies) count toward your package time.
What We Cover in Our Coaching Process
Soar: Your Planning Platform
Every LifeLaunchr family gets access to Soar, our AI-powered college and career planning platform. Students use it between sessions to research colleges, explore majors and careers, track scholarships, draft application materials, and get guidance on any part of the process.
Your College List
Our coaching packages don’t have hard limits on college lists, but we recommend a list of 10–12 colleges, with a roughly equal balance of reaches, targets, and likelies. That gives your student a genuine range of outcomes without unnecessarily padding the list.
In choosing colleges, we encourage students to optimize for fit — the right academic environment, campus culture, financial match, and future trajectory for each specific student — based on research using Soar, guided by your LifeLaunchr coach.
Our goal is to have all applications submitted by October 15 of senior year. That timeline eliminates the last-minute scramble and gives your coach time for thorough final reviews.
LifeLaunchr’s Essay Process
The median LifeLaunchr student writes 16 essays across their applications. Here’s how we approach each type:
- Common App Personal Statement: Our process starts with self-reflection exercises done over the entire time we work with students, then moves on to brainstorming stories and themes. We then help students choose a theme and story and create an initial draft focused on content, not polish. That is refined during discussions and, after a few drafts, moves to detailed written feedback via our platform. The entire process takes about a month.
- UC Personal Insight Questions: We use a similar structured process, focused on the specific rules of the UC PIQs, to help students create thoughtful drafts of their responses and revise them until they’re ready to submit.
- “Why Us” Essays: Our research process and Soar provide a deep foundation of college research, which leads to essays that connect your student’s specific goals to what each school offers. We don’t rely on generic templates or insights: the goal is to write responses that are particular to each school and each student.
- “Why Major” Essays: We focus these essays on a genuine exploration of preparation and purpose, and understanding the insights that led a student to choose a particular major.
- Additional Essays: We help students develop responses to common themes — identity, community, leadership, intellectual curiosity — that can be adapted to specific application prompts.
Essay Reviews: Package limits on reviews are listed in each coaching package description. Additional reviews are $55 per review, or $600 for a block of 12. Turnaround is 48–72 hours. Scholarship and summer program essays follow the same system.
All applications should be completed at least two weeks before deadlines to allow time for final review.
The Application Timeline
Most of our students apply for fall semester admissions, and this is a typical timeline:
- Before January of Junior Year: Complete your student profile in Soar; set your family’s financial parameters using the Department of Education’s Student Aid Estimator.
- February 1, Junior Year: Your coach prepares an initial research list of 20–25 colleges to explore.
- February – May, Junior Year: Student and coach research colleges together and narrow to a final list.
- May 1–15, Junior Year: Request recommendation letters from teachers and your school counselor.
- May 15, Junior Year: Finalize your college list.
- May 15 – August 15: Complete major essays (Common App, UC PIQs) before senior year begins.
- August – October 15, Senior Year: Fill in application forms, finalize remaining essays, and submit everything.
- The goal: all applications submitted by October 15 of senior year.
Policies and Support
A few things to know before you get started:
- Refunds — We limit enrollments to maintain quality, so we don’t offer refunds on coaching packages. Our initial consultations are intended to give families the information you need to make a thoughtful decision.
- Holidays — Coaches don’t schedule sessions during Thanksgiving week or December 24 – January 2. We give advance notice for any planned time off and arrange alternate meeting times in all non-emergency situations.
- Code of Ethics — LifeLaunchr follows the HECA code of ethics and professional standards. We are also members of NACAC.
- Getting Help — For admissions questions, contact your coach by email. For platform or technical support, reach us at help@lifelaunchr.com.
Ready to Get Started?
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