Options Solutions Educational Consultants: Review and Alternative

What Options Solutions is

Options Solutions was founded in 2003 in West Vancouver by Melinda Giampietro, who remains its president and principal consultant, on the premise that school counsellors were spending more time on mental health and less on career and post-secondary planning. It now has offices in West Vancouver, Vancouver and South Surrey and a team of around twenty: educational consultants, writing coaches, two graduate-school consultants and admin. Giampietro also hosts the Admissions Office Canada podcast, which launched in late 2024.

It is a classic independent educational consultancy, and its services are correspondingly broad:

• Admissions and applications for Canadian, US and UK universities, plus graduate, law and medical school: institution lists, the Common App, SAT and ACT guidance, completing applications and supplements, interview preparation.
• Planning and advising: interest and career assessments (Strong Interest Inventory, AchieveWorks), course planning, extracurricular planning, athletic recruitment.
• English and writing: writing support including application essays, executive-functioning coaching, BC literacy assessment prep, SAT, ACT and SSAT prep.

Delivery is one-to-one, in person or virtual, in one-hour sessions, plus paid group workshops. Their FAQ suggests a Grade 10 or 11 student meet every three to four months and a Grade 12 student monthly, and notes a 48-hour cancellation policy.

What Options Solutions costs

The hourly consulting rate is not published. Sessions are “billed at the consultant’s hourly rate,” paid after each one, and you learn the rate when you enquire. There are no packages listed.

Workshop prices are public on their calendar. For the autumn 2026 season:

So the one interview product they sell with a price on it is a three-hour group workshop for $225. AcceptMe, with unlimited timed on-camera interview practice plus the essay coach and the Story Bank, is C$49 a month, and you cancel the month you submit. A whole application season comes to less than two of those workshops.

What an hour with a consultant can and cannot do for an interview

This is the crux. A good consultant is worth paying for the things that need judgement: which programs to apply to, how to sequence a Grade 11 course load, whether an essay topic is a mistake, what a US application actually wants. Options Solutions has done that for two decades and their site says clients have been admitted to hundreds of institutions. We have no reason to doubt it.

But a video interview is not a judgement problem. It is a performance problem. Sauder gives you 30 seconds to think and 90 seconds to answer. Ivey’s Kira interview is five questions in one sitting with no retakes. The skill being tested is whether you can produce a structured, specific answer under a clock, on camera, on the first take. That skill is built the way any performance skill is built: by doing it, reviewing the recording, and doing it again. Nobody gets there in a three-hour group session or by talking about the interview in a one-hour meeting, however good the advice.

The research is unusually clear on this. In the studies on our research page, an unguided practice run before a recorded video interview changed nothing, tips videos changed nothing, and the group that improved was the one that practiced with an automated interviewer and then read feedback on their own recording. A consultant can tell you what a good answer sounds like. Only reps make yours sound like that.

Options Solutions versus AcceptMe

Where twenty years of judgement beats a tool

A consultant who has sat with families since 2003 can do two things AcceptMe cannot: read your tone and presence in the room, and give you judgement on programs, courses and how to apply. We are honest about both. What a consultant cannot sell is reps, and the skill a timed video interview tests is built by doing it many times with feedback each time. The founder’s account of why we built AcceptMe is the argument in full.

Who should hire Options Solutions

• Families in the Lower Mainland who want an in-person advisor from Grade 10 onward, across course selection, extracurriculars and the school list.
• Anyone whose main need is strategy rather than practice: which schools, which country, how to sequence a complicated application, or a graduate, law or medical school route.
• Anyone who wants a career-assessment conversation before deciding what to apply to at all.

Who should use AcceptMe instead, or as well

• Students whose applications include a video interview, a timed written answer or a supplementary essay, at any school in any country, who know where they are applying and need to get good at the assessment itself.
• Families for whom hourly consulting is out of reach. A month of the coach costs less than one workshop.
• Clients of Options Solutions, or any consultant, who want to arrive at each paid hour having already recorded and reviewed their answers, so the hour goes on judgement rather than on rehearsal.

Start with the Sauder guide if you are in BC: it walks through the two written questions and the 30-second-prep, 90-second-answer video, with fifteen practice questions you can record tonight.