Agnia Grigas

Dr. Agnia Grigas is one of the most recognised voices in elite U.S. college admissions. As founder of College Admissions Secrets, she has spent nearly two decades guiding students into the country's most selective universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, and the rest of the Top 50. Her clients have collectively earned more than one million dollars in merit scholarships and financial aid.

Dr. Grigas's authority is rooted in her own admissions story. Born in Lithuania and immigrating to the United States at age ten, she earned her BA cum laude from Columbia University in Economics and Political Science, followed by an MPhil from St Antony's College, Oxford, and a doctorate from Brasenose College, Oxford, in International Relations. She has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Beyond admissions, Dr. Grigas is a globally recognised author and policy expert. Her three previous books — Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire by Yale University Press, The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas by Harvard University Press, and The Politics of Energy and Memory between the Baltic States and Russia by Routledge — have earned international acclaim, and she serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Today she writes and speaks about what she has learned from inside the admissions room: that getting into a dream school is not a test of perfection, but a strategy that any prepared family can master. A proud mum of three, she lives with her husband and children in Los Angeles, California.