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Reimagine your application experience.

Structured and Personalized Admission Support for Top Universities in US, UK, and Elsewhere

We beat the odds.

Since 2014, Essai has worked with hundreds of students with its end-to-end intensive counselling program.
In that time, our students have earned:

200+

Ivy League* Offers

520+

Top 20* Offers

  • End-To-End Counselling
  • One-on-One Mentoring
  • Application Essays
Book a Consultation

Why Essai?

We put you at the centre of your application.

Proven Success
Rate

With a 92% acceptance rate into Tier 1-3 universities globally, our personalized approach ensures you’re on the right path to your dream school.

Tailored Application
Strategy

We create customized application strategies that highlight your strengths, making your profile stand out to top universities.

Expert Guidance at Every Step

Our experienced mentors provide comprehensive support, from profile building to interview preparation, ensuring you are fully prepared for every stage of the application process.
Our Results

Our students have earned 1300+ Global Select* offers!

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29
15 (1)
7 (3)
16 (1)
6 (1)
21
20 (2)
13
8
11
2 (2)
26
30
10
27
14 (3)
18
24 (1)
12 (1)
4 (7)
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5 (4)
17
3 (2)
1 (6)
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19 (2)
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What we do

At Essai, we specialise in end to end profile building and college application support for the best colleges and universities in the US and the UK.

Profile Building

At Essai, we guide and support standout profiles by understanding individual strengths, goals, and preferences. We ensure continuous academic progress, facilitate service delivery through a global network, and provide prompt, positive support. Our team is with you every step of the way throughout the entire process.

Application Support

Our Application Support program helps students create personal, memorable, and bold applications. We craft high-quality essays, manage 3+ application portals, offer rapid response to student and parent input, and ensure proactive deadline management. We provide end-to-end support for up to 25 applications or schools.

College Knowledge

Offering up to 20 personalized reports and plans. Students gain exclusive access to Ivy-correlated competitions, summer schools, and research opportunities. Additionally, we provide real successful Ivy League essays, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, and Imperial College personal statements, and elite summer school application materials.

What we do

Nicholas Henderson

Our Director, Nicholas Henderson, graduated from Harvard in 2006. He has since taught at Shrewsbury School (UK), authored the Pearson’s Guide to the SAT (2010), and co-founded Essai Education in 2015. Nick splits his time between Delhi, London, and Washington DC.

Our hardworking, creative, and passionate team members are motivated by Essai’s ambition to transform the education experience.

Strategic Profile Building

At Essai, our aim is to guide, develop and support student efforts to help them create profiles that stand out. Using our proprietary resources and strategic partnerships, we are equipped to provide both advisory and operational support in relation to extracurricular activities, internships, academic research and social service leadership.

Explore and understand possible intended majors

Craft and engage with internships, summer schools, research projects, and more

Coordinate and manage the standardised testing requirements

Ideate and drive an impact-driven social initiative

Supervise and support scholastic progress

Comprehensive Application Support

Our Application Support program assists with every stage of the application process: developing a college list that suits your needs and interests, providing support and structure for your application essays, assisting in the effective completion of your application forms, and clarifying any doubts you might have along the way!

Longlist and shortlist optimal college list

Identify and engage school stakeholders

Synthesize and communicate key profile building elements

Ideate and develop creative application essays

Understand and manage portals and submit timely applications

We work with students all over the world.

Experience the Essai Difference

Essai

  • Comprehensive Admissions Guidance
  • One-on-One Expert Mentoring
  • Exclusive School Insights

Others

  • Limited or Generic Admissions Support
  • No Specialized Test Preparation
  • Minimal School Insights

Take the first step towards your dream university!

