All-Angles Admissions & Academic Guiding
A Wild Success.
of candidates with Backcountry admissions support have been admitted to at least one of their Top 3 Dream Schools.
of candidates with Backcountry admissions support who have applied to Top 20 schools have been admitted to Top 20 schools.
of candidates with Backcountry academic support have elevated their GPAs, measurably improving their admissions prospects and outcomes.
NOTE: Backcountry Academics was launched in Spring, 2024. These numbers are drawn from our Guides’ collective admission experience.
We offer all-angles admissions support which includes a comprehensive candidacy diagnostic; personal narrative development sessions; intensive one-on-one essay guiding, crafting, and editing; resume and activities list guiding, crafting, and editing; school list guiding and crafting; select performance coaching; and terrain-specific guiding and insight (school-specific, major-specific, and career-specific)
Work one-on-one with a Backcountry Core Guide to deepen your self-awareness, uncover your personal narrative, and craft vibrant, authentic personal essays that showcase who you are and what you have to offer. The essay is a candidate’s sole avenue for self-advocacy, and self-disclosure, and self-expression.
Your Backcountry Guides will call on their wealth of knowledge with respect to prep school and undergraduate programs to help you craft, refine, and optimize your school list.
Work one-on-one with a Backcountry Core Guide to craft a resume and/or activities list that not only reflects the extent of your academic, extracurricular and service-oriented achievements, but helps communicate effectively your passions and priorities.
Seek your summit with Backcountry! We offer comprehensive, all-angles admissions support which includes a comprehensive candidacy diagnostic; personal narrative development sessions; intensive one-on-one essay guiding, crafting and editing; resume and activities list guiding, crafting and editing; school list guiding and crafting; select performance coaching; and terrain-specific guidance and insight (schools-specific, major-specific, and career-specific)
We offer all-angles academic support which includes a comprehensive transcript diagnostic; guidance on course selection, resume building, and extracurricular development; intensive one-on-one writing & research instruction; performance coaching (executive functioning/time management, performance-optimizing wellness, and test-taking); and terrain-specific guiding and insight (school-specific, major-specific, and career-specific)
Work one-on-one with a Backcountry Core Guide to deepen your self-awareness, uncover your personal narrative, and craft vibrant, authentic personal essays that showcase who you are and what you have to offer. The essay is a candidate’s sole avenue for self-advocacy, self-disclosure, and self-expression.
Your Backcountry Guides will call on their wealth of knowledge with respect to prep school and undergraduate programs to help you craft, refine, and optimize your school list.
Work one-on-one with a Backcountry Core Guide to craft a resume and/or activities list that not only reflects the extent of your academic, extracurricular and service-oriented achievements, but helps communicate effectively your passions and priorities.
Work one-on-one with Backcountry’s Executive Functioning Specialist to performance-optimize your approach to life and school. Learn to better structure your days; track your achievements and challenges; maximize your efficiency; and declutter your mind (and desk!).
Learn to put your best foot forward in one-on-one sessions with Backcountry’s interview specialist. Participate in a mock interview with pre- and post-interview feedback, learning to better highlight your strengths, acknowledge your challenges, and communicate your passions and aspirations.
Master the art of test-taking with Backcountry Guides. Learn strategies for optimizing study time and results. Build your pressure-tolerance under simulated test conditions.
Work one-on-one with a Backcountry Guide to hone your strategic positioning via extracurricular and resume-building guidance and support. Whether you’re an elite athlete, a community activist, or simply an enthusiastic participant in school clubs and organizations, we’ll help you identify your talents, develop them and ultimately, showcase them on your admissions journey.
Work one-on-one with Backcountry’s Expedition Leader to optimize your research skills and elevate your craft, either in general, or with respect to any academic subject that’s writing and/or research intensive.
Receive specialized Backcountry Academic Support with one of Backcountry’s Core Guides, Dr. Tyler Spencer—a former Rhodes Scholar and current resident of Mexico—who has limited availability for Spanish tutorials. Backcountry’s Expedition Leader also accepts a few candidates a year for intensive, academic support in English & Literature, Creative Writing, Comparative Government, Political Science, and other Humanities-oriented courses.
Work one-on-one with Backcountry’s Expedition Leader to craft an ideal application strategy – either for one application, specifically, or for your full set of applications, more generally.
Work one-on-one with Backcountry’s Expedition Leader on everything from your extracurricular involvement to your course selection, to your study skills, in order to establish ideal strategic positioning for your future admissions journeys
Work one-on-one with Backcountry’s Expedition Leader and Backcountry’s Gap Year Specialist to design your ideal gap year, challenging yourself in all directions to maximize your admissions potential and optimally prepare yourself for your academic as well as professional future
Tackling the exacting wilds of today’s academic and admissions landscapes doesn't need to feel like a wilderness solo – Backcountry is here to help you navigate the terrain and cast light on every step of your ascent.
