College Application Assistance –
- Assist in writing college essays that stand out
- Brainstorm essay topics, develop ideas and make revisions
- Provide detailed suggestions for content, vocabulary and correct structure
- Emphasize the student’s own voice and reveal the strength of character
- Discuss intent of essay prompts and how to best answer questions
- Work with student on who to ask, how to best approach their teachers and counselors and what to provide each writer
- Assist students in providing personal information, which helps the teachers and counselors write more effective letters of recommendation
- Help obtain letters from people outside the school environment as potential supplementary recommendation letters
- Common, UC, CSU, Boarding School and Independent School application assistance

College Financial Planning & Award Package Assistance -

- FAFSA Preparation and Submission Assistance
- PFS By NAIS - Financial Aid Application and Parents' Financial Statement submission
- CSS Profile
- Award Package Assistance
- Institutional Scholarship & Grant Assistance
- Parent PLUS Loan Assistance & Appeals
- Verification/Audit Assistance
- Forms Assistance (including Special Income, Extenuating Circumstances, International Student)
Income-based Repayment Assistance

About Me

After her realization that valuable information on how to fund her daughter's college education was not readily available, Gigi sought out to personally demystify the stressful process of obtaining adequate financial aid. In short time, Gigi had diligently researched various sources of financing, and through that daunting experience learned firsthand the tools of the trade.



As a result of her extensive research and the professional guidance of several college financial aid administrators, she gleaned valuable insight that enabled her to develop a proven methodology for obtaining the maximum amount of financial aid possible. All of her hard work came to fruition when her daughter was fortunate to graduate from Loyola Marymount University without any student debt.



Empowered by her success, Gigi founded College Connect 101 in 2010 with the mission of helping families overcome the challenges of college affordability for their children. After a few years of working exclusively with financial aid, Gigi realized that if she could work with students to help them navigate through the rigors of the application process, enabling them to submit their best overall application, they would receive more merit aid which will inevitably help to offset the total cost of tuition. To learn more about the college application process, she joined professional organizations such as the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) and the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) to learn best practices which she uses to continuously place her students into prestigious schools.



Gigi received her Master of Arts in Behavioral Sciences from California State University, Dominguez Hills and enjoys attending college admissions workshops and visiting colleges and universities across the country.

Specialty Areas

Students Enrolled