For many, tutoring is just “more school” after school. But for Jamie Schultz, founder of Jamie The Scholar Private Tutoring, the goal isn’t just to finish the homework—it’s to change the student’s internal narrative from “I can’t” to “I just haven’t yet.”

In a recent interview with Tom O’Hare of Get College Going and Christine Gacharná of College App Help Desk | ESSAY CURE, Jamie shared the philosophy behind their highly personalized approach to student success.

Here are the key takeaways for parents and educators.

1. Meeting Students Where They Are (Literally and Figuratively)

Jamie emphasizes that the traditional “one-size-fits-all” model often fails the students who need help the most. Jamie’s work centers on academic empathy. By building a bridge between a student’s current frustration and their ultimate goals, Jamie creates a safe space where mistakes are viewed as data points rather than failures.

2. The Power of “The Scholarly Pivot”

One of the standout moments from the interview was Jamie’s discussion of the “pivot.” It’s not just about teaching algebra or grammar; it’s about identifying the executive functioning gaps—organization, time management, and self-advocacy—that often masquerade as “not being good at a subject.”

3. Consistency and Connection

Jamie’s work with students isn’t a quick fix. It’s a relationship-based model. The interview highlights how Jamie remains a consistent advocate for students, often acting as the “third-party” support that eases the tension between parents and teens during the high-stress college-prep years.

Why It Matters

In an era of AI and automated learning, Jamie Schultz reminds us that the human element—mentorship, encouragement, and personalized strategy—remains the most effective tool in education. Jamie isn’t just a tutor; she’s a strategist for the modern student.

Want to learn more? Check out Jamie’s full range of services at jamiethescholar.com or reach out to see how this company can help your student find their “Scholarly Pivot.”

At The Student Empowered, academic life coach Mya Anderson helps students and families navigate the transition from high school to college with clarity, confidence, and practical strategy. Because the truth is, college operates like a “second language” — and most students are expected to already speak it.

They don’t.

And when they don’t understand the hidden rules, systems, and expectations, they hesitate to ask questions. They make avoidable mistakes. They lose confidence. Sometimes, they fall behind before they even realize what went wrong.

The Student Empowered exists to change that.

College Is Not High School — And That’s the Point

In high school, success often looks like:

• Complete the assignment

• Check the box

• Follow the instructions

• Get the grade
  

In college, the message shifts dramatically:

• You should know what to do

• You should know when to ask

• You should know how to manage it

• You should figure it out
  

But no one actually teaches students how to “do college.”

Professors don’t explain how course numbers work. Advisors don’t always have time to catch every registration mistake. Syllabi are handed out, but rarely decoded. Campus services exist — but most are passive. If a student doesn’t initiate, no one intervenes until there’s already a problem.

Mya’s role is to step into that gap — proactively.

Starting Before Move-In Day

The Student Empowered ideally begins working with families in the summer before college starts.

Why? Because confidence and clarity don’t happen overnight.

Summer support includes:

Translating the “Language of Higher Education”

Students and parents learn what course codes mean, how academic calendars function, when to meet advisors (there’s actually a sweet spot), and how college systems really work behind the scenes.

Orientation Prep and Recap

Students retain surprisingly little from orientation. Mya meets before and after to create a practical “cheat sheet” so nothing important gets lost.

Family Communication Planning

How often will you talk? What happens when they come home for the first break? How do you support without interrogating? How do they ask for space without shutting you out?

This is not about creating distance. It’s about preserving connection.

Course and Priority Management Foundations

Instead of vague “time management” advice, students learn how to:

• Rank priorities

• Estimate task effort

• Break down syllabi

• Understand academic expectations

• Create realistic work plans
  

College doesn’t reward good intentions. It rewards systems.

First Semester: Real-Time Support

Once classes begin, the coaching becomes personalized.

Syllabus Mastery

Most students treat a syllabus as a list of dates. In reality, it functions more like a contract. Mya teaches students how to extract grading policies, professor expectations, participation rules, and hidden risk points — before they become problems.

Note-Taking and Learning Strategy

No one actually teaches students how to take notes in college.

Students learn:

• Why they’re taking notes

• How to match note-taking style to professor style

• How long they can truly focus (“sweet spot” reading time)

• How to build study stamina

• How to use graded feedback to improve
  

It’s not about working harder. It’s about working smarter.

