Expectations

Signing Up

Students must complete a brag sheet and payment must be issued before service is officially booked. The service is not officially booked until the invoice is paid.

Communication

Students are expected to proactively communicate with Angie Bates and/or the coaches when they have questions or concerns and when their work is completed. We do not review any materials from students until they notify us via email that their materials are ready for review.

Although we do follow up with students who have missed deadlines, it is the student’s responsibility to ensure we know they have completed revisions and are ready for review. If a student has not emailed us by the deadline to let us know their work is ready for review, that work will be considered late.

It is also the student’s responsibility to come to us with any questions or concerns about feedback or the process and with any scheduling problems.

Late Work

The writing process is a collaborative effort that requires the full participation of all parties in order to be successful. This demands that everyone (Ms. Bates, the writing coaches, and the student) promptly and clearly communicates progress to one another, fully performs the required tasks, and closely follows the agreed upon schedule.

In recent years, we have encountered two major problems when delivering the service: (1) students who do not follow instructions, including failing to answer our questions and prompts, and refusing to follow our recommendations without providing a clear reason, and (2) students not communicating scheduling issues to us, such as missed deadlines with no notice or disappearing for weeks at a time without explanation.

Unfortunately, these issues have become so pervasive that we now must institute a new service policy: Euphony Coaching reserves the right to cancel the service without granting a refund after the student has three (3) unexcused missed deadlines. A “missed deadline” is defined as incomplete work or work submitted past a given deadline with no prior notice to us.

This new policy is not meant to penalize students for unforeseen circumstances, such as an illness or a family emergency. The policy is meant to enforce accountability so that the students complete their work in a timely fashion, communicate with us ahead of time if they cannot meet an agreed upon deadline, or explain to us why the work cannot be completed as expected.

As long as the student makes a genuine effort to notify us before missing a deadline or can satisfactorily explain to us why the work cannot be completed as expected, we will consider it excused. If there are extenuating or unforeseen circumstances, please contact us as soon as possible and we will try to make accommodations.

Of course we will hold ourselves to the same standards as we hold our students: we will closely adhere to the schedule, provide thorough feedback, and promptly notify the student of any delay or change to the agreed upon schedule.

Calls

Ms. Bates require at least 24-hours notice to schedule phone calls. Phone calls must be requested. After a phone call is requested, we will provide Ms. Bates' current availability. Broadly, phone calls are available between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM Pacific every day except Thursday and Saturday. Calls are scheduled as available on a first come, first serve basis. There is a call limit for all packages of no more than one call per week. If a call is scheduled, and the student fails to attend, that call is still counted toward the weekly limit and the total number of calls.

Exceptions

Exclusive package clients receive priority call scheduling and a repeating weekly slot for calls. 24-hour notice is still required for rescheduling.
Welcome Calls are included for Exclusive, Premium, and Standard package clients. These calls are scheduled after the invoice is paid and mark the official start date of the service.
Premium package clients are limited to 4 calls and Standard package clients to 2 calls.

Schedule and Due Dates

Ms. Bates will make a schedule for the student that lists due dates for every round of revision for the PIQs (and Common App essays if applicable), as well as the dates they can expect to receive feedback. The schedule is set up to normally give students 4-5 days to complete revisions for any draft round, which, where possible, includes a few weekdays and a weekend. We will usually return feedback within 3-4 days.

The student and Ms. Bates reviews the schedule before we get started to ensure there are no conflicts, and she will make adjustments as needed.

We don’t expect students to work on drafts while at COSMOS or other intensive summer programs. Time at these programs will be added to the schedule as break periods if they overlap with service. Students are welcome to submit revisions if they work on them during these programs, but we prefer students not feel pressured to get revisions complete during their time there. Their plates are full enough just with those summer activities.

If the student realizes there will be a conflict in the schedule after the schedule is completed, they should email Ms. Bates as soon as possible to make adjustments. If students do not email us about a conflict before the due dates that are affected by that conflict, the schedule will not be adjusted to accommodate the conflict, and any work turned in after the due date stated on the schedule will be considered late.

The deadline of a particular application does not change our turnaround time. Students who have not completed revisions before the application deadline because of late work will not receive last-minute edits or feedback, and no refund on services will be issued.

Privacy Summary

Student materials are securely stored within a designated Google doc folder. Access to this folder is strictly limited to authorized individuals, including the student, the parents (if granted access with the student's consent), Ms. Bates, and any appointed writing coach responsible for the student's materials. No student materials, including essays, transcripts, questionnaires, writing exercises, or any related content, will be disclosed to any external parties unrelated to Euphony Coaching. As an additional measure, all writing coaches affiliated with Euphony Coaching have undergone a vetting process and have signed comprehensive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) strictly prohibiting them from sharing any materials with external entities or individuals. No student data of any kind will ever be sold to third parties.

The complete privacy policy is available here.