GUIDANCELearn how to build the future you want and then we help you to get it with a strong sense of achievement along the way.
GuidanceTest PrepTutoring
Use HPES + LIZARD and Get the Future You WantThirty years of success in a wide variety of education areas enables HUNTER Programs + LIZARD Education to get fantastic results.
Gain an advantage from our unique ability to evaluate and then enable students that comes from three decades of extensive experience in guidance counseling, tutoring, test prep, classroom teaching, education consulting, curriculum development, and other areas of education, both domestic and international.
To this day, Dr. Rachel Winston of LIZARD Education continuously updates and advanced her skills and knowledge through her university teaching position, and her ongoing quest for knowledge as a student at Ivy League universities.
Raymond Hunter of HUNTER Programs Education Services continuously updates and advances his skills and knowledge through his education consulting at schools, math research and consulting in industry, development of outreach programs run by students, and by evolution of his company in anticipation of student future needs.
HPES has three decades of extremely successful experience in tutoring and test prep. LIZARD has three decades of truly excellent experience in guidance. Although HPES and LIZARD remain separate business entities keeping our expertise at our high levels, it makes sense that in order for students to receive maximum benefit, we work together as one.
Your HPES + LIZARD Guidance Experience DetailsHere are some essential details about how our guidance experience works and what we can provide.
- Creating an Education Plan
Our 5-session planning program (Assessment, Information, Resume, Roadmap, Goal Setting) begins with a scan of possibilities.
Our 2-hour initial consultation provides you with an assessment and valuable information, relative to your unique background.
“Working” Resume : In the next two sessions, we outline your experiences/interests and fill in missing puzzle pieces.
Goals: In the last two sessions, we create a road map with modifiable targets and a “what-by-when” outline.
- Choosing Major + Career
Choosing a major is not like picking a career out of a hat. We laugh, yet literally so many let circumstance dictate their futures.
Aptitude and interests play a huge part in where you start and the career you choose. There is a “LIZARD journey” in between.
“Our 5-session program includes career, interest, and aptitude surveys to give you a better idea of where your puzzle piece might fit into this world of possibilities.
You finish with possibilities that inform your decisions.
- Applications and Admission
Whether it is the Common Application, Coalition Application, UC/CSU Applications or those that are unique to the school like MIT and Georgetown, we help students throughout the process.
We evaluate your credentials and give you suggestions for how to improve your application based upon your unique interests, talents, and goals.
We offer free general workshops, $40 UC Admissions Workshops, and personalized and individualized services to help you get accepted.
- College Entrance Essays
We help students step back to evaluate essay topics and ways to present their unique selves.
We work one-on-one with students to consider and develop each essay and supplement to reflect the authentic student, athlete, visionary, entrepreneur, researcher, scientist, artist, tinkerer, techno-geek, or social justice advocate.
Essays, essays, essays – Our specialty is helping you better articulate what you want to communicate. We also help students script and create student’s video essays.
- Financial Aid
We help you get financial aid. Our $40 evening workshops discuss FAFSA, the CSS Profile, and scholarships. Each has detailed requirements and nuances specific to a family’s unique financial profile.
Deadlines, tax returns, residence, 529 plans, divorce/remarriage, and other circumstances come into play.
For individual expert sessions, contact us for an appointment.
Counter to intuition, private colleges end up costing less than public colleges.
- Extracurriculars
Slideroom, ZeeMee, websites, and the Coalition App are three options for showcasing talent. Each school’s access and usage is different. You do not have to apply in fine art to take advantage of some of these sites.
While portfolio requirements and audition/interviews differ, the challenge is managing and organizing schedules as dates overlap.
We personally assist you with organization, portfolio presentation, and video essays.
- Process and Cost
While many students make appointments their junior year to enter undergraduate or graduate school, some start in middle school to ensure they are on a true and guided path throughout their journey.
