Support That Matches How You Actually Need It

Some applicants come to us needing a single, sharp strategy session and the confidence to take it from there. Others want a partner beside them for the entire journey, from the first conversation about pre-reqs through the final decision on where to enroll. College Matters is one of the few firms that offers both: targeted, hourly support for students who know what they need, and comprehensive planning for students who want full guidance through the cycle. You choose the level of support that fits your situation, not the one that fits our business model.

We work with students from the very beginning of the process: mapping out pre-requisite coursework, building a realistic timeline for the MCAT, preparing for CASPer and AAMC PREview, and pre-planning for secondary applications long before they arrive. From there, we carry that same strategic thinking into the personal statement, the CV, and interview preparation. Underneath all of it is the question we spend the most time on: why medicine, really. Every strong application, every strong interview, and every strong secondary essay comes back to a student who can answer that question with clarity and conviction; that's where we start, and it's what we keep returning to.

Two Ways to Work With Us

Our mini-packages are built for students who need focused, expert input at a specific moment: an assessment of where you stand, or a set block of hours to work through a particular piece of the process. 

Our comprehensive plan is for students who want a partner with them from start to finish, including a customized Med School Hub, built around each student's own timeline, that turns what can be an overwhelming process into a manageable set of tasks. The Hub includes a GPA calculator that tracks trends and BCPM breakdowns over time, along with school data that goes well beyond what the MSAR provides: mission fit, supplemental letter policies, in-state versus out-of-state admissions preferences, and other program-level nuances we gather directly rather than relying on published averages.

As one student put it: "My Hub literally saved me from crashing out."

Meet Your Advisors

Betsy Morgan and Greg Makoul both work directly with medical school applicants, and every student who works with College Matters benefits from both of their perspectives, whether that's through a single strategy session or full support across the cycle.

Betsy Morgan, CEP, MALS

Betsy brings deep, practical fluency in the mechanics of the process: the nuances of AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS, and how individual schools of medicine differ in their requirements and evaluation criteria. She is one of a small number of independent educational consultants nationwide admitted to the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP), an organization built primarily around health professions advisors embedded within colleges and universities. That standing gives her a rare vantage point: she sits inside the same professional community that trains and credentials university pre-health advisors, and stays connected to a network of colleagues who shape how programs evaluate applicants nationally.

Dr. Greg Makoul

Greg brings a background to medical school advising that few consultants can offer: a career spent studying how physicians and patients actually communicate. He spent 15 years on the full-time faculty at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, where he served as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Communication + Medicine and helped lead major curriculum reform. He has also held faculty appointments at Yale School of Medicine and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and the communication assessment tools he developed are used in medical schools worldwide. Greg has been the interviewer; who better to help you prepare for yours? 

Together, Betsy's command of the admissions process and Greg's expertise in communication give students a combined lens: insight into how admissions committees actually evaluate candidates, paired with a communication scientist's eye for whether a candidate's story is cohesive and holds up under scrutiny. We help students move from a scattered list of experiences to a clear, consistent narrative of why medicine, told the same way whether it shows up in a personal statement, a secondary essay, or an interview answer.