Expert College Counseling For Your Gifted, 2E, Quirky, or Neurodiverse STEM Child
Are You Raising a STEM-Minded Teen?
If your teen repairs the kitchen sink when the plumber is unavailable, counts the days down to DEF CON, or chatters about how much fun it was doing the PROMYS application’s challenging problem set (all examples of real Lantern students) — you’re raising a STEM-minded student who thinks differently. Maybe they’d rather play a video game than make small talk, or they disappear into a coding project for hours and forget to eat dinner altogether. Their curiosity runs deep, their focus can be intense, and their mind is always in motion.
As a parent, you might watch this brilliance with pride — and sometimes, a little uncertainty. How do you help a student who may be more fluent in calculus than conversation? How do you find a college environment that challenges and supports them? And how do you guide them through an admissions process that also values storytelling and presentation when your student’s strengths lie in raw intellectual power?
Every student deserves a counselor who speaks their language — and helps them thrive.
Are You Looking for a STEM-Minded College Counselor?
That’s where we come in. I’ve spent my life in the world your child inhabits — a world of ideas, systems, logic, and design. I speak their language because it’s my language too. I earned my B.S. in Electrical Engineering (Johns Hopkins University) and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Carnegie Mellon University), then spent fourteen years teaching computer science as a professor at Wellesley College.
I still remember falling in love with it all — playing video games back when most families didn’t even have a personal computer, taking AP Computer Science the first year it was offered at my high school (and showing Mr. Schneider that girls could score a 5 on the AP exam!), and writing my college essay about coding in my head while swimming laps during swim team practice — back when computer science was just beginning to emerge as a college major.
As a child, I proudly wore a T-shirt that said “Half a ship, half a grade” — my dad taught math to naval architecture and marine engineering students. In graduate school, I worked on induction motor controllers and built my own hardware in the machine shop. Today, I beam when I see a Tufts University Electrical and Computer Engineering T-shirt that says “It’s a Four Year Transform” — a playful nod to Fourier Transforms, still one of the coolest concepts I’ve ever learned. I love matrices and numbers, and even all these years after writing my first Hello, world! program (in BASIC!), I still think coding is one of the closest things to magic we’ve got.
It’s not unusual for me to say we’ll ‘iterate on an essay’ or that an idea feels ‘orthogonal’ to another — and my students get it immediately. That shared language has always been part of how I connect with STEM-minded students.
I married an engineer — a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researcher now for over 30 years — and together we raised one. My daughter is now also a researcher at MIT after majoring in biomedical engineering at Tufts and earning her master’s degree in bioinformatics from Harvard Medical School. (In true geek fashion, she dressed up as a cation for Halloween this year!)
We are excited to support your interesting STEM-focused child.
We Speak Geek — The Connection That Changes Everything
That lifelong love of engineering shapes how I work with students — and, by extension, how I’ve built Lantern’s college application process. At Lantern, we meet STEM-minded teens where they are — in the language of systems, logic, and discovery.
My colleague Eliza Yuen and I both spent years advising students in Tufts School of Engineering, and today we are still a team, working closely with engineering applicants at Lantern — students exploring everything from mechanical and biomedical engineering to computer science and AI. Together we’ve guided hundreds of bright, analytically minded undergraduates to and through college. Eliza may not be an engineer by degree, but she’s fluent in the culture — she understands how engineering students think, how curricula are structured, and how to translate technical work into stories that resonate with admissions committees. (In fact, she even advised my own engineering daughter during her undergraduate years at Tufts — and she’s now raising her own bright engineer-in-the-making.)
Together, we bring both deep technical fluency and a collaborative approach to every student we work with, as we describe in College Admissions Counseling at Lantern: A Team-Based Approach to Student Success.
One-on-one STEM-minded counseling helps students make strong college applications.
