Founding Story
As a child of immigrants, our founder navigated the confusing landscape of college admissions largely on his own to top universities.
He joined a college counseling firm over 10 years ago as an advisor, where he learned about the college admissions landscape. In 2018, he co-founded a new counseling firm, bringing the process entirely online, where it thrived once COVID required remote learning. He wanted to keep it small and intimate, but soon realized that reliable, curated information, education, and guidance was hard to come by.
Now that he has optimized the process and guidance online, his vision with the Applicate™ Platform and services is to build a community of counselors, students and families that seek guidance traversing the process.
About Us
Dave Kim earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Masters of Education from Harvard University. From over a decade of counseling experience and staying connected to hundreds of Admissions Officers nationwide, he brings intimate knowledge of the college admissions process, politics, and dynamics. In addition, his 20-year corporate background in product management and software development edtech, fintech, cybersecurity, and e-Commerce bring a mindset of streamlining, bespoke experiences, and intuitive user interfaces.
The Applicate™ platform is the culmination of 25+ years of product management and development experience, and a decade in the trenches of college admissions counseling. We not only build the Applicate™ platform, we use it ourselves!
Testimonials
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“We grew our counseling business from basic documents and spreadsheets, because there was nothing that did what I needed to do to help me support my students. Even moving to an existing software solution required exorbitant customization and maintenance. Applicate™ has made this process far easier, allowing me to take my own data and insights combined with their data to create truly customized plans and experiences tailored towards each of my students. Applicate™ has made my job far easier and saved me hours of time without sacrificing quality!”
Ann Lee, Ann Lee Consulting