Our hard-won academic and admissions expertise coupled with and our bedrock faith in language as an agent of change informs our hand-crafted approach to each candidate’s academic and/or admissions expedition.
At Backcountry, we're Ivy League and Ivy+ trained academics devoted to helping each of our candidates artfully strategize and authentically shine.
We’ll help you identify your inspirations, aspirations, achievements, and convictions and communicate them in a resonant voice that’s all your own.
At the same time, you’ll learn to render your worlds, interior and exterior, in gripping detail.
Our all-terrain, all-angles strategy is designed to optimize your candidacy, deepen your self-awareness, and support wild success.
Whatever your goals for school—whether you’re dreaming of Exeter the Ivies, or liberal arts in Maine—you will emerge from our process with sharper focus, a powerful voice, and a more dynamic self-understanding that will serve you beautifully at your dream school and beyond it.
Backcountry prizes specialized attention. No candidate at Backcountry is alike and we celebrate those differences with bespoke strategy and intensive, one-on-one instruction.
We limit our candidate roster to ensure each of our candidates receives truly concierge attention. Need a same-day resume? We’re on it. Need a research strategy for a paper due tomorrow or a crash-course in test-taking? We’re all yours.
Our admissions approach is whole-student and all-angles— meaning in addition to application support, we also provide year-round academic support and strategic positioning designed to help you blaze ahead, starting as early as 7th grade.
Margaret, I’m recommending Backcountry Academics with all my heart because of your talent, your creativity, your grit, and the night and day difference I see in my child. I would feel guilty not shouting your praises from the rooftops.
”In a nutshell: I owe you a huuuuuuuuge debt of gratitude. I’m going to Stanford!!!
”One of Margaret's greatest strengths is her ability to connect with her students on a personal level. She takes the time to listen to their stories, understand their unique strengths and weaknesses, and help them identify what they really care about. Margaret's empathetic nature enables her to provide comprehensive and holistic guidance and support, ensuring that her candidates feel seen and heard.
”Margaret is a superstar and she is the reason I was accepted to Columbia. She helped me put together an exceptional application that highlighted my greatest achievements and communicated my authentic voice, which I wouldn’t have found without her. Thank you. A million times, thank you.
”Thank you so much from the bottom of my SOUL for the tireless work with my son. Significant progress is being made. I’ve seen a tremendous change in him. His grades, attitude and his happiness.
”I have been admitted to Phillips Exeter Academy as part of the Class of ’26, and I have been awarded full, financial aid to support my education. This is a significant milestone for me, and I couldn’t have achieved it without your invaluable help and support. Your guidance and the contributions you’ve made have played a crucial role in this achievement.
”I wouldn’t be at Princeton without Margaret’s tireless guidance.
”I feel the need to confess that I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past trying to “make” my child learn how I do. Never did I really take the time to understand the difference in our learning styles. And the fact that it can’t be learned away with effort. I thank Margaret for opening my eyes.
”Beyond helping students navigate the admissions process, Margaret fosters self-discovery and cultivates outstanding personal growth. She encourages her students to explore what inspires them, to challenge themselves personally and academically, and to pursue opportunities that align with their values, not simply their ambitions. Margaret's dedication to helping her students gain a better understanding of themselves and their aspirations sets her apart as an exceptional guide.
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At Backcountry, candidates are guaranteed to work one-on-one with our Expedition Leader, Margaret M. Kelly, whose inspired approach to admissions consulting is steeped in her love of language. A graduate of Princeton University, Virginia Law, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program, Margaret’s published work spans legal non-fiction, flash-fiction, and poetry.
Margaret is a virtuoso application strategist and essay specialist with thousands of hours of experience guiding a wide range of candidates—from the struggling to the super-achieving—to their academic and admissions summits.
Backcountry candidates are also guaranteed to work with at least one of our phenomenal, terrain-specific guides. Collectively, our team of expert admissions strategists holds 16 Ivy League and Ivy+ degrees; we’ve traveled to nearly every country on the planet; we’ve studied everything from systems engineering to wildlife medicine to evidence-based social intervention; and we’ve worked in rarefied spaces of more than one dozen fields and industries. The upshot? We’re equipped to advise on academic trajectories and career paths of all kinds.
Whatever your academic and extracurricular needs may be, we’re here to support you. At Backcountry, synergy is key to our process—if you’re working with one of us, you’re working with all of us. And if your needs extend beyond our collective specialties, we’ll be the first to say so and work to connect you with a professional we know and trust.
At Backcountry, we believe students of all backgrounds deserve access to quality academic and admissions support. So, for every paying candidate we work with, we’ve made it part of our mission to help another student with financial limits seek their summit pro bono.
We are also proud partners with Ukraine Global Scholars, an organization that helps underserved Ukrainian students earn scholarships and admission to top-tier prep schools, colleges, and universities worldwide.
