Profile

Carsten Bösel is the Founder & Director of CONSULT US and a nationally recognized expert on US college admissions. With 20 years of professional experience guiding students through the application process at colleges and universities in the United States, he serves as a premier resource for US-bound students and their families as well as for high school and university administrators throughout Germany and beyond.

Carsten started his career in 1999 as an Education USA advisor at Amerika Haus Berlin, a US State Department-affiliated overseas educational advising center operated by the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE).  Two years later, he was coordinating the advising activities at all four of CIEE’s Education USA centers in Germany. In addition, Carsten completed US-Based Training, a State Department-sponsored professional development program hosted by the College Board in Washington D.C.

In 2006, he  started his own practice as one of Germany’s first independent educational consultants. Working one-on-one with high school students and their parents, Carsten helps his clients build strong college lists, prepare for standardized testing, create effective personal essays, navigate the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE, and keep abreast of deadlines and important milestones. He also works with teachers at German public high schools to help them navigate the Common Application and write letters of recommendation in a way that US admission officers will find helpful. All of his advising work is guided by NACAC’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practices.

In addition to his individualized counseling, Carsten has also served as a study abroad counselor, writer and presenter for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), one of the world’s most important funding organizations for the international exchange of students and researchers.

Besides his work as a consultant, Carsten is also a  writer and English-German translator. His publications include numerous print and online articles, as well as two 180-page hardcopy volumes on studying in the US and Canada, both published by the DAAD, with several thousand copies sold to date. As a translator, he has specialized in education and social science research, translating scholarly articles and grant proposals for German universities, research institutions and education foundations, including the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) and the German Children and Youth Foundation (DKJS).

Carsten received his M.A. in American Studies, Political Science, and Communications from Freie Universität Berlin. In 1997-98, he was awarded a full scholarship to spend one academic year at Duke University, Durham, NC as a graduate student in English. His professional memberships include the International Association for College Admission Counseling (International ACAC) and the German Federal Association of Interpreters and Translators (BDÜ). Moreover, Carsten is an authorized translator for the Berlin courts and notaries for the English language.