Help-Seeking Confidence

Office hours can feel intimidating. Sending emails about grades can feel confrontational.

Instead of reacting with, “Can you change my grade?” students learn to ask:
“Can you help me understand what happened?”

That shift alone can change outcomes — and relationships.

Students practice scripts. They prepare for conversations. They walk in with a plan.

When Something Goes Wrong

Even with preparation, college includes bumps.

Maybe your student:

• Registers for the wrong level course

• Misreads expectations on a paper

• Struggles with a roommate

• Loses motivation mid-semester

• Faces a breakup that affects sleep and focus

• Comes home for break and something feels different
  

Mya helps students move from panic to plan.

Instead of spiraling, they ask:

• What happened?

• What are my options?

• What’s my next best move?
  

Families are also prepared for transition moments — like the first fall break, winter reset conversations, or the emotional turbulence that sometimes accompanies young adult relationships.

Everything is normalized. Nothing is shamed.

Why Families Choose The Student Empowered

Many families hire support for college admissions.

Few think about support for college completion.

But college is one of the largest financial investments most families make. Repeating a course can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Extending graduation by even one semester increases tuition, housing, and opportunity costs.

More importantly, confidence costs something too.

The Student Empowered protects both the financial investment and the emotional investment.

Parents often say:

• “I want to enjoy my child’s first year of college.”

• “I don’t want every conversation to feel like an interrogation.”

• “I want someone else to be the strategy voice.”
  

Mya becomes a neutral, knowledgeable partner — not replacing the parent, but preserving the parent-child relationship.

Students don’t see her as a disciplinarian.

Parents don’t feel like they’re hovering.

Everyone feels supported.

What Makes This Different

Mya brings more than 20 years of on-campus higher education experience. She understands advising loads, faculty expectations, campus systems, and institutional blind spots.

She knows where students slip — because she’s seen it happen.

She also knows how capable they truly are when given the right tools.

At its heart, The Student Empowered does one powerful thing:

It normalizes “I didn’t know.”

And then it turns that moment into learning, growth, and momentum.

The Goal

Not perfection.

Not control.

Not pressure.

The goal is this:

A student who knows how to:

• Advocate for themselves

• Recover from setbacks

• Understand academic systems

• Make thoughtful decisions

• Build confidence intentionally

• Stay on track toward graduation

Because getting into college is exciting.

Finishing strong — and growing through the process — is empowering.

Kirkus Reviews called RIGHT My College Application Essay “A straightforward guide that makes use of the author’s extensive experience.”

From the author: Back when reading news on paper was still a thing, I was the editor-in-chief of my campus newspaper. I’m an award winning writer and photographer, my work has appeared everywhere from local newspapers to Time magazine (twice!) Editors call me a “two-for” because it doesn't matter if you hand me a camera or a keyboard, I'm a master communicator. I know this stuff backward and forward, inside-out and upside-down.

I taught English in Tokyo for three years and for six years, I taught undergraduate COMM & English courses. I was promoted to Lead Faculty for Communication and responsible for streamlining the teaching and evaluation of student writing.

It was during my time teaching academic writing to undergraduates that my own two kids were going through the process that you’re going through now. So between my kids, my friends’ kids, and my kids’ friends, I was up to my elbows in college application essays. And what I saw was that they were all making the same mistakes, and it all boiled down to high schoolers not really understanding the backbone of academic writing at the undergraduate level.

And that’s when I had my ah-ha moment and created the instruction that led to this book.

For many students, writing the essay is the most daunting task in the college application process — & for good reason! They’ve spent most of their academic lives in one rhetorical mode, and the college application essay is their first experience wresting an unfamiliar method of communication.

In my experience teaching college essay writing, lots of students admit to spending at LEAST 10 minutes staring at the blank page before starting the assignment. Many admit to spending 30 minutes or more.

The reason students sit paralyzed in front of the blank page is because they aren’t confident using the steps in the process. They think it’s about the writing, so they sit there, staring, wondering how to create something that “sounds good.”

Communicate. Navigate. Punctuate.^© is the trademark of this instruction. We use alliteration to help students learn and remember the process so they can 1) unlearn bad habits developed by getting by in high school and 2) develop new muscle memory around using the steps in the RIGHTING process which incorporates the tools professional writers use plus the three most important components of writing.

