About Amy

Amy McVeigh is the founder of Smart College Selection, and a Smart College Selection Consultant.

Prior to becoming a college selection consultant, Amy spent more than two decades running a business performance consulting firm predominantly in the sales, marketing, and training areas. She also held corporate positions in finance, public relations, sales, marketing, and communication at Fortune 100 companies.

Now she guides teenagers and their parents through the college decision-making process. It’s a different kind of consulting, but her clients benefit from her informed and structured approach.

The best part? She has teenagers in her world daily, dreaming and scheming.

Amy is a problem solver, an organizer, a writer, a learner, an author, a mom, and a huge fan of teenagers. After helping her own children and many friends through the admissions process, Amy realized that what had been an avocation needed to become her vocation. For years, she’d been an informal consultant to countless young people – they’d talk about hopes and fears, careers and colleges, and plans and contingencies. And she loved it.

When Amy started Smart in 2014, she had no idea the tremendous demand there would be for full-time, comprehensive, informed, and caring guidance through the college selection process. Because of this, she has carefully and slowly brought on additional consultants to serve more families.

Amy earned college counseling certificate from UCLA, an MBA from Harvard, and a degree in public relations from Boston University. Amy frequently attends conferences and webinars and has visited over 170 colleges to continue to build her knowledge in this ever changing field.

Amy is one of the few members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) in Indiana and Michigan named as a Professional Member and she also serves on IECA’s Board of Directors and runs the association’s Education & Training Committee. She is a member of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC)’s Michigan chapter (MACAC).

Amy was honored to be asked to write the U.S. chapter for NACAC's Guide to International University Admission and serve as one of its overall editors. She has presented at national conferences for IECA and the Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA) sharing her expertise on topics from college essay writing to working collaboratively with high school counselors. Amy also works with the University of California – Berkeley, developing its college counseling curriculum and teaching courses in college counseling through its Extension program. She also serves on Berkeley’s Advisory Board for its college counseling program.

Amy lives in Frankfort, Michigan, and travels frequently to meet with clients.  Her clients are mostly in Michigan, though she works very effectively with students long-distance via all the technologies.

Amy has two adult daughters who bring great joy, new recipes, and fun adventures into her world.  In her free time, she runs, hikes, sails, and travels.

“In working with Smart College Selection we had a trusted, caring, informed consultant who knew the ins and outs of what initially felt like a complicated difficult process. Through their well developed, logical steps, my senior became very informed of what she really wanted her college experience to be, found schools that matched it and really took ownership of her future. 

Amy provided a sounding board, reality check, and calm voice to my daughter (and to us); it made what could have been a difficult, anxiety inducing time period into something enjoyable.”