Book a consultation

Follow our Journey

A perfect score does not guarantee admission to a top university. Neither does a perfect GPA. If it did, the process would be a lot simpler than it is. What top universities are actually evaluating is harder to quantify: who is this person, what do they care about, and what will they do with the education we give them? Grades and test scores tell part of that story. They signal academic capability. But they say very little about intellectual curiosity, initiative, or the kind of person a student is becoming. That is where extracurricular activity comes in, and not as decoration. The sequence matters. A well-chosen summer programme shows early subject interest. A research project shows the ability to investigate and think independently. A genuine social initiative shows that a student can identify a problem and take action. Together, these build a profile with texture and direction. The mistake most students make is treating activities as a checklist. The goal is not volume. It is a coherent sequence of choices that, when read alongside the academics and the essays, tells one compelling story. At Essai, profile building is where we begin, because by the time applications are due, the story should already be written. 🔗 Link in bio to start building yours. #ProfileBuilding #CollegeAdmissions #IvyLeague #USAdmissions #UKAdmissions #ExtracurricularActivities #SummerPrograms #StudentResearch #EssaiEducation #HighSchoolStudents #CollegeApplications #ApplicationSupport
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A perfect score does not guarantee admission to a top university. Neither does a perfect...

Case competitions exist at the university level. They are rare at school level. The ones built around real, unreleased business cases are rarer still. The Essai Casebook is not a simulation. It is not a hypothetical. You receive an actual business situation and defend a real decision in writing, the way analysts do. If you are in grades 9 to 12 and want something on your application that shows how you think, not just what you have done, this is worth your time. Free entry. Worldwide. Submissions open on September 1st! Submit here: https://essai.in/the-essai-casebook/ Deadline: September 30th, 2026, 11:59 p.m. IST #EssaiCasebook #CaseCompetition #CollegeApplications #ProfileBuilding #EssaiEducation
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Case competitions exist at the university level. They are rare at school level. The ones...

Most students pick their safety school by acceptance rate and then feel bad about it. That's backwards. A safety school should be one you'd genuinely be happy to attend, not a backup you're quietly hoping to reject. Because here's the thing: in a bad year, your safety becomes your school. If the answer to "would I actually be excited to go here?" is no, it's not a safety, it's a placeholder, and you've built a list that only works if the reaches come through. Rebuild it. Find schools where the academics match your direction, the location suits you, the culture fits, and the odds are genuinely in your favour. There are hundreds of excellent universities beyond the twenty everyone talks about, and some of them are quietly better fits for specific students than the reach schools they're chasing. A list you'd be happy with at every level is the only kind worth submitting. Link in bio. #CollegeList #SafetySchool #CollegeAdmissions #CollegeSearch #USAdmissions #EssaiEducation
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Most students pick their safety school by acceptance rate and then feel bad about it....

Three industries. Three real dilemmas. One decision each. Electric Vehicles: A promised sub-$25,000 EV never shipped. Engineering resources went elsewhere. Cheaper rivals are gaining ground. Do you build the affordable model and risk your margins, or hold the premium line and bet on autonomy? Digital Media: A major streaming platform cut royalties on tracks under 1,000 annual streams. Independent artists are calling it a lockout. The platform calls it fraud filtering. Do you roll back the policy or hold firm? Luxury Fashion: A fashion house showed sandals closely resembling a GI-protected regional craft design, without credit. Backlash followed. Do you apologise and negotiate, quietly drop it, or defend it as independent work? Pick your track. Submissions open on September 1st! Submit here: https://essai.in/the-essai-casebook/ #EssaiCasebook #CaseCompetition #EssaiEducation #StudentCompetition #BusinessStrategy
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Three industries. Three real dilemmas. One decision each.

Electric Vehicles: A promised sub-$25,000 EV never...

Most competitions want the right answer. The Essai Casebook gives you a situation where there isn't one. You get a real case document, six to eight pages of context, numbers, and constraints, built around an actual business decision. Your job is to read the situation, weigh the options, and defend a recommendation in writing. No team. No presentation. Just your reasoning. Free to enter. Open to students in grades 9 to 12, worldwide. Submissions open on September 1st! Submit here: https://essai.in/the-essai-casebook/ Deadline: September 30th, 2026, 11:59 p.m. IST #EssaiCasebook #CaseCompetition #StudentCompetition #BusinessCase #CollegeApplications #EssaiEducation
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Most competitions want the right answer. The Essai Casebook gives you a situation where there...

