Summer Wu is a Graduate Coach with InGenius Prep who brings a genuinely multilingual, cross-cultural perspective to the admissions process. A native Mandarin speaker with advanced Japanese proficiency (JLPT N1) and near-native English fluency (TOEFL 116), she is exceptionally well-positioned to support Chinese and Japanese students navigating the American admissions process, and to help students from any background develop the international awareness and precision of voice that selective colleges look for. She is currently completing an MA in East Asian Studies at Duke University, building on a BA in Asian Studies from Vassar College, where she received the Lilo Stern Writing Prize for academic writing.
Her coaching and tutoring experience is direct and sustained. As a private tutor, she has worked one-on-one with more than 20 Chinese and Japanese high school students, university students, and working professionals in spoken English and IB Economics, developing personalized study plans tailored to each student’s goals and schedule. She has also conducted mock PhD and job interviews for more than ten students, giving her hands-on experience guiding students through high-stakes evaluative conversations. Her approach is grounded in genuine personal familiarity with the experience of navigating American academic institutions as an international student.
Summer’s research background adds real scholarly depth to her mentorship. As a Research Intern in Vassar’s Asian Studies Department, she contributed to an AI-driven conversation simulator based on testimony from a surviving Chinese “comfort woman” — a project now installed at the Nanjing Museum and the USC Shoah Foundation Archive. She conducted research across Chinese, English, and Japanese sources and proofread English translations of classical Chinese texts, reflecting the kind of rigorous trilingual academic work she helps students develop in their own applications. Her senior thesis examined Japanese imperial ideology and agricultural imagination in colonial Southeast Asia during the Co-Prosperity Sphere era. She deepened her East Asian expertise through study abroad at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, and at Mynavi Corporation’s Global Business Strategic Office in Tokyo, where she conducted and analyzed interviews with American college students and career advisors to inform cross-cultural market research.
As a Graduate Coach, Summer specializes in working with students targeting Asian Studies, East Asian languages, sociology, international relations, and humanities programs. She brings particular value to Chinese and Japanese students encountering the American admissions process for the first time, offering mentorship that is academically rigorous and personally attuned to the specific challenges those students face. She is skilled at helping students discover their strengths, develop compelling personal narratives, and approach the application process with clarity and confidence.
