What Happens in an Executive Function Coaching Session
An executive function coaching session at College Success Plan is a weekly one-on-one video meeting between your student and the same dedicated coach. Every session is tailored to your student, and every session is shaped by a sequence that College Success Plan's coaches have refined since 2009: a short social check-in, a follow-up on every commitment, a review of courses and grades in the learning management system, and a settled plan for the coming week. Your student leaves each session with a written plan for the week ahead.
Most of a College Success Plan session goes to your student's classes, taken one at a time. The coach reads each assignment's rubric with the student and rewrites it as a checklist, then opens the grades in the learning management system and figures out, class by class, what result is still within reach. The coach and student clear small obstacles on the spot rather than leaving them as homework: they compose the awkward email to a professor together, book the writing center slot then and there, and untangle the submission page that made no sense on Sunday night.
A College Success Plan coach builds nine core skills:
Planning,
Organization,
Task Initiation,
Time Management,
Prioritization,
Self-Regulation,
Self-Monitoring,
Self-Advocacy, and
Cognitive Flexibility.
College Success Plan's College Success Coaching page states the method behind each skill plainly: "Our pillars of accountability, structure, and consistency get the job done." All three depend on the same meeting recurring with the same person, which is why coaching sessions run on a consistent weekly schedule rather than being booked only when trouble arises.
If you are reading this in the middle of a bad semester, or a week after a diagnosis, the situation is more ordinary than it feels, and nothing surprises the College Success Plan team. Students arrive at College Success Plan having done well in high school, then hit a wall in college, where nobody structures the week for them. In most cases, the underlying issue has nothing to do with a student's intelligence or effort: the structure high school supplied is gone, and nothing taught the skills to replace it. The executive function program at Rush University Medical Center states that mastery of these skills predicts school success better than IQ does. Those skills can be taught, and College Success Plan has been teaching them to thousands of college students since 2009.
Is Executive Function Coaching Enough for a Student With an ADHD Diagnosis?
Yes, for the part of the problem coaching addresses, and College Success Plan regularly coaches students with an ADHD diagnosis. Our coaches routinely work alongside the psychologist who evaluates, the physician who prescribes, and the disability services office that grants accommodations, and coaching replaces none of the three. Coaching addresses the ‘how’ of living with a diagnosis: the planning, starting, and self-monitoring that CHADD identifies as executive function skills impaired by ADHD.
The work is specific to a diagnosed student because the coach teaches each skill inside your student's actual coursework. The coach fits study methods to the student. A coach may have a student read the assigned chapter before opening the guided notes, then return to the chapter a second time. Or boil a week of lectures and reading down to a single page, on the theory that the material appearing in both is what the exam will ask about. Or go to the professor with two direct questions: how would you study for this course, and will the test be multiple choice or essay? The answers change how your student prepares. And the coach asks your student to size up their own standing before opening the grades: self-monitoring belongs to the nine skills, and estimating a participation grade before seeing it is how a student practices it.
Task initiation is a dedicated part of every session, because the inability to start derails students just as often as work that is too hard. A student who can plan a week and still cannot start on a Tuesday night is not lazy; that is a skill gap, and much of the coaching goes to closing it. Understood.org counts starting tasks among the executive function skills, and says students who struggle with those skills work just as hard as everyone else. A term paper stops being "the paper" and becomes a named first move with its own date: a topic chosen by Friday, an outline standing by Monday. When a big meet or a trip is coming, the plan front-loads the week so the work is done before your student leaves, and a full day off stays on the calendar on purpose.
As College Success Plan's FAQ states, "the majority of our coaches have master's level or higher degrees in the educational field," and many "are also accredited through the Rush NeuroBehavioral Executive Function Center (part of the Rush University Medical Center)." Elizabeth Pyle, who founded the practice, studied at the Rush NeuroBehavioral Center and has worked with students for over thirty years; our coaches list their backgrounds individually. College Success Plan coaches both college students and high school students preparing for college.
The coach keeps pointing your student toward the help already waiting on campus: the writing center, office hours, accessibility services, the math lab. Colleges provide these support services, yet they often go unused. Coaching aims to help students navigate their own campus effectively, without the coach acting as a go-between. If accommodations are not yet in place, that is the more urgent job, and setting up accommodations runs on its own timetable. Is College Success Plan For You? sets out whether coaching fits your student at all.
How the Session Changes With the Student and the Week
The shape of a College Success Plan session remains consistent, even as the specific focus shifts from week to week. A student in good standing uses the coach as a project manager and a sounding board for plans. A student in academic trouble gets more accountability, and more of the session goes to grades. An anxious student gets smaller steps, and confidence is rebuilt on finished work. The weekly plan bends around the life your student actually has, so a championship meet or a family trip reshapes the schedule instead of breaking it.
Support stretches when a week demands it. A coach will read a paper draft before the deadline, listen to a practice run of a presentation, or track down the campus tutoring schedule and send it over. The coach also builds tools the student keeps using: a week's schedule blocked out in color, every due date from every syllabus gathered into one calendar, a running tracker of grades.