Three of the most competitive academic opportunities available to high school students. One consistent pattern. Across John Locke, Yale Young Global Scholars, and the S.T. Yau Science Award, Essai students consistently outperform the global average, not by a small margin. This is what a structured, long-term approach to academic enrichment looks like in practice. DM us to learn more. #EssaiEducation #AcademicEnrichment #JohnLockeEssayPrize #STYauAward #YaleYoungGlobalScholars #ProfileBuilding #IvyLeaguePrep #OxbridgeAdmissions #CollegeCounselling #HighSchoolStudents
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Three of the most competitive academic opportunities available to high school students. One consistent pattern....

This year, the headlines were full of reasons to hesitate. Geopolitical uncertainty, shifting visa landscapes, questions about America's openness to international students. The noise was loud. Our families chose not to listen. What surprised us most about this year's results was not the numbers, though the numbers were exceptional. It was the conviction. Students and parents who saw the uncertainty clearly and decided to pursue global education anyway, because they understood something the headlines often miss: American universities remain among the most transformative opportunities available to a young person anywhere in the world. The results confirmed it. Nearly half of Essai's students this year secured admission to a top-tier university. Uncertainty is a reason to plan better, not to step back. The students who committed early, built purposeful profiles, and applied with clarity and confidence are now heading to some of the finest institutions on the planet. And as Nick said: we're just getting started. 🔗 Link in bio to book a consultation. #CollegeAdmissions #USAdmissions #IvyLeague #GlobalEducation #StudyAbroad #StudyInUSA #EssaiEducation #HighSchoolStudents #CollegeApplications #ProfileBuilding #ApplicationSupport #AdmissionsResults
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This year, the headlines were full of reasons to hesitate. Geopolitical uncertainty, shifting visa landscapes,...

The S.T. Yau High School Science Award doesn't give you a question to answer. It asks you to find one. Students must identify an original research gap, design a methodology, produce a full academic paper, and defend it in front of expert judges from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Global medal rates are among the lowest of any high school competition in the world. 0.03% overall. 0.003% gold in Mathematics. 42.6% of Essai students cleared Round 1 in 2026. Round 1 clearance, not medals, not final awards. We're specific because this competition demands it, and so do we. For students targeting STEM at Oxbridge, the Ivy League, or MIT, few credentials signal genuine research capability as clearly as this. A transcript shows grades. Round 1 of ST Yau shows that a student can think, research, and produce original work at an undergraduate level in high school. DM us to learn how we prepare students for the S.T. Yau High School Science Award. #STYauAward #YauScienceAward #EssaiEducation #STEMEducation #HighSchoolResearch #AcademicEnrichment #IvyLeaguePrep #OxbridgeAdmissions #ProfileBuilding #CollegeCounselling
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The S.T. Yau High School Science Award doesn't give you a question to answer. It...

The last two weeks of summer break are the most valuable days on your calendar, because once school starts, your time gets sliced into homework, tests, and everything else. Three jobs before that happens. Seniors: get your Common App essay to a real draft, not an idea. A finished bad draft in August beats a perfect concept in October, because supplementals are coming and they multiply fast. Grade 11 students: close out whatever you started this summer. An unfinished research paper or half-built project helps nobody; two focused weeks can convert it into something that actually goes on your application. Grades 9 and 10: pick one thing you tried this summer and decide whether it's worth going deeper. Depth is built in exactly these small commitments. And everyone: sort the boring admin now, transcripts, test registrations, recommender shortlists, so September belongs to schoolwork instead of paperwork. Two weeks of unstructured time won't come back until next summer. Spend them on purpose. Need help deciding what to prioritise? Link in bio. #SummerBreak #BackToSchool #CollegeAdmissions #CommonApp #ProfileBuilding #EssaiEducation
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The last two weeks of summer break are the most valuable days on your calendar,...

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