Elevated
mission
To teach and equip students with the necessary academic, intellectual, social, emotional, personal and interpersonal skills for success in school and life beyond.
Our Story
In 2020, I graduated from Yale…into a worldwide pandemic.
Right after my Zoom graduation, my parents, who worked as restaurant staff, were laid off. Stuck in my Miami childhood bedroom, I applied to hundreds of jobs. Despite my Ivy League degree, I faced rejection after rejection. The only work I could find that year was as a part-time sales associate at my friend’s real estate startup, and as an online writing tutor.
Little did I know how lucky I was.
That summer, students flocked to the Internet for supplemental educational opportunities. So, I tutored like crazy. For 9 weeks from 9 AM to 9 PM, I poured my heart into teaching students everything I knew, from creative writing to social entrepreneurship to how to write their way into college.
Then, disaster struck again.
That same summer, my parents fell for a crypto scam. Despite the business’s initial success, money felt tighter than ever. And I had never felt more exhausted in my life.
But what if there was a way to teach others and get paid while I slept? This was the question that motivated me to record my first YouTube videos in the fall of 2020.
The only problem? They stunk. Out of the first 50 videos I made, only 5 got more than 10,000 views.
I considered quitting YouTube altogether. But thanks to the gentle love of my girlfriend and now wife, Ingra, I kept at it.
Around this time, I won the lottery. After asking my friend Jeff to join for the better half a year, he agreed to be my co-founder. Though you rarely see him featured on YouTube, Jeff is the bedrock of this company – he literally holds me up. Not only is Jeff a sensational writer whose own common app essay was featured in the New York Times, but he’s an amazing engineer, manager and friend.
I create content; Jeff creates systems. In 2023, Jeff built the ElevatEd Essay Portal – just one of his many ingenious contributions. In total, we've edited 8000+ common app essays, supplemental essays, graduate schools essays, and more.
Helping students articulate the story of their lives, present their best selves to colleges and watch them get admitted – there are no words that can describe that feeling.
Since 2020, ElevatEd has grown more than tenfold. We use this money and platform to connect with inspiring scholarship students, many of whom we often work with for free.
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Take Morteza, for example, who risked his life sharing educational materials to girls in his village under Taliban Rule and was recently admitted to Stanford.
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Or Kenny from New Jersey, who matched with Columbia through Questbridge.
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Or Patrick who found us via TikTok, then got into Duke just by watching our videos from the Philippines.
Why does ElevatEd exist?
To help millions of students around the world take their education to the next level.
Though we offer personalized, customized private college consulting, we also want to help an insane number of students and drive down costs as much as possible.
That’s why we take so much of the profits gained from our services and re-invest it into making free YouTube content.
This year, we’re also developing tech tools to help every student tell the best stories of their lives and successfully navigate life’s transitions.
Long story short, we believe access to high quality education shouldn’t require a second mortgage.
Want to work with us? Follow us on LinkedIn.
We look forward to collaborating with you, and elevating together!
THANKS
TO OUR BRILLIANT TEAM
Since 2020
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We’ve helped dozens of students win 215+ Scholastic prizes across multiple categories ranging from poetry to flash fiction, personal memoir, humor, journalism and more.
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We’ve coached more than 200+ students from every background imaginable into all 8 Ivies, as well as Stanford and MIT.
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We’ve recorded over 500+ videos related to Yale, college admissions and entrepreneurship, totaling 6M+ views across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more
But beyond the numbers, we’ve had the pleasure of watching our students grow and fulfill their potential. That is why we teach!
