Matthew T. Riley, PhD
Director and Senior Admissions Consultant
With over 24 years of experience guiding students through the college admissions process, Dr. Riley has helped countless students earn admissions to the world's highest-ranked universities including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT, Berkeley, Oxford, UChicago, Princeton, Columbia, and a multitude of other top-50 universities.
Dr. Riley has a comprehensive understanding of the admissions process and how students can leverage their unique qualities and personal stories to stand out from the crowd. From helping students find their voice in their essays, to helping students strategically position themselves through their application materials, Dr. Riley helps students create compelling applications that highlight each student's unique story in eye-catching ways.
Dr. Riley taught at Yale University prior to founding Ivy Academic Prep and he is a member of PNACAC, SACC, and the Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA).
Sean Massa
Admissions Consultant
As an Admissions Consultant with over 10 years of experience, Sean helps students find ways to stand out to admissions officers in a way that highlights their passions: from budding scientists and aerospace engineers, to aspiring politicians and human rights advocates, to young entrepreneurs and economists. He has a passion for helping students tell their authentic stories and share the most significant moments of growth in their essays.
Sean's students have earned acceptances to some of the nation's most prestigious universities: Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, John Hopkins, Duke, Brown, Cornell, Notre Dame, Berkeley, Emory, UMich, Carnegie Mellon, and more.
As a Double Ivy League graduate from UPenn and Yale, Sean loves to share his insights and help students and families navigate the admissions process so they can make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime college admissions experience!
Abigail Butcher
Admissions Consultant
With years of experience in both undergraduate and graduate admissions, Abigail is passionate about helping students achieve their academic ambitions. Her background in admissions and scholarship coordination has provided her with valuable insight into what decision committees value, gained from her tenure at Bard College, St. John's College, and the University of Georgia.
Abigail has assisted numerous students in honing all aspects of their application, understanding the intricacies of selective college admissions, and preparing for college interviews. Her college advising approach is centered on introspective self-authorship and fit - identifying colleges where a student's values and priorities align with the institution's mission and culture.
Abigail has over a decade of experience helping gifted students gain admission to highly competitive R1 institutions such as John Hopkins, Stanford, and MIT.
Nancy Ciabattari
Admissions Consultant
With many years of experience inspiring students to craft their best stories for their college essays and achieve exceptional verbal scores on standardized tests, Nancy thrives on helping students attain their academic goals.
Her students have gained admission to the most competitive colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Penn, Princeton, UChicago, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, and many others. Nancy has two master’s degrees from Brown and an undergraduate degree from Boston College. She has taught subjects ranging from creative writing and English to languages and literature at Brown and other colleges.
Nancy brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the mentoring of her students and enjoys empowering them to be lifelong learners and advocates for themselves.
Noah Grossman
Admissions Consultant
What do you want to say? When students arrive with what other people want to hear, my job is to put them back in the driver’s seat. In years of guiding students towards admissions success at schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, NYU,and Johns Hopkins, my mission is to help students find what’s true to them. College admissions can make us over-emphasize where we want to be. But in order to write a compelling essay, we must know where we are now.
Forfeiting a legacy at both MIT & Harvard to pursue storytelling, I studied animation at California Institute of the Arts, and interned for companies like StudioCanal (The Hunger Games, Paddington, The Bling Ring) and Valhalla Entertainment (The Terminator, The Walking Dead) before pursuing indie filmmaking. And yet, my story has come full circle. I'm still dedicated to asking young people to define what matters most to them, to help them move towards the most meaningful path.
Miles Hewitt
Admissions Consultant
Miles is a storyteller through and through. Since 2018, when he graduated cum laude from Harvard after completing an award-winning collection of poems for his senior thesis, he has guided scores of students to admissions at their dream universities — including all Ivy League colleges, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, and Top 20 ranked BS/MD medical programs.
In the course of a lifetime of writing, Miles has come to understand the drafting and editing process intimately. He thrills to helping his mentees find outside-the-box, authentic narratives that reflect their deepest selves, and feels strongly that the college application process is much more than a means to an end; with the right guidance, it can be a transformative experience of self-reflection and empowerment.
