A school application is a family decision. We help you read the rules calmly.

Here's what you're up against.

Picture a Sunday night in December. Your eighth grader has a test date booked, an interview behind you and a January deadline close, and a quiet question under all of it: how do we know this is the right place?

GDS is a city day school with a required admissions test, a family interview and a financial aid application that is separate from the admissions file. Each piece has its own date.

That is why we built this guide. The useful thing is a calm read of what GDS has published, with the dates, requirements and tuition in one place.

We went through this. That's why we built it.

Growing up in Fairfax County, I applied to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and my parents signed me up for a prep program. The instructor had never set foot inside TJ. There were 30 students in a single classroom, almost no feedback on our writing, and templates that had nothing to do with the real application. On test day, we realized we had been preparing for something else.

My friend Vishnu was right there with me, in the same classroom, with the same feeling that families deserved something better. We talked about it all through high school and into college. Vishnu passed away far too young, but his conviction never left me. EduAvenues carries his belief forward: if you are going to do this, do it right, and do it for the families who need it most.

So we built what should have existed.

After UVA's McIntire School of Commerce and five years in financial services, including time at Goldman Sachs and at Evergreen by Alpine Investors in private equity, I walked away because this mattered more. I also served on the Board of Directors of the TJHSST Partnership (Endowment) Fund. This isn't just work for me. It's personal.

Families deserve that same clarity. This site follows GDS's own pages, shows where each fact comes from, and says plainly when something is not published. For help with your own student's situation, start with the EduAvenues high school admissions page.

Today our instructors include graduates of schools like Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, and UVA, and our team has spent more than a decade helping families through selective admissions. Meet the EduAvenues instructors.

And we built it to fit into your family's life. Lessons are online and self-paced. Prep should work around school, sports, music, and family dinners, not replace them.