Forget about being labeled as a “good writer” or a “bad writer” in high school — it doesn’t matter! This isn’t an application for an MFA in creative non-fiction. This is a college application essay. This is undergraduate academic writing.

Academic writing follows formulas and is evaluated by measurable goals. Once students learn to use the tools, the emphasis returns to where it will need to be in college — absorbing and understanding new and complex concepts and ideas and being able to communicate those ideas back to professors in the form of an academic essay that will be graded and will factor into large portions of their undergraduate grades.

We demystify academic writing and we start with the the college application essay, so while students are getting this college application monkey off their back, they’re leveling-up their writing skills to compete and succeed at an undergraduate level.

A "Workable, Workbook" available for College Planning, Pivotal College Planning Workbook is a simplistic, step-by-step method to plan a student’s college journey with confidence.

Authors Shelley Honeycutt & Tom O’Hare worked in collaboration with some of the top college planners in New England to create this workbook. Although these experts serve students nationally and internationally, they share their methods, techniques, and experience, which can be used by students anywhere. The workbook is filled with organizational charts, activities, questionnaires, and examples. The workbook also offers additional support via its YouTube Channel and other online sources.

Author Tom O’Hare has dedicated many hours to advising students via College App Help Desk and is a vetted and trusted ESSAY CURE partner.

College Vine: All Colleges

The College Admissions Process Podcast

Relevant podcast episodes: Inside the Yale Admissions Office and Admissions Beat from Dartmouth

What they’re looking for: MIT, UVA, CalTech, Georgia Tech

Worried about tuition? Here’s a simplified college cost estimator.

More books that College App Help Desk contributors have found useful for students:

Students and parents should swap “rankings” for the Fiske Guide to Colleges and focus on the details of a particular school that makes it a good fit for a student.

Former New York Times education editor Edward B. Fiske tells stories about schools, including quotes from real students and information you won't find on college websites.

Sending a teenager to a flagship state university for four years of on-campus living costs more than $100,000 in many parts of the United States. Meanwhile, many families of freshmen attending selective private colleges will spend triple—over $300,000. With the same passion, smarts, and humor that infuse his personal finance column, Ron Lieber offers a much-needed roadmap to help families navigate this difficult and often confusing journey.

[Editor’s note: Look — I wrote a book on how to write a college application essay, and I still found this book super engaging and informative!]

On average, an admissions committee takes seconds to decide whether to admit a student. They must sum up the student in one sentence that will tell them if a student is going to be a good fit for their program. This book shows students how to crack the code.

Full disclosure, I haven’t finished reading this book yet, but I attended a webinar to listen to the author speak and I was impressed by her background and motivations for writing this book. As a writer myself, I love it when an author presents a premise and supports it well — even if I don’t agree with the premise!

In this case, I agree with the author’s premise that many of us buy into the idea that we are either innately good at math or we’re not—but that’s not true.

Numeracy is as important as literacy when it comes to opening doors in life.

September 9, 2025: Jeffrey Selingo is no stranger to the college admissions discussion, and I always enjoy listening to what he has to say. In Dream School, Mr. Selingo shifts the spotlight from how colleges pick students to how students can better pick colleges.

Dream School reveals what really matters in a college: strong job prospects after graduation, hands-on learning experiences, and a sense of belonging.

William E. Sedlacek is the nation's leading authority on noncognitive assessment; he challenges the use of the SAT and other standardized tests as the sole assessment tool for college and university admissions.

In Beyond the Big Test, Sedlacek presents a noncognitive assessment method that can be used alongside standardized tests to measure what students know by evaluating what they can do and how they handle a wide range of problems across different contexts.

Educators have used his innovative method to:
• Select a class diverse on dimensions of race, gender, and culture in a practical, legal, and ethical way
• Teach a diverse class employing techniques that reach all students
• Counsel and advise students in ways that consider their culture, race, and gender
• Award financial aid to students with potential who do not necessarily have the highest grades and test scores
• Assess the readiness of an institution to educate and provide services for a diverse student body

V. Peter Pitts, “the Small College guy” has gone web surfing---looking for more cool and unique programs at 333 affordable small colleges.