Consultant Profile: Madison Searle

Why Work with Madison?

  • Managed admissions for three undergraduate honors programs at the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin and read more than 5,000 applications while also advising students applying to graduate and professional programs
  • Taught writing seminars in two programs at the College of Natural Sciences – Health Science Scholars and Polymathic Scholars – and worked with students on their applications to medical school and other health professional schools

Madison’s Stats

  • BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin
  • MA in English literature from the University of Virginia

What Madison Has to Say

“Virtually all of the premed students I taught were competent writers, but relatively few had learned how to effectively tell their stories and write in their authentic voice. Teaching verbal authenticity and helping students clarify and articulate their own stories in a way that invited, maintained, and rewarded a reader’s attention became my focus. 

One of my favorite maxims is from Kurt Vonnegut: ‘Pity the reader.’ Pity her because reading is hard. It’s particularly hard for admissions reviewers reading a dozen applications at a gulp. As a published writer, graduate application advisor, and former director of an undergraduate honors center at a leading public Ivy, I know what applicants need to accomplish in applications, and how reviewers process and respond to them. I welcome the opportunity to help you tell your story.”

What Else You Should Know about Madison

  • Was book reviews editor for a music magazine for about a decade (and has never met anyone else with that title)
  • Currently working on a book proposal involving the history and future of engineering interventions to protect Galveston, Texas, from hurricanes
  • Has a longtime interest in writing about science, particularly essays and fiction by Americans of the late nineteenth century who saw science and technology as the means toward a utopian society (of whom Mark Twain was one, briefly)