Good question because it can be confusing to someone who is not used to the U.S. system. You may wonder why you may need someone like us. Some people have thought that we are a marketing agent who gets paid by the universities to recruit students.


All of us attended university in the United States and loved it. We were exposed to academic and research opportunities, creative outlets, and outdoor and sporting activities that were not available in Malaysia. Most importantly, we walked away with the sense of possibility and independent thought. This has had a permanent impact on us to question everything and be the final arbiter of the decisions we make in our lives. Coming back to Malaysia, we saw that the lack of exposure to new ideas and the dampening of critical thought handicap candidates here. So the idea of working with Cartisans is to initiate that culture of independent thought so that you can begin to share with the universities what you really think and care about.

Honestly, there isn’t a preset amount of time because it really depends on what kind of candidate you are going to be. Obviously, if you only have a few months before an application deadline, it may already be too late for this year’s cycle. Even if you find yourself in this predicament, you can come to us for an initial evaluation of your last four years of schooling/career and we can make some recommendations. We have successfully placed the most ambitious candidates in the top 20 schools, often after a gap year (i.e., you apply to university in the following admission cycle). Usually starting work 12 months before the first deadline is comfortable, though we have had candidates who started work as early as 18 months prior, which made the stress more manageable.


Putting an application together is, in many ways, life-changing, especially for Asia-based candidates because of the schooling system that you come from. People assume there’s a formula to success but critical thinking cannot be elicited via a formula. So it does take time to get used to thinking about your application differently, given the fact that most candidates have exams to study for throughout the year, and other family/social/work/school commitments. If you read our alumni stories, most of our candidates had six months or fewer of working with us so their experience was especially stressful and intense. If you feel that you should start early, that is probably a good decision.

Again, it depends on what kind of candidate you are. We have had students who only engage us for admissions counseling or testprep tutoring. For example, if you come to us with good scores in hand, then tutoring is not required and we will work only on the rest of your admissions package. Sometimes the tutoring offered at your school is inadequate for you, and you would like a better score because you are aiming for more competitive universities. On rare occasions, what you have put together would already be competitive enough for the school that you are targeting so we would not recommend that you engage us. So giving us the chance to evaluate what you have prepared is important to help you decide what kind of help you need.