Read on to hear from Bria Isaacson, Prompt’s Head of Student Operations; Megan Heavner, Prompt’s Lead Student Success Manager; and Andrea Wilson, Prompt’s Sales Manager and Graduate Student Success Manager (SSM).
Bria is the Head of Student Operations at Prompt, which means that she ensures students have as seamless an experience as possible. Recently, she worked with the tech team to unveil a new and improved student platform. This platform offers better video calling quality, clearer next steps for students, and efficient content mapping tools - and we have many more updates rolling out!
I’ve always been in education in some way, from tutoring students when I myself was a student to being a public school teacher and now working at Prompt. I love that I can use my time to help someone else understand something and achieve their goals.
I remember my scholarship essays better than my personal statement. One of my scholarship essays had to be about C.S. Lewis, and I wrote about my dad and I reading his books together and how he inspired me. That was a fun essay – except I wrote it the day before it was due, and I believe that’s why I received an honorable mention and didn’t win the scholarship.
Start early so you have enough time to revise and really make your essays shine. I was a perfectionist in my essay writing, so I never really put words to the page until I felt the last-minute pressure to write. Now I know that anything would’ve been better than nothing, as it would’ve given me time to revise.
I love helping students to achieve their goals. Students have so many dreams, and I want to help them achieve as many as humanly possible.
I recommend creating a list of all of the essays you need to write first. This used to be a daunting task, but Prompt’s free essay list builder makes this super easy. You can then group your essays into categories (for example, “Why Us” essays or essays about community. We have articles for each of these essay categories with writing tips). After that, you can use Prompt’s Content Mapping strategy to use similar content for essays in the same category.
The partnership between students, Prompt Writing Coaches, and Prompt SSMs means families always have an admissions expert to reach out to. All students receive one-on-one support from experienced Writing Coaches plus personalized assistance from their SSM, who plans deadlines for them, answers any application questions, and provides resources throughout the application journey.
Megan is the Lead Student Success Manager at Prompt. She graduated with an undergraduate and graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University where she also worked as an Educational Outreach Coordinator. She works with students to help them achieve their college goals by keeping them on track with deadlines and answering application questions.
Both my mother and grandmother were teachers, so I grew up in the classroom. After college, I was a classroom teacher before moving to educational technology. I can’t imagine doing anything else!
I wrote about the first time I left the United States and went to Italy for a summer study abroad program my junior year. It was definitely the experience that started my love of travel and was one of the most important experiences I have ever had.
Apply to a variety of schools. That way, you have lots of different options to choose from when decisions start rolling in.
All of our students have such bright futures ahead of them and work so hard to achieve their goals. I feel really lucky to be able to witness their growth during such an important time in their lives.
Before working with Prompt, I recommended setting a schedule and having a master spreadsheet of all the materials and deadlines that you need for all of your schools. Now, I know that your Student Success Manager and our Prompt Platform can help you keep track of deadlines and essay requirements while our coaches help you craft compelling essays!
At Prompt, we have a fantastic team of industry experts who love working with students and have an array of experiences that make our team really diverse and unique. Most of our core team members are educators who have built careers working with talented young people. We also have coaches who are teachers, engineers, playwrights, authors, scientists, filmmakers, the list goes on! This allows us to match students with a Writing Coach who will be a great fit for them.
Andrea is the Sales Manager and a Graduate Student Success Manager at Prompt. She is a Seattle, Washington native who has worked in education since 2007 and has spent over 15 years as an academic advisor and one-on-one K-12 teacher with a focus on students for whom a traditional classroom environment was not always accessible. In the last 7 years, she has brought her passion for supporting students into the edtech field, providing additional opportunities for students of all kinds to develop the tools they need to succeed.
I started as a tutor in 2007, and I saw so many students who were struggling, but who didn’t need to be. I began paying attention to equity and accessibility. Every student deserves education that is accessible and equitable for their specific needs and goals in life. It has been, and continues to be, my goal to help make that happen.
My college application essay focused on my experiences as a peer tutor in high school. I worked with other students in English, History, and French classes during my junior and senior year. What I learned from that experience set me on the path I still follow: helping students succeed in their own authentic ways.
Remember, this is stressful and scary, but it’s not going to last forever. Do your best, start early, be authentic, and ask for help when you need it. Everything else will fall into place, even if it’s not exactly how you expect.
They are brilliant. Also, they’re hilarious. Truly, the highlight of my day is talking to teenagers. They’re a force of nature. I have so much respect for them and faith in them — it’s an honor to be able to help them (in my own small way) to step into this next phase of their lives.
Make a list. Make three lists, actually: must be done within the current week, must be done within the current month, and must be done before next month is over. Move action items like “finish Common App personal statement” or “submit UCLA application” onto the list that shows how soon it needs to be done. That, plus the timeline you’d get from a Prompt SSM, makes it almost impossible to fall behind and get overwhelmed by deadlines.
The coaches and SSMs (and everyone, actually) care so much about helping students get into their dream schools. They want to meet students where they are. They want to champion them, encourage them, and guide them. That’s why we don’t have end dates, hour limitations, or draft review cutoffs at Prompt. We are here for the student until they have everything they need to successfully apply, whatever that might look like.
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