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 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 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. The thing that liberal arts colleges well is conference-style classes, very few lectures, and no teaching assistants! You get a lot of direct interaction with the professors. And, you're likely to live on campus. At a liberal arts college, more than 70 percent of the students live on campus. You will call your professors by their first names, “Derek” and “Jim”, rather than “Professor”. You might babysit a professor’s kids. You might have dinner at their home. There's a lot of interaction around the conference table--it's a Socratic method of discussion, a dialog for four years. At liberal arts colleges you will have to write a lot and critically express your ideas pretty much all the time. Liberal arts is the purest kind of education and so you really don't get applied majors.

In other words, it's more likely that a liberal arts college would offer economics instead of a finance major. It's the pure liberal art form. You might study physics instead of engineering. That's not to say that liberal arts colleges don't offer engineering. There are few that do. But more typically, liberal arts colleges offer 3/2 programs with engineering schools offering two degrees—one from the liberal arts college and another degree at an engineering school. We will talk more about this later. But for now, let's talk about the next group or category of schools – “research” universities.

Research universities are famous. The reason for their fame is that they pretty much do all the graduate-level research in the country, and in turn that fuels our economy. Research once focused on nuclear weapons research--now it's more peace related topics such as biotech. The University of California, U of Michigan, and Stanford are research universities. Some research universities may be medium size. Stanford, for example, has 6000 undergraduates while University of California at Berkeley has more than 20,000--that's an order of magnitude difference in terms of the undergraduate level and smaller size student bodies play a significant role in getting more personal attention from professors. Medium size research universities where undergraduates can get

5 personal attention do exist but the big thing about the research universities is graduate level research and as a result they tend to be larger in size. The great news is that you can easily name research universities--even those outside of the country. These schools are highly recognizable, especially by employers. In fact, employers come to these schools looking for people who've majored in very specific things like accounting, finance, and engineering. Research universities offer a huge variety of courses, which makes them very unique. They also tend to have fairly diverse student bodies. The state or public research universities tend to be the largest populations where about 30 percent living on campus in dorms and about 70 percent commuting in or living in close proximity. At medium size private research universities like Stanford or Harvard the majority of undergraduates live on campus in the dorms.

“Hybrid” universities are another category that we invented the sit between research universities where graduate students are the focus and liberal arts colleges that cater mainly to undergraduates. Hybrids offer a great mix of pre-professionalism and liberal arts with personal attention from professors. Santa Clara University, for example, offers finance and engineering majors and Jesuit-influenced liberal arts where students will be required to focus on improving their writing, and critical thinking, and public speaking skills—not to the extent of liberal arts colleges but to a greater extent than larger universities with 20,000 plus undergraduates. Hybrid universities are balanced and tend to be medium-size—in the range of 4000 to 8,000 undergraduate students--somewhere in between the 10,000 to 20,000 size research universities and the much smaller, 1,000 to 2,000, size liberal arts colleges.

Hybrids are a trade-off: you're not going to get the intensity of the liberal arts college’s undergraduate research and direct work with professors in discussion classes, but you will get a bit--and you will also have access to pre-professional majors like business and engineering. Still, with hybrids they may not always have the brand name or breadth of classes and extreme level of graduate research that you'll find at a research university. Still, in many ways hybrid universities offer the best of all worlds.

6 The next category of college are the teachers’ colleges or comprehensives. Almost all states have teachers colleges. California, for example, has what is referred to as the California State University (CSU) system which contains all of the state’s teachers’ colleges. Teachers’ colleges were founded to teach K-12 teachers, kindergarten through 12th grade. Teachers attended these colleges before going out to teach in public schools. Teachers’ colleges do a good job of teaching public school teachers. Some teachers’ colleges have grown and morphed into what we term “comprehensive” universities. San Diego State and Arizona State, once teachers colleges have both added engineering, business, and other pre-professional programs, diversifying away from a teacher education base. In fact, a good number of teachers’ colleges across the country have become comprehensive universities--you may wish to explore this college category further if any of these study areas interest you.

The next major category is “polytechnic” universities. Polytechnic universities are fascinating because they are really unique. The way that you can tell you're on campus at a polytechnic is that you might see cows on campus. Historically, polytechnics are agriculture and engineering universities given a land grant when they were established. Polytechnics exist in abundance in the US. Besides the cows being present, the way that you also can recognize a polytechnic is by their land holdings--they tend to also possess a lot of land. The word “polytechic” itself means many technologies. Attending a polytechnic you have the option to study or major in a wide variety of pre-professional and technical subjects. These subjects can range from communications to agricultural economics to aerospace engineering. A good example of a polytechnic is Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in California. In the University of California system the polytechnic is UC Davis and in the Ivy League it's Cornell University. Like UC Davis, Cornell happens to be both a polytechnic and a research university.

There's one more category of schools that we haven't talked about yet – “specialty” colleges. These are very focused institutions. For example, Juilliard only offers performing arts study in areas such as drama, music, and dance. Babson College, a business-only school based in the Wellesley, Massachusetts is focuses on business

7 and offers great entrepreneurship study and practice. These are just two examples of specialized colleges. Olin School of Engineering in Massachusetts is one more example where like the name indicates the majority of students study science and engineering.

