Over 10 years of teaching and counseling experience — including teaching positions at Columbia University — I've helped students gain admission to Columbia, Brown, Duke, UPenn, UChicago, UCLA, NYU, USC, UC Berkeley, UMich, Cambridge, Oxford, UCSD, Amherst, and more.
My specialties are college admissions essays and SAT Verbal prep. I also help students develop high-impact activities — passion projects, independent research, and academic publications — that set them apart in a competitive...
Over 10 years of teaching and counseling experience — including teaching positions at Columbia University — I've helped students gain admission to Columbia, Brown, Duke, UPenn, UChicago, UCLA, NYU, USC, UC Berkeley, UMich, Cambridge, Oxford, UCSD, Amherst, and more.
My specialties are college admissions essays and SAT Verbal prep. I also help students develop high-impact activities — passion projects, independent research, and academic publications — that set them apart in a competitive pool.
Every student I work with gets a strategy built around who they actually are, not a template. I put in 100%, and we revise until every essay is as strong as it can be.
Here's what my student Elizabeth — admitted to UChicago (Class of 2024) in Economics, their most selective program — had to say:
"I am so glad to finally find a teacher who works 200% for the student. In a month, Sonya managed to do what teachers at the best school in Russia could not do for a year. In just four lessons, I raised my SAT Reading and Writing scores by 200 points — something that had seemed impossible to me before."
I love what I do. Watching students reach schools they once thought were out of reach is what drives me. I'd love to hear about your goals.
