Frances Kao has over 9 years of educational and professional experience and has been consulting for the undergraduate and graduate admissions processes since 2001. Frances earned her Master’s in Education at Columbia University and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Juris Doctor degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Prior to founding Frances Kao Educational Consulting, Frances had been advising full-time on the application processes for MBA, Master’s and JD/LLM law programs. Frances’ foray into the admissions consulting world began in 2001, when she worked as an admissions advisor at Kaplan Test Prep in New York City primarily focusing on helping high school students and parents clarify the critical requirements in the college admissions process. She also advised U.S. college students and post-graduates on the process of applying to graduate schools and provided specific advice and tips on preparing and taking the relevant graduate school admissions examinations, including the GMAT (business school), GRE (general graduate school) and MCAT (medical school).
Following graduation from law school, Frances spent five years practicing corporate law in Taiwan, first at Jones Day and subsequently at Baker & McKenzie. Although trained to be a strong and logical writer as a lawyer, Frances nevertheless felt restrained in her endeavors at constructing “original” or “creative” legal memos and contracts while abiding by statutes or stiff codes of regulations. After returning to educational consulting full-time again in 2011, Frances has finally reconnected with her core passion within and achieved immeasurable satisfaction and contentment at work and elsewhere. The re-discovered fulfillment serves as never-ending drive and energy to help people methodically outline and validate their visions/ aspirations and attain their goals in life, ultimately becoming happier individuals with meaningful pursuits in the process.
In developing Frances Kao Educational Consulting, Frances has drawn upon her previous professional work and her own experiences with and lessons learned from applying to universities and graduate schools in the U.S. Frances’ goal is to help and inspire students to building and crafting interesting life stories in their application essays that would most appeal to the admissions committees of leading universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, thereby realizing their dreams of attending a top-notch educational institution overseas.