We caught up with Lucy Stonehill as she was about to leave for Asia to market her business that consults students on admission to the US’s top 200 universities. She tells us how she uses technology and pro-bono work to set her apart from her competitors.
The PIE: Tell me about what Stonehill does?
LS: We assist international students with the process of applying to American universities and colleges. I was born and raised between London and New York but I decided to go to the US for university and found the admission process for me was incredibly foreign and the landscape of existing colleges and universities so vast and overwhelming. When I got to university and spoke with other international students, I realised that a lot of them had ended up there slightly by chance.
“We are an unusual company and I wanted to be an unusual company from the beginning”
As a company, we work to eliminate confusion from the application process, to add strategic and editorial value to students’ applications, and to find the right educational home for each individual student. We also offer assistance with everything from standardised testing guidance and school selection through to itinerary and interview preparation, essay formation and draft-review.
The PIE: You launched in April 2012. Now 18 months in, what’s been the biggest challenge so far?
LS: Establishing relationships that we know will guarantee us a consistent stream of clients from year to year. It’s one thing to have one relationship this year which leads to a number of students but I think knowing that those relationships will continue and we can consistently estimate by how many students we can grow each year is a challenge. A lot relies on that in terms of how many people I can hire. What I can afford to spend on outreach, universities fairs and marketing.
The PIE: What makes you stand out from other education consultants?
LS: We are an unusual company and I wanted to be an unusual company from the beginning. Firstly, we integrate technology into our services to reach a wider audience, but also to streamline the consulting process online because it’s currently very disjointed and confusing. You have to visit one site to register for the SATS, another site to log into your common application, and various other sites to acquire information about individual school application requirements, etc. We have built a platform that weaves together all these separate parts for our clients.
“Last year, we worked with students from Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, and India and helped them secure scholarships at a range of universities including Cornell and Yale”
And secondly, we work with select schools and non-profits to find the brightest students from lower-income backgrounds and we offer our services to these students (50% of our total intake) entirely free of charge. Last year, we worked with students from Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, and India and helped them secure scholarships at a range of universities including Cornell and Yale.
The PIE: What inspired you to include pro-bono consultancy in your business model?
LS: When I started I spent a lot of time with very bright students from underrepresented areas of the world and I realised that for them, getting a scholarship to one of the top tier schools in the US is really going to change the trajectory of their lives. And that had a huge impact. So I decided to create a two-for-one consulting model whereby for every paying client we advise, we take on a non-paying client free of charge.
The PIE: So you mostly work to get students admitted to top-level schools?
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LS: We’re very open to students who are less ambitious academically but thus far we’ve just attracted quite a top tier group of students and I think we’re really trying to focus on developing a specialty in the top 200 schools in the US.
The PIE: How does technology enhance your services?
LS: We have a web platform that students log into online and receive access to hundreds of resources, including rankings information, practice SATs and expert generated application tips. Then there’s a school matching algorithm we’ve designed based on criteria to find the most appropriate list of schools for students. And then there’s a common application builder which generates a mock common app for you so that the process of entering that information into the actual application is very simple.
“In the top 10 markets for students heading to the US, the average growth rate among those markets is 16%. And a large portion of those students will come from international schools”
The PIE: What does your client-base look like?
LS: We’re targeting the top ten feeder nations of students heading to the US for undergraduate and graduate programmes. So it’s Canada, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the UK. Last year most of my clients were UK-based. This year I have two Pakistani students, a few Indian students, a range of UK students, a Swiss student, and several Shanghai and Beijing-based students. It’s getting to be a lot more diverse.
The PIE: How are you promoting yourself in foreign markets?
LS: We have relationships with international schools in India, Korea and China. There are several schools in the UK that I do presentations at to educate the students about what the landscape of universities looks like today from a higher education perspective. Beyond that we have a couple of advertising deals set up with sites that tend to provide informational services as well as supplementary services for international students looking to study abroad.
The PIE: International schools are becoming a huge market for student recruitment, do you see that growing as a market for you?
LS: Absolutely, we did some market research that essentially estimated the size of our markets and their growth potential over the next 10 years. In the top 10 markets we’re looking at, so that’s the top 10 markets for students heading to the US, the average growth rate among those markets is 16%. And a large portion of those students will come from international schools.
The PIE: Any plans to expand to universities outside of the US?
“I’d like to really engage some companies to help us grow the pro-bono wing of the company”
LS: We have a few people on our consulting staff to help students with their personal statement to edit and format their essays for other universities but to be honest, the US application process is really where the majority of our expertise lies and it’s also so much more complex and comprehensive than the other application processes to universities. So I think we’re pretty happy in that space.
The PIE: What are your future plans?
LS: I’d like to really engage some companies to help us grow the pro-bono wing of the company, because I’d like to be able to spend more time on it and go to those countries to visit the schools that we’re working with to establish a more official formula. But, what feeds the growth of that part of the business is the growth of the paying client wing because we use that portion of the business to subsidise the pro-bono kids. So I think with our new technology platform and our lower price point, Asia and certain subsections of Europe will be huge markets for us. I think trying to establish a foothold in India and Korea and China will instrumental to our growth.