Something to think about after hearing all six college types is identifying your right match. Are you more liberal arts oriented and looking for pure academic study working shoulder to shoulder with professors while being required to do lots of writing, critical thinking, public speaking? Are you looking to research universities with their plethora of courses? Are you focused on teachers’ colleges or comprehensives for teacher education or another pre-professional major? Are you looking at the polytechnics, focused on business, engineering and many technologies? Or would you prefer to have the type of singular focus on one subject that comes from the specialty college type? It’s really important to take time to think about these six options. Please go ahead and take a few minutes to reflect.

You might ask yourself: “am I pre-professional for my first degree” or “looking at building a liberal arts platform for graduate study”? It’s really important question. You might also ask yourself, “am I pre-professional for my first degree, meaning I want to go out and get a job?” Or-- am I “looking more at a platform to learn to write really well, think critically, and express my ideas in oral argument better and develop leadership skills so that I can go to graduate school at a higher rate?” Or--am I “looking at something in- between, a balance of all of those?” This is important to ask yourself. Now when you're looking at the realities of finding a college in your state or area it's really important to note that the three types of colleges that most people go to are research universities, hybrids, and then liberal arts colleges. The good news is that you can find each of these types of schools pretty much all of the states in the US. Here on screen are examples of these three types of colleges—research universities, hybrid universities, and liberal arts colleges.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the premier public research university in North Carolina. And they've got a lot of undergraduate offerings in terms of courses.

8 UNC Chapel Hill is also a brand name that you can take successfully bring to employers. In North Carolina the hybrid category university is Wake Forest, a really great university that I think is going to become the next Duke University—Wake Forest is very up and coming! And then at the liberal arts college in North Carolina is represented here by Davidson College, which has under 2,000 students is also one of the top feeder schools into med schools in the country. Davidson along with Duke University in North Carolina have some of the highest acceptance rates to medical schools in the US--close to 90 percent of the students that qualify for Davidson’s pre- med advising gain admission into medical school.

Another example of a research university from a nearby state is University of Virginia. President Thomas Jefferson started the UVA as a liberal arts college that's grown into a research university. Another excellent academic college and one of the top feeders into graduate school and jobs is College of William and Mary. Willam and Mary is a hybrid, is focused more on undergraduates while also offering business and other pre- professional majors. University of Richmond and Washington and Lee in Virginia are examples of top-notch liberal arts colleges. These three college types--research, hybrid and liberal arts—are typically represented in almost every state in the country.

Why is it so important to find the right match? One of the reasons it's critical to find the right match is that many students aren't finding the right matches and as a result they're transferring and/or not finishing in four years. A sizeable number of students, 30% transfer because they didn’t get the right college match. Only about 60 percent of students finish in four years which means that 40% of the time parents have to pay an additional year or more of college at the price of of a public school or private university that can be quite costly for a parent to have to factor in a year or two of extra cost.

Another thing is that 30 percent of all students that are in four-year schools have transferred at some point. That does include people that are transferred from two-year schools to four-year schools. But still, when you're transferring schools, it's inefficient because it disrupts your networking. It disrupts your social network and your job network

9 and also your graduate school placement network. Even though you might be trading up by transfering to a better school, you're still giving up some of those good things. So it's really important to figure out what's the right fit for you, what makes you happiest, and what's going to be fulfilling and give you the skills and experiences to help you achieve your life goal.

As we talked about earlier, please ask yourself which type of college is going to match what you want to do and match your personal values as well? Remember, it's a huge investment for your parents. If you're listening, you already know this. After buying home, college is the second largest investment for families. It’s a big deal. And there's a lot that goes into this, a lot of work in decision making. It should be the right match for you from a variety of angles. One of the good things about paying for college, though, is that there's a huge return on investment. All the research out there shows that it's worth greater than a million dollars in earnings in your lifetime.

And I know that even if you're there's some uncertainty in the economy and people are worried about getting jobs, but still, on the whole, in the aggregate, college offers one of the best returns on investment. It's a very good investment and one that certainly pays big dividends. The other thing you have to kind of think about is that you're buying a network for life. And as we talked about before this decision is about the direction your future will take. It's going to be about your happiness and really about you at the end of the day. You want to make sure that that investment your family makes in a college is the right one for you.

For example, one network that you get from a college is lifelong friendships. Another network that you also get from college is your job network. Your job network can determine the salary that you earn as you leave your undergraduate program after four years. The last network that I like to look at is the graduate school placement network. This network determines which colleges feed into graduate schools at a higher rate. It may come as a surprise that attending a big name, a big research school that everybody knows or has heard of, may not provide the most direct path into graduate

10 law, medicine, business or science and engineering PhD programs. What might surprise you is that the truth of which college will help you gain admission to graadutae school is usually the opposite of what we normally think would work. For example, small liberal arts colleges where you learn to write well, think critically, and express your ideas in oral argument and conduct research with professors, meaning closer student-teacher interaction, have hands-down the best rates per capita of admission to all graduate school programs. Liberal arts colleges make research with professors more accessible and when a student co-authors an article with a professor it can help propel the student into grad school at the highest possible rate.

Finding the best job network and salary can also be less straightforward than you might think. Earnings often depend on a number of things. But