During her time at Northwestern University, Jen Kaifesh quickly identified her passion and gift for helping others maximize the power of the written word. She was asked to serve as a liaison between the university and local high schoolers interested in attending to help the students understand the requirements for admission and find ways to “stand out” in the application process. The university also hired her to assist undergraduates with graduate school applications, as well as to help graduate students and professors alike restructure and polish papers before publication.
In 2003, this fascination with the higher education admissions process led Jennifer to delve into standardized test preparation, and she joined a successful, well-known test prep company in Los Angeles. While she was impressed with the broad scope of the company’s material, she was disappointed by the lack of curriculum personalization: regardless of a student’s strengths or weaknesses, there was one, and only one, method demonstrated to attack a problem. She quickly found that tailoring her approach to each student’s unique means of problem-solving led to score improvements nearly double that of the company average…and so, after recognizing the need for holistic, full-service guidance, she left the established company to venture out on her own in 2006 — and so began Great Expectations College Prep.
Her goal was not just to offer effective standardized test preparation, but to merge her personalized approach to test prep with her insight into the application process in order to offer students a comprehensive resource. She recognizes the importance of encouraging students to find academic and extracurricular pursuits that they both enjoy and excel at: doing so cultivates the authenticity that is an integral part of the application process and also ensures that students have positive high school experiences.
In the years that followed, Jen hired a variety of experts in various, niche aspects of the process (athletic recruitment, art portfolios, etc) to provide students with an even more diverse, relevant range of services in their quest to gain admittance to their dream schools.
Despite the growth of the company, Jen still stays up-to-date on every student’s progress and/or setbacks, offering her expert advice and opinions to help ensure improvement and, ultimately, success in the college application process.