Meet the Counselors

EMILY ALLEN, Director of Counseling Services

Ms. Emily Allen is an outstanding educational leader with broad, international experience in counseling and teaching. She has sent students to all of the most selective universities and colleges in the USA and Europe, including the Ivy League, Oxford, Cambridge and other good selective institutions. She has earned certification from The Harvard Summer Institute on College Admissions, The University of Oxford’s International Guidance Counselors Institute, The UCAS International Advisors Conference (Universities & Colleges Admission Service for the UK) and others. She is a member of CIS (The Council of International Schools), IACAC (The International Association of College Admissions Counselors) and NACAC (The National Association of College Admissions Counselors for the USA). Even more important, she recently experienced the college-application process as a parent: Her daughter graduated from high school in 2017 and is now at Yale University. Ms. Allen loves her counseling work, and she puts her long experience as an English teacher to good use helping students with their application essays. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Florida, an M.A. in English Literature from California State University, and an M.Ed. in International Counseling from Lehigh University. Prior to joining the ACS administration, she served as the Director of College and University Counseling and Director of International Programs at Cape Cod Academy in Massachusetts and before that she served as School Counselor and Director of University & College Counseling and Testing at St. Stephen’s School in Rome, Italy. Her past experience includes working as a College and University Counselor at King’s Academy in Jordan and with School Year Abroad in Beijing, China. She also taught at The American School of Tangier in Morocco and at Pomfret School in Connecticut. In addition to college and university counseling and teaching, she has done social-emotional counseling, volunteered for a crisis hotline, worked in a learning specialist program, taught English literature at small colleges, supervised boarding school dormitories and coached cross-country running.