No fixed agenda. Bring the lab you want into, the offer you do not understand, the resume nobody is answering, the college list, or just the sense that you are spending your time on the wrong things.
If $250 is out of reach, write to me first and say so. I hold a few reduced places every cycle and asking is all it takes.
You have a specific thing in front of you and nobody good to ask about it. The people around you are either in exactly your position — so their advice is a guess dressed up as experience — or so far past it that they have forgotten what the first step looked like.
So you do what everyone does. You read threads where confident strangers disagree. You collect general advice that is true of everyone and therefore useful to no one. And the actual decision, the one with a date on it, sits there.
Most of these problems are not hard. They are just specific, and general advice cannot reach them. An hour and a half with someone who has been through the same gate and will look at your actual materials usually settles it.
That is what this is. One conversation, your real situation, and something written down at the end.
Nothing generic. We work on what you brought, on screen, together.
Whatever is relevant — the offer letter, the draft, the paper, the rejection email, the list of labs, the resume. I read all of it beforehand so you are not spending paid time briefing me.
You often arrive with three problems and one of them matters most. We find which, and we say out loud what a good outcome of the next 75 minutes looks like, so we can tell at the end whether we got there.
Not advice about the problem — the problem. We rewrite the email while you watch, read the offer line by line, pull the project scope down to something finishable, or cut the school list in half. You do the typing.
What happens first, what happens if that works, what happens if it does not. Most plans die because step one was never small enough. We make step one small enough.
A one-page note: what we decided, the actual text of anything we drafted, the order of operations, and the two or three things most likely to go wrong along with what to do about them.
Things you can act on, not things you have to remember.
The email, the outline, the scope, the shortlist — drafted with you and ready to use, not a fill-in-the-blank template.
What to do, in what order, this week and next. Short enough that you will actually reread it.
Where you actually stand, including the parts nobody has been willing to tell you plainly.
What the likely responses are and what each one means you should do, so the next step is not another decision from scratch.
If you finish the session without a concrete plan you would actually act on, say so within seven days and I refund you in full. No form and no argument about it.
What I won't promise is the outcome itself — a place in a lab, an offer, an acceptance, a specific number. Those are decided by people I don't control. Anyone guaranteeing you one is guaranteeing something that isn't theirs to give. What I will promise is that the parts within your control will be done properly, and that you'll know why each one is the way it is.
Anything in the territory: getting into a lab, starting or finishing a paper, choosing a venue, an internship search that is not converting, a resume, an interview you have coming, an offer you cannot read, a college list, an essay draft, or the question of what to do with the next two years. If it is outside what I know, I will say so in the first ten minutes and refund you rather than fill ninety minutes.
Yes, and I will speak with a parent before we meet. They do not need to be in the session.
Whatever is relevant to the thing you are bringing, sent when you book. The more concrete it is, the more of the ninety minutes goes on your problem instead of on context.
Yes, people do. If you find yourself booking a third, one of the packages is cheaper for the same amount of my time — I will tell you that rather than let you keep buying singles.
Up to 24 hours before, at no cost. Inside 24 hours or a no-show, the session is used. Same courtesy in reverse: if I have to move it, the session is free.
Completely. Offer numbers, drafts, school lists, company names — none of it goes anywhere, and I will not use your situation as an anonymised example without asking you first.
$250. Ninety minutes on your real problem, a written plan within 24 hours, and a full refund if you leave without one.
Pay and book — $250Deadline inside 48 hours? Email rpande.1729@gmail.com with "urgent" in the subject and I will fit you in where I can.