Pro bono admissions and humanitarian student work.
Dr. McElroy is committed to a “pay it forward” and needs-based philosophy of student support, allocating a percentage of hours and students every admissions cycle to pro bono work for students from lower-currency or conflict-affected countries.
Pro Bono. Pro Results.
Since 2022, this has meant extensive work with Ukrainian high school and university students wishing to study abroad– both those living on refugee visas already in North America and Europe, and those still in Ukraine and hoping to get to safe studies.
In the last three admissions cycles, Dr. McElroy has shepherded Ukrainian pro bono students to:
A full ride scholarship undergraduate acceptance at Yale
Undergraduate admissions seasons with 15+ US university acceptances at various funding rates
Master’s acceptances at London School of Economics, ICL, UCL, and Edinburgh
Chevening Scholarship UK
UGRAD and Erasmus Plus exchange semesters in the US and Poland.
-Better Headline Needed-.
Uniting her connections with Ukraine and Ukraine diaspora networks derived from her parallel journalism career, Dr. McElroy joined the advisory team of the global Ukraine NGO Brave Generation in 2023. There she did individual consulting and gave webinars to Brave Generation students on applying internationally, especially on the master’s level, as well as on how to address life in wartime in application essays.
She is now a senior advisor with the prestigious Ukraine Global Scholars program, once again uniting her networks and careers to work with students in the active conflict zone on their admissions processes abroad.
The Sága Project
In 2025, Dr. McElroy launched The Sága Project: An International Women’s History and Journalism Collective as a website, media archive, oral history database, and soon to be educational portal and video repository.
The program features a developing subset scholarship program called Sága Scholars, which will fund admissions for students from global conflict and poverty-impacted zones on the same pay-it-forward model. In addition to continuing to mentor Ukrainian students, in 2027 Sága Scholars will prioritize offering admissions consulting scholarships to students from Palestine and Lebanon.
The Sága Project
Sága Scholars Program