Why Speaking Geek Builds Trust with STEM Students
For families of gifted STEM students, the college search often feels like entering a world that doesn’t quite speak your child’s language. Many well-meaning counselors and teachers are generalists — they understand course rigor, extracurricular balance, and essay timelines — but they don’t necessarily get students who’d rather discuss the elegance of a recursive function than their last soccer game.
When a counselor is fluent in their world — when we can talk through an algorithmic approach to problem-solving, recognize the spark in a student explaining their data model, or get excited about how a robotics team solved a tricky systems challenge — the conversation shifts completely. Suddenly, they open up. They share what fascinates them, what frustrates them, and where they’re stuck. They talk about all the projects they’re dreaming up (one of our current students has a spreadsheet listing 18!), the classes that light them up — and those that don’t — and the kinds of people who truly feel like their people. Sometimes that connection begins with something as simple as sharing a laugh over a geeky joke — the kind only another engineer would appreciate.
That’s when the real work begins. Once students know they can talk freely, we can dive into the kind of thinking that really excites them — and often, that’s wonderfully complex.
That kind of fluency is what makes our counseling so powerful — and it’s also what makes our STEM college counseling fundamentally different.
What Makes Our STEM College Counseling Different — and Why Does It Matter?
We help students deepen their STEM interests and activities.
How We Help Students Deepen STEM Interests Through Extracurricular Activities and Classes
Once students feel understood, they’re ready to build on that momentum — and that’s where we come in. We help them shape their ideas from the start, whether that means guiding a computer science passion project, designing an independent research experience, or connecting their technical curiosity to a real-world problem.
We also guide high school course planning with a STEM lens — helping students understand not just which classes to take, but why each choice matters. From deciding between AP Physics 1, C, or dual-enrollment options, to selecting advanced math classes like linear algebra or differential equations based on potential engineering majors, to layering in computing electives that connect to their long-term goals, we help them make choices that boost their learning and strengthen their applications.
To explore these topics in more detail, see:
What High School Extracurricular Activities Matter Most on Your College Application?
What High School Classes Should I Take To Get Into The Best College?
As students deepen their STEM interests, the next step is understanding which engineering fields best fit how they think and what excites them most.
We help students understand STEM majors and careers.
How We Help Students Make Sense of Engineering Majors
The engineering landscape is vast, and choosing the right program can feel complicated — even overwhelming at times. Just this week, two advising sessions brought that to life: one student wanted to understand the differences between mechanical and aerospace engineering, and we spent half an hour on the topic. Another puzzled over a major-fit assessment that listed chemical, biomedical, computer, and materials engineering as her top matches — but not electrical engineering — and we unpacked why that made sense for her given her interests and aptitudes.
Our deep experience in engineering education makes these conversations unusually rich. Together, we’ve advised hundreds of students within the Tufts School of Engineering, helping them navigate degree requirements, curriculum options, and research pathways. We both know the inner workings of engineering programs — how curricula are structured, how students think and learn, and how to connect academic pathways with future opportunities. I serve on Tufts’ engineering curriculum committee and maintain the school’s official degree sheets outlining each degree’s requirements — work that keeps me closely connected to the structure and substance of every engineering discipline. Earlier in my career, I developed double-degree programs with MIT and Olin College of Engineering and an engineering certificate program at Olin while at Wellesley College.
Together, these experiences — from designing programs to advising within them — uniquely position us to help high school students explore the many pathways within engineering with confidence and clarity, and to discover the academic environments where they’ll thrive.
For families who want to explore how different engineering majors – and the best colleges for engineering and computer science – align with student strengths and interests, see our resources:
We help students communicate their ideas with clarity, confidence, and impact.
How We Help Students Communicate STEM Stories in Their Essays And Applications
Once students begin to see where their interests fit within the engineering landscape, the next step is helping them communicate that story with confidence. Many of our students come to us with incredible projects, research, or self-driven experiments — but making that work accessible for a non-technical audience can be its own challenge.
