Session 1 Transcript Hi, My Name Is David Montesano. I
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Session 1 Transcript Hi, my name is David Montesano. I'm the founder and an admission strategist here with College Match. Thank you for coming to this first session with us today. We're going to define your college needs and preferences in session number one. Let's go ahead and start. One of the first places to begin the process of looking for the right college is to examine your life's goal--or vision. Now, this is a pretty heady concept for most people. Most people don't know what their purpose in life is and even if you talk to people who are grown up, they might not know. One of the ways to look at this is by viewing four different categories - almost like a multiple-choice test. One is “helping others”. The second one is “making an impact or change in the world”. The third is “being happy”. And the fourth is “finding out who I am and where I am going”. So that's easier to decide when you look at the question from the perspective of these four choices. Take a minute. Think about those choices, if you would. Maybe one of the best ways to identify your life goal is to look backwards. Imagine that you're 60 and you've had a great career. We are now looking at your life’s goal--or the most important thing that you accomplished with your life. I want you to take a minute and think. Analyze what the highest level thing for you to accomplish in your life might be: is it to “help others”, “make an impact or a change in the world”, to have stability, security, control and income” (to be happy), or to “find out who you are and where you're going in life”? Which of those is the highest level for you? I'm sure you want to accomplish all of those things, but which is the highest level that makes living out the rest of the years happy for you? Go ahead and write down your choice. 1 The next thing we're going to do is look at how you're perceived both academically and socially by other people. For example, what do your parents, teachers, and classmates say about you? Do they say that you're a good writer or a great writer or something in between an average writer? I want you to think about that for a minute. Maybe write that down, if you would. Another category to look at is participation. Are you a huge participator in class discussions? Are you okay at it or somewhere in between? Go ahead and write that down, too. These are all very important factors that lead up to choosing the right college for yourself. Another thing to look: are you passive or active? What's your learning style? That's multiple choice. You can just say you're passive or active. It's a binary choice. Another thing important to look at is your critical thinking. Are you a great critical thinker, good critical thinker, or somebody that's somewhere in between those two? Write that down as well. Critical thinking skill is a really important skill for college. The other thing would be leadership. Are you a social leader? And one of the ways to kind of think about that is not just academically and class, through grades, or class participation, but also socially, outside of class. For example, do people come to you and seek your counsel? Are you one of the wise people on campus? Are you a social leader? Think about that. And again, that's kind of a binary choice, too. Probably a “yes” or a “no” would suffice. Another thing to consider is shyness. When you're in high school, there's a lot of people that are shy, but you might want to just kind of think about whether or not you are shy. That is a simple “yes” or “no” as well. But this is really helpful for finding out whether or not you need to overcome that shyness and help you to become a leader. This is something that some colleges are very good at helping with—helping you overcome your shyness and move on towards leadership. I also want you to kind of think about how you're currently perceived. Make sure that you've written down all of those responses, and you can go back in this session and 2 reevaluate some of the questions that we just asked. If you need to go back that's fine. Please think about how you're currently perceived. The next thing I want to talk about are core values. These are your operating principles, a stake in the ground and a reason for getting up in the morning. They don't change over time--they're immutable. What we're looking for are your core principles or your operating principles as a human. I want you to think about things. We usually don't tell each other what our operating principles are, but rather we live them and our personalities reflect our core values. Go ahead and think for a second about what your core values might be—the things that you just don't compromise on. For some people, it could be “hard work” or “honesty”. One of the ways to look at colleges is through the lens of values. And then your life’s goal is really important as well. Putting these together and looking at the skills and experiences that you need to achieve your life’s goal is the next step. If for example, you said, “I want to help other people”, what are the skills and experiences, the training, that you might need? Or, the writing skills or interpersonal skills that you might need to gain before being able to go out into the world to help other people? Or, maybe it's a graduate degree that you need? If going to graduate school you’ll need to get the right undergraduate platform to be able to get into the graduate program that you're interested in. But right now, the way that people look at colleges is based on three factors: cost, location, and prestige. What I'd like to try to get you to do instead is to look at your life’s goal first, then your values, and then identify whether or not the college has the skills and can give you those skills and experiences that you need to achieve your life’s goal. Then, and only then, you'll have a really good college match! Cost, location, and prestige are secondary or tertiary considerations. Does this fit my values, and does it give me the skills and experiences to achieve my life’s goal? So 3 those are really the important things to ask yourself. What we're going to do is look concretely at finding the right match among the sea of colleges in the “college brandscape” that exists out there including, the different types of colleges and universities. Here are just a few examples. You are likely familiar with these colleges because their logos abound everywhere. Basically, when you attend a school, you take on the value of that network. It's a network that you get for life. In terms of finding the right match, what are the right questions to be asking? The first question is to review the different types of colleges that are available. That's really important. Much like opening a door when you have many doors to choose from, there isn't a wrong answer but each path that you take will end up in a slightly different place-- perhaps that's the joy of life! Finding the right school can also be a challenge. Choosing the right colleges requires upfront matching with your core values while making sure that the college gives you the skills and experiences to achieve your life’s goal. As we said earlier, this is most important. The next thing that you want to look is that you're going to be spending time on campus. It's really important to find the right match from the perspective of campus atmosphere. What is the campus like--is it a cozy atmosphere? Is it a big research university with lots of exciting courses. Is it a diverse campus? Is it urban, rural, or suburban? These are all really important factors or questions that we're going to be looking at today. Finding the right match, that's really what it's all about. Let's talk again about the different types of schools. Specifically, there are just six types of colleges out there. I want to go through each of these today. The first type that we're going to talk about is the “liberal arts” college. The reason we're going to talk about this type is that in the early days of the 13 US colonies liberal arts colleges were first created. For example, the Ivy League originally consists of colonial-era liberal arts colleges, like Harvard (New College), College of William and Mary, and Yale (Collegiate School). All the other colleges are essentially a chip off the old block from these colonial colleges. 4 An example here is in California. Pomona College is a liberal arts college with originating links to Harvard and Yale. The way that you know you're visiting a liberal arts college is that it's very small , 1000 to 2000 students.