We encourage starting in the first weeks of a term rather than after the first bad grade: a plan is easiest to build in the first month, when nothing has been lost yet. Starting at midterms or later still works, and College Success Plan takes on that situation regularly; the plan then begins as a recovery plan rather than a head start.
What the Coach Does Between Sessions
A College Success Plan session ends with the coach taking on tasks too, part of what separates a coaching engagement from a standing appointment. After the call, the coach sends the agreed plan in writing, confirms the next meeting, and follows up by email with where grades stand. In the days between, the coach stays within reach, texting a reminder on the day a task was supposed to begin, reading a draft before it is due, and adding a short mid-week session when the work piles up rather than waiting for the next full one.
Nothing agreed to in a prior session quietly disappears: the coach gets proof that commitments actually happened and the next session begins with a review: did the writing center visit happen, did the department ever reply, was the paper started on schedule? Because College Success Plan’s coaches track every commitment, your student gains an accountability partner focused entirely on making that week's plan a reality.
The coach's language carries part of this too. The week comes up in the first person plural, a joint project rather than an inspection. The doing stays with your student; the problem has stopped being theirs alone.
That follow-up is the part many parents came for. Someone else is now asking whether the paper has been started. You are not checking the learning management system at eleven at night, and your question about a chemistry grade is not turning a Sunday call into an argument. That job belongs to the coach now, and you go back to being a parent without losing visibility.
In College Success Plan's end-of-term parent questionnaires, 81% of responding parents (109 of 134) describe relief from the monitoring role, reduced stress, or an improved relationship. Parents put it in their own words:
"I didn't have to nag him about what he wasn't or was doing. I could be his mom." Parent of a College Success Plan student
"It's saved our relationship with our son. We no longer feel the need to hound him or check up on him. We rely on weekly updates from his coach." Parent of a College Success Plan student at Montana State University
"It took us out of the nagging, worrying role and allowed us to just check in on grades and the college experience ... as we felt our role should be." Parent of a College Success Plan student at Lynn University
What an Executive Function Coach Does Not Do
Executive function coaching at College Success Plan is not tutoring, therapy, admissions consulting, or a replacement for disability accommodations, and each of those has a better place to go.
Executive function coaching is not subject tutoring. A coach makes sure the problem set is started on Tuesday; a tutor teaches the chemistry inside it. College Success Plan offers that separately ("Ask us about our subject matter tutoring and study hall offerings"), and campus tutoring centers, study labs, and office hours do the same job free.
Executive function coaching is not therapy, counseling, or treatment. A clinician treats anxiety and depression, and colleges run counseling centers for exactly that. A coach can help a student book the appointment and keep it. A coach does not replace it. We are always happy to offer recommendations and we have a network of referrals we can provide.
Executive function coaching is not college admissions consulting. No essays, no school selection, no application strategy. "College coach" is used for that work too, and this is not that.
Executive function coaching is not a substitute for accommodations or disability services. Accommodations are an entitlement your student registers for with the college, and they exist whether or not there is a coach. As College Success Plan's post on the accommodations deadline puts it, "colleges aren't required to guarantee success or replicate a high school IEP; they're required to provide equal access."
College Success Plan's FAQ answers more questions of this kind.
What Your Student Has to Bring to an Executive Function Coaching Session
College Success Plan asks three things of your student: (1) keep the weekly session, (2) attend class, and (3) commit to the plan developed with the coach, even when obstacles arise. No coach can supply any of these three things on the student's behalf.
Your student does not have to be enthusiastic. Many students first sit down with an executive function coach because a parent asked them to, and reluctance is workable ground.
What It Looks Like When Coaching Is Not Working
Sometimes coaching does not land, and the first month usually says so before the grades do. The signs are behavioral: sessions repeatedly missed or moved, a plan untouched week after week rather than partly done, text reminders ignored, a student who will not share the syllabus or the learning management system, a student who is agreeable in session and disengaged the rest of the week. A grade that has not moved in the first weeks is not a signal on its own; a student who has stopped showing up is.
A student not attending class at all, in an untreated mental health crisis, or carrying an undiagnosed learning difference has a problem sitting underneath executive function, and weekly planning may not resolve it. The National Institute of Mental Health says ADHD often occurs alongside anxiety, depression, and learning disorders, which can make those conditions harder to diagnose and treat. In these situations, the next step typically involves the counseling center, a clinician, or a psychoeducational evaluation. Coaching belongs after that, or in tandem with that step, rather than in place of it.
How to Start With College Success Plan
The first step is a free consultation with the College Success Plan team. You describe what their academic experiences have looked like, we tell you whether coaching would be a strong fit and what we would start with, and you decide from there. There is no obligation.
If you think your student would benefit from executive function coaching, schedule a free consultation, or read more about College Success Coaching first.