Welcome
Compass+Crossroad’s approach is to demystify the post-high school process. Leah’s background as a parent, professor, advisor, tutor, and academic coach, along with a certificate as an Independent Educational Consultant (IEC, UC Irvine, 2025), help her to be an effective professional guide on your journey. With an insider view of higher education, Leah specializes in personalized services to support high school students, including planning appropriate coursework, strategic extracurriculars, college visits, list development, essay-writing, application preparation, financial aid, final decisions, and more. Leah has visited dozens of colleges both within Colorado and outside the state. Her expertise will help minimize stress and help students and their families prepare for their next adventure.
Leah offers individual hourly tutoring on all writing projects, including college application essays. Her goal is to support students to find and develop their unique voices.
C+C offers both hourly rates and package deals as well as wrap-around services that can even follow the student through their first year of college with retention coaching. Please reach out for more specifics.
About Leah
Leah Rogin has been teaching and working in higher education for 20+ years, including as an English professor, writing center tutor and coordinator, as well as department chair, concurrent enrollment chair, curriculum advisor, and academic coach.
While helping her own high school student prepare for college, Leah realized how complex and daunting the process can seem, even for a relative insider. This inspired her to pursue her Independent Educational Consultant (IEC) certificate through UC Irvine, which she completed in 2025. Her experience gives her unique insight into exploration, planning, organizing, setting goals, essay writing, college preparation, and college success. Her focus is on supporting students and their families to feel like the college process is an adventure and opportunity to develop tools for the future, rather than a stressful or overwhelming conclusion to high school. After working for several years through nonprofits such as InsideTrack and local tutoring organizations, Leah founded Compass+Crossroads as a college consulting and coaching business focused on the needs of Colorado students. Learn about Leah’s work as an academic coach here: Meet Dani and her Student Success Coach, Leah.
Along with her IEC certificate, Leah earned an MFA in creative writing, an MA in English, and a BA in literature. She also received her AA from CMC in Steamboat and has a special place in her heart for Colorado’s community colleges. In addition, she holds certifications in foundational coaching, success coaching, career coaching, and healing-centered engagement. Combined with her background in teaching, these certifications help her to meet students where they are and support their ability to plan and progress toward where they would like to go. Her college coaching approach encourages parents and students to collaborate transparently through the planning process, as well as to fine-tune application materials in order to open as many doors as possible.
Leah specializes in working with high school students who need coaching around the next phase of their lives, which can include universities, community colleges, gap year, study abroad, internship, trade school, or exploration of other possibilities. Her work with children and teenagers who have learning disabilities has influenced her approach to teaching and coaching, and she enjoys advising both students who want to stay close to home and students who want a more far-flung adventure.
Leah is a member of Higher Education Consultants Association, College Consultants of Colorado, Colorado Authors League, among other professional organizations. She upholds the HECA code of ethics in her college coaching practice. See her CV for more info on her background.
Specifics
Compass+Crossroad’s goal is to demystify the post-high school process and support students and their adults to approach what comes next as an adventure. C+C offers both hourly rates and package deals as well as end-to-end services that can even follow the student through their first year of college with retention coaching. Please reach out for more specifics.
In addition, Leah offers individual hourly tutoring on all writing projects. Her goal is to support students in finding and developing their unique voices.
Need help with just one area of the application process? C+C can design a package around your needs as well.
Services
- Coach students through the process of examining their values and the deeper “why?” of going to college
- Build a college list with an individualized and balanced set of safety, target, and reach colleges
- Support student writing, including organization, brainstorming, development, and editing for both Common Application Essay and Supplemental Essays
- Assist students to develop range of materials, including resumes, portfolios, appropriate social media, etc.
- Organize, prioritize, and track campus visits
- Specialization in community colleges + transfer students
- Explore productive gap years, internships, and alternative pathways
- Understand learning disability support in the college process
- Educate and provide resources on financial aid, including merit aid and scholarships
- Facilitate decision making and preparation
- Continued support with retention coaching
Resources
While there is no substitute for the one-on-one coaching approach offered by Compass+Crossroads, there are so many amazing resources out there to support learners on their path beyond high school. Contact Compass+Crossroads for more resources, thoughtfully compiled for each individual student:
Getting Started:
• 20 Ways Parents Can Support Children Applying to College (collegeessayguy.com) The College Essay Guy is about more than just writing essays. This robust site houses a variety of free resources, including a range of materials for parents.
• Corsava – Account Set Up Site that helps students establish a baseline of what they are looking for in a college through an interactive cardflip that helps to visualize must-haves, negotiables, and deal-breakers.
• Consulting – A Student of Colleges by Steven Antonoff Steven Antonoff, who lives in CO, wrote the book on College Consulting, literally! His site includes a wide range of resources to support learners (and parents!) on the college pathway.
• O*NET Robust career profile site that has a brief (25 minute) free quiz to help students think about their aptitudes and how those might align with career choices. Includes thorough database about careers, including pay, trajectory, and necessary education.
Explore Colleges:
• 2025 Best Colleges in America – Niche Use Niche as a resource for getting a snapshot of induvial colleges, as well as perusing their lists for more information about best-fit colleges. For the best experience, sign up for a free account for tools to track your interests.
• An Interactive Map Of US Universities: See Colleges By State Excellent interactive map to think more about geography of college locations
• campustours.com Provides a range virtual campus tours for colleges around the country.
Essay Writing:
• Announcing the 2025–2026 Common App essay prompts Choose from 7 potential prompts for Common Application essay
• Essays That Worked | Johns Hopkins University Admissions Examples of essays that resulted in admissions offers at Johns Hopkins
Podcast: • The Truth About Expressing Character in Application Essays (20 min) Helpful consideration of the deeper purpose of application essays
Financial Aid:
• Counselors and Mentors Handbook on Federal Student Aid Comprehensive guide to financial aid put out by federal government
• Estimate Your College Costs | ECMC Basic starting point to understand and estimate college costs.
• Save Money On College | WICHE Student Access Programs Explore options from the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, including WUE—the tuition-saving Western Undergraduate Exchange for states in the West.
• How to pay for college in 4 steps Detailed “course” that goes through various aspect of planning for and paying for the financial aspect of college, including great resources on merit scholarships.