That’s where our fluency in engineering and computer science becomes their advantage. We help students translate complex ideas into language that reveals both the rigor and the joy behind their work — the problem they set out to solve, the iteration that taught them something unexpected, the spark that kept them troubleshooting until it finally worked. The result isn’t just a well-written essay; it’s an essay that bridges two worlds: the deeply technical and the broadly human.
One of my favorite examples came from a student who compared math and science to comedy. In her essay, she described her teacher’s math slide explaining a complicated concept as a “demonic summoning done by an artsy, slightly possessed four-year-old in red chalk,” referenced a stuffed polar bear named Lars in relation to polar coordinates, and used Spiderman to explain polyimide microstructure. Most people wouldn’t know how to respond to that essay — but we did. We dissected her metaphors the way you might debug a program, preserving her wit while clarifying her meaning. The final version was still entirely hers — funny, brilliant, and true — but now it also revealed what admissions officers most want to see: how her mind works.
I later shared her essay with a former Tufts Board of Admissions member who used to read for engineering — an engineer herself. She loved it, calling the student “an interesting student for sure,” adding, “this student’s brain works a bit differently — and it’s pretty cool.”
Even unconventional topics, like video games, can become powerful ways to show curiosity and creativity when handled thoughtfully — as we explain in Can You Write a College Essay About Video Games? How to Do It Right (With Examples). Students applying to engineering or computer science will also find tailored guidance in How to Write a Standout College Essay for Engineering Applications and How to Write a Standout College Essay for Computer Science (CS) Applications.
What is a Deep-Fit™ College Search? Why Does it Give STEM Applicants an Edge?
Deep-Fit goes far beyond rankings or acceptance rates. It’s about helping students identify the environments where they’ll thrive — technically, intellectually, and personally — and, in the process, present themselves as the kind of applicants colleges most want to admit.
We use our insider knowledge of engineering programs and decades of experience on college campuses supporting students to guide families through these nuances, helping each student find the balance of challenge, support, and community that will let them thrive.
Deep-Fit as a Competitive Advantage in STEM Admissions
But Deep-Fit isn’t just about finding the right environment — it’s also a powerful admissions advantage. In a world where computer science and engineering programs are among the most competitive majors, a Deep-Fit application helps a student stand out in a sea of similarly high-achieving peers. It demonstrates that they know themselves, understand the school, and can articulate how they’ll contribute and grow within that specific community — qualities every admissions officer looks for when deciding between strong applicants.
When students build this kind of clarity, their confidence and applications both transform. They understand not only where they’ll fit, but why — and that insight shines through. They see themselves thriving on a college’s campus — and they help admissions officers see it too.
Learn more in For CS and Engineering Students: The Deep-Fit Admissions Advantage and How a Deep-Fit™ College Search Builds Student Confidence and Agency for a Bright Future.
Depth and focus are strengths — we help students tell that story authentically.
Do Exceptionally Bright, Twice-Exceptional (2E), or Neurodiverse STEM Students Need Specialized College Counseling?
Some of the brightest — and often twice-exceptional (2E) — STEM students think and experience the world a little differently. At Lantern, we see that as a strength, not a challenge. Focus, depth, and intensity aren’t obstacles to overcome; they’re signals of curiosity and drive that, when understood and supported, become the foundation for lifelong success — and can make them unforgettable in the applicant pool when their stories are told with insight and authenticity.
Learn more in Yes, Your Child Can Find a College Home Where They Will Thrive.
A Partner Who Gets Them — and Helps Them Shine
We speak geek — and that changes everything. Working with Lantern means partnering with counselors who understand both the intellect that drives your child and the hopes you hold for them. We combine deep engineering literacy with empathy and mentorship, guiding each student to uncover where they’ll thrive and how to tell that story with confidence.
When families choose Lantern, they’re not just finding a college counselor — they’re finding partners who truly get their student and know how to help them shine.
