Ana Barros is a Harvard University alumna and an MBA candidate at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her academic and professional career has focused on student development, narrative strategy, and guiding young people through high-stakes, high-pressure environments with clarity and confidence.

Before founding her independent practice, Ana spent eight years at Harvard in academic and student-facing roles. She served for three years as a Resident Tutor, a faculty-appointed advising position where she lived in a residential community of more than 500 undergraduates. In this role, she worked closely with high-achieving students on academic decisions, personal challenges, professional trajectories, and the early stages of their intellectual formation.

 This experience shaped the foundation of her advising work:


students produce their strongest writing and clearest thinking when they feel understood as whole people.

Ana brings a structured, intentional approach to the college application process. She specializes in helping students clarify their academic and intellectual direction, identify meaningful themes and stories from their experiences, develop strong Personal Statements and supplemental essays, articulate their ideas with confidence and coherence, and navigate the admissions landscape without panic or urgency.

Her expertise lies in strategic positioning, understanding how different components of an application fit together to present a unified, authentic portrayal of a student’s strengths, values, and development.

To preserve depth and individualized attention, Ana intentionally works with only a small number of students each admissions cycle. Her students have been admitted to universities such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Northwestern, and other highly selective institutions.

Ana’s practice is built on professionalism, clarity, and integrity. 
Her goal is simple:


to provide students with thoughtful, high-quality guidance that helps them understand themselves as thinkers, learners, and emerging adults and to present their strongest, most coherent applications.