College Counseling

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Welcome

The attention that Taft gives students comes into special focus during the college selection process. We have four full-time college counselors on staff, dedicated to helping students and families successfully navigate the college search process. We help students develop the analytical skills they need to best assess their own strengths and interests, allowing them to discover those schools offering the best overall fit. We also work directly with colleges on behalf of our students, presenting their character and achievements in an accurate, nuanced, and compelling light.

Our approach is student-centered, and spans the upper mid and senior years. Parents are also involved, through meetings, personal conferences, e-mails, and a bimonthly newsletter from the college office.

We get to know our students in virtually every facet of their lives at school: We coach, attend sit-down dinners, and interact continually with students, their teachers, and their coaches. We advise students on course selection, standardized testing requirements, essay writing, and how to best present themselves on their college applications. In the fall of their senior year, we help students finalize their list of colleges, and consult closely with teachers, coaches, deans, dorm faculty and advisors prior to crafting a detailed letter of recommendation, which highlights every facet of a student’s moral, intellectual, and social development.

The college counseling team also attends conferences, visits college campuses, constantly reviews media reports, and cultivates relationships with our colleagues in admissions offices.

College Acceptances

Over the past five years (2019–2023), Taft students enrolled at 198 different colleges and universities in 38 states, the District of Columbia, and six foreign countries. During the same period, five or more students enrolled at each of the following schools:

Amherst College, 6
Babson College, 7
Barnard College, 5
Bates College, 6
Boston College, 13
Boston University, 7
Bowdoin College, 6
Brown University, 18
Bucknell University, 21
Carnegie Mellon University, 7
Colby College, 6
Colgate University, 13
College of the Holy Cross, 7
Colorado College, 7
Columbia University, 11
Cornell University, 18
Dartmouth College, 6
Dickinson College, 5
Duke University, 12
Emory University, 5
Fordham University, 5
George Washington University, 9
Georgetown University, 29
Hamilton College, 8
Harvard University, 8
Hobart & William Smith Colleges, 7
Johns Hopkins University, 6
Lafayette College, 6
McGill University, 5
Middlebury College, 14
New York University, 17
Northeastern University, 14
Princeton University, 8
Scripps College, 5
Southern Methodist University, 18
Trinity College, 14
Tufts University, 12
Tulane University, 17
University of California, Berkeley, 6
University of California, Los Angeles, 7
University of Colorado, Boulder, 11
University of Connecticut, 7
University of Miami, 15
University of Michigan, 10
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 9
University of Notre Dame, 9
University of Pennsylvania, 21
University of Richmond, 20
University of Rochester, 5
University of Southern California, 9
University of St. Andrews, 7
University of Texas at Austin, 8
University of Vermont, 5
University of Virginia, 11
University of Wisconsin, Madison, 10
Villanova University, 5
Wake Forest University, 18
Washington & Lee University, 10
Wesleyan University, 12
Yale University, 18

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For College Representatives

2023 Spring College Fair

Thursday, April 20, 2023
6:45-8:30pm
McCullough Athletic Center

February 2023

You are cordially invited to join us for our annual spring college fair at The Taft School. Our entire junior class will be in attendance at the fair, and they will be at a point in the college counseling process when they are most open-minded and curious. We have already begun to work with the Class of 2024 to help them shape their thinking and formulate questions about their college aspirations. In addition to Taft students, students from Trinity-Pawling School, Westover School, The Frederick Gunn School, and local public high schools will be in attendance.

While the fair itself will begin at 6:45pm, we will be offering a light dinner from 5:45pm – 6:45pm. You are welcome to set up any time after 5:30pm. We would strongly prefer that a professional member of your admissions staff joins us; however, we will also welcome alumni representatives to attend in your place if necessary.

To accept our invitation, please register via Naviance RepVisits. Once your registration has been submitted, you will receive an email confirmation with a link to our campus map.

Hope to see you this spring!

Meet Our Team

Alison Almasian

Class of 1987

Director of College Counseling

Carla Ambrosini

Testing Coordinator

Catherine Ganung

Senior Associate Director of College Counseling

Cheryl Gatling-Galloway

Administrative Assistant, College Counseling

Jon Gottsegen

Associate Director of College Counseling

Max Rosner

Associate Director of College Counseling

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In This Section

"Matching a student with the right college is both an art and a science. We use data to inform our conversations about the initial choices, but we also do a great deal of questioning, getting to know the student…We read every teacher comment, dean letter, and advisor letter…All of this comes together to tell the student’s story, to present the narrative of who they are in a compelling way."

—Alison Almasian ’87, Director of College Counseling

Fast Fact

More than 100 representatives of colleges visit Taft each year, giving students the opportunity to learn about them and enabling the counselors to maintain the rapport and professional understanding that marks Taft's relationship with these colleges. The excellence of our academic program leads to outstanding options for students' post secondary education.