Robert Rivas MACollege Advisor

Rob has fifteen years experience in college admission, having begun his career at Williams College shortly after graduation. At Williams, he oversaw recruitment efforts across the country, specifically in Chicago and the Midwest, across the southwest, and New York City, where he was a popular panelist at high school “College Nights” due to his candor and humor.

While at Williams, Rob oversaw the admission office’s publication suite and served as the liaison to the financial aid office and on the Board of Directors of NECBAC, a consortium of college counselors from private schools on the East Coast.

Rob left Williams to explore admission practices and work at nearby Bennington College and shortly thereafter was recruited to be the director of diversity recruitment for the office of admission at Swarthmore College. At Swarthmore, Robert also served as a member of the admission office’s senior leadership team and spearheaded the overhaul of the office’s reader rating scale and application reading processes.

Rob has been a private admission counselor since moving to Denver in 2015. His philosophy in working with students is to offer tailored, practical advice based on his years of experience, and, more importantly, to help students reflect on their place in the world, their motivations, and their passions. Helping students realize that curricular choices, grades, and test scores are necessary to “get them to the table” in admission committees, but not enough to make them a compelling applicant, is integral. Rob believes that, at the “table,” all things are equal, and making it to that stage is the easy part; standing out among a sea of similar curricular choices, grades, and test scores is the real challenge.

Following his advice, Rob’s clients have received and accepted admission to the Ivies, elite liberal arts colleges (including, but not limited to, Williams, Middlebury, Swarthmore and Amherst), and a host of other highly-selective institutions.