GET TO KNOW US

DONALD M. DUNBAR
(Founder, President and Managing Director)

Mr. Dunbar's career in education spans more than 30 years. After teaching at Brent School in the Philippines and subsequently at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, he served as a guidance counselor at Weston High School in Massachusetts. This background led to a position as College Counselor at Phillips Academy Andover where he worked closely with college admissions officers. In 1984, he founded Dunbar Educational Consultants, which ultimately involved consulting roles at Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland and The Boston Globe.

Mr. Dunbar's experience at Andover involved meeting personally with admissions committees of various colleges to advocate for each Andover applicant. It was a rare opportunity that no longer exists, to experience firsthand how admissions committees reason and make their decisions, and how they differ from each other. He came away from that experience impressed with the integrity of the admissions process and with profound insight into the admissions value system. In subsequent years, he has continued to build on his personal contacts and to teach his students how admissions people think.

Our Other Professional Consultants

Dunbar Educational Consultants is composed of a staff of 13 professionals. Our consultants are drawn not only from academic circles but from a variety of careers, including, for instance, two Wall Street executives, a secondary school Director of Admissions, an M.B.A. career counselor, a federal government educational consultant and a pediatrician.

Our diversity of background is a major strength, we believe, because we all work together on each other's individual cases, sharing a variety of perceptions and theory. We are in continual communication with each other and meet three times annually to discuss trends and changes in our dynamic field. In November, as a group, we go over every one of our students' college lists, thereby offering to each of our applicants the evaluations of 10-12 counselors. In essence, we are a team.

If your son or daughter would value insight into how the admissions people who evaluate them think, we might be an ideal choice. We also critique our students' writing for clarity, substance and the power of their word choice. Accordingly, we enhance their ability to articulate who they are.

Much of our work can be done on the telephone or by e-mail and facsimile, but we do have locations near New York, Boston, Washington, and Los Angeles. Internationally, we are situated in Paris, which makes us accessible in Europe, and we have an office in Hong Kong to accommodate Asian candidates.

One of our chief goals is to take the stress out of the admissions process, principally to be advocates while providing a support system for both our students and parents. Essentially we teach our students how to think on a more mature and intellectual level. For parents, we are often able to support their views from a vantage point palatable to their children.