Whether you are applying to summer college programs, academic contests, research opportunities, internships, MBA/Psy.D programs, or Law/Medical school, we are dedicated to you.
We charge $150/hour for 2-hour sessions and also have discounted packages for bulk hours paid in advance.
- International Students
Half of our clients are Chinese or Mexican. We visit both countries often and are experts in international admissions.
Our extensive knowledge of visa, contacts, forms, and financial requirements has made us a leader in helping students get accepted to boarding schools, homestays, college, and graduate schools.
With more than three decades of expertise, our students are accepted to top universities as well as artistic/specialized programs.
- Develop Leadership Skills
HPES and LIZARD work together to help plug you into exciting opportunities outside of school, including truly unique leadership roles in which you have a hand in creating. .
Students describe these opportunities as open-source organizations run by students in arenas that go way beyond a school clubs.
Students can participate in many of the opportunities created by others, or created by themselves, and joined by other students.
Students are measured by what is achieved, and not by how much time is put in.
- Resumes + Interview Prep
How do you explain your journey, commitments, and vision in a hard copy or digital resume or personal or remote interview?
We answer all of your questions and thoroughly lay out your unique background, activities, and interests and then create your individually designed resume. Your activities may change, so we can make modifications or send you the file.
We also help set up, research, and practice for your college/graduate school interviews.
- Scholarship Apps
We search for and help you apply to scholarships.
Three-fourths of our students are offered more than $50,000 to attend college and one fourth are offered over $80,000. Each year, some of our students receive a full scholarship.
We help students with the financial aid/scholarship application planning and process. We also have a $40 financial aid/scholarship workshop.
- Athletic Admissions
We help you approach coaches, provide information, communicate with, and apply to colleges for athletic admissions.
The timeline is key to creating an organized approach to athletic admissions.
We personally assist with NCAA Clearinghouse forms, videos, resumes, and admissions. We also help students track, communicate, and follow through with each school.
LIZARD Education
We believe that all people, rich or poor, can go as far in life as their talents and persistence will take them.
Knowledgeable/Resourceful/Empowering Coaching – We are driven by the idea that to find joy, you must unleash your unlimited dreams, envision what you want to create, and fiercely and methodically work to achieve your goals. Our counseling team is led by Dr. Rachel Winston, California’s quintessential student, educator, and counselor.
Dr. Rachel Winston
HPES + LIZARD Education enables great student growth when used alone, and leads to greater success when combined with HPES tutoring and test prep.
- GUIDANCE
DESIGN YOUR FUTURE AND THEN TAKE IT
Use HPES + LIZARD guidance to get the most out of the work you have done to get to where you are now, and let us help you get to where you want to go next and in the years to come.
We can help you get the most out of what you have, we can help you figure out what you can still do to get you the rest of the way to your dream, or we can help avoid passing by opportunities you never knew were available to you.
- TUTORING + TEST PREP
EXCELLENT TUTORS AND HIGHER SCORES
Learn more from your class subject material at school, and dramatically reduce standardized test prep time.
Our tutors do both, tutoring and standardized
test prep. Learn your classroom material better and retain it, while building your core of knowledge and problem-solving skills. Your HPES tutor also emphasizes classroom material that is highly likely to show up on your future standardized exams.When standardized test prep begins, your tutor knows strengths, weaknesses, what you have and what you have not learned in the classroom.
- TUTORING + TEST PREP + GUIDANCE
THE HPES GROWTH STACK FOR MAXIMUM GROWTH
Learn more, better grades, less test prep time, and get the most out of your efforts.
Our extracurricular activity planning and development goes way beyond just good. We creatively build leadership skills and teach how to build a network of contacts that will help you to succeed. It’s planned in unison with how to best present yourself in your college applications.
HPES tutoring, test prep, and extracurricular development put you in the best position possible when applying to colleges.
We get to know you well through tutoring and test prep, which means the college application process requires less time and effort, but yields better results.