Everything happens in writing. No call with me to schedule.
A person reads every answer, and a person signs the report. Two rounds of questions, then a written report, for students from 9th grade through their second year of college. Your student never talks to a chatbot, and I will tell you exactly where I do use AI.
The process
Round 1
Your student fills out a broad questionnaire. You fill out a separate parent intake. I tell you both, on the forms themselves, exactly who sees what.
What you tell me about money, health or the household never reaches your student. What you say you hope for them does appear in the report, marked clearly as yours, next to what they said they want. That side by side is a large part of the point.
What your student writes reaches you, because the report quotes them to show how I read them, and you get the same copy they do. If your student is 18 or older, whether you get that copy is their decision. Nothing they write reaches you outside the report, unless the law requires it. All of it, including when I would tell you something outside the report, is set out on the privacy and safety page.
Round 2
I read both. Then an AI tool drafts follow-up questions, and I approve each one before I send it. How many depends on what they wrote in Round 1. It is not a one-size-fits-all quiz.
The report
It arrives about 48 hours after your student's Round 2 answers come back. Most of the clock is your student. If the forms come back quickly, 5-7 days. If they sit, 2-3 weeks.
What arrives
Five things, every time.
Interpretation
My read of who your student is and the things they said that led me there.
Career possibilities
Based on the overlap between their interests, talents, grade, test scores etc.
School and program list
With what each one costs (or a note to confirm it at the source) and what it requires. Also the money section, and a dated action plan with a named owner on every item.
A tracker
A spreadsheet built from your report and rebuilt whenever the report changes, so the plan you track is the plan you were given.
A calendar file
Every dated item in the deadline table, importable into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook, with reminders set two weeks and three days ahead of each one.
Every factual claim carries a label
You can see where each figure came from.
- Verified. With the source named and dated on the back page.
- My estimate. Worked out from verified figures, with the arithmetic shown.
- Prediction. With my confidence stated.
- Confirm at the source before acting. Stated by the family, or found but not confirmed against a primary source.
Confidence is my judgment about how much evidence I have. It is not a statistical measure and there is no scoring system behind it. These four labels apply to facts and figures. My read of your student is not labeled, because it is a judgment, and your student can correct it within 30 days as your family's one revision.
My rule is that nothing is written from memory, mine or a machine's.
- Deadlines, dollar figures, score cutoffs and eligibility rules are checked at the source, or they carry the label.
- When I get one wrong, you get a written correction, not a quiet edit.
- Some questions can only be settled by a phone call. I make the ones I can.
- Where a school will only speak to you, I tell you exactly who to call and give you the sentence to say.
Your student never talks to a chatbot.
They fill in a form and I read it. That is the whole of the interaction. There is no version of this where a machine holds a conversation with your teenager, and no automated reply ever reaches them.
I use AI, and here is where.
Your student's answers, and yours, go into an AI tool with names included. Every answer on every form goes in, including what you tell me about money, health and the household. I use it on a business plan, and under those terms the company does not train its models on what I send. It drafts the whole report from your answers. I then rewrite and check every page against what your student actually wrote, and what ends up in your report is what I agree with and put my name to.
It never talks to your student. Every word that reaches them, including the second round of questions, was written or approved and sent by me. It is never the source of a fact: every deadline, dollar figure, score cutoff and eligibility rule is checked by me at the source, or it carries the label. And it never has the last word on who your student is. Your student does.
If I did not trust these tools enough to tell you I use them, you should not trust me to use them on your family.
Your student gets the red pen.
If my interpretation of them is wrong, they say so within 30 days of getting the report and the document changes. That correction is the point of the exercise, not a complaint about it. It counts as your family's one revision.
If it is wrong
What you can hold me to.
Your $500 includes one revision: within 30 days of getting the report, email everything you want changed to bryan@overlap.report. If a fact in your report was wrong when I sent it, or one of the five things listed above is missing, you get a written correction at no cost, and it does not use up your revision. Within the 30 days, I reply within 3 days and send the updated report within 14. After the 30 days, I still fix a wrong fact or a missing item at no cost. A cost or deadline that changes after the date I checked it is not an error in the report.
What I will not do is rewrite the report because you do not like what it says. Your student holds the red pen on my read of them, and if I have read them wrong they say so within the 30 days, as your one revision, and the document changes. But a conclusion you disagree with is not the same as a mistake. If you are hoping to be told a particular answer about your student, this is probably not the thing to buy.
Scope
What this is, and what it is not.
It is a structured interview built on work-values theory, flow research, and reflected appraisal. It is not a validated instrument, it is not a personality test, and it does not use one. What it is built on is written down and I will send it to you.
I do not score your student, rank them against other applicants, or quote you an admission percentage. I do sort the list into safety, target and reach, and I show you the evidence behind each call so you can argue with it.
Overlap does not publish success rates, and I will not quote you one.
It is information for your family to act on, not professional, financial, or legal advice. The call is yours to make and the decision is yours. Where money or a filing is involved, I tell you who the right professional is to ask. It is not a replacement for your student's school counselor, either. Overlap is meant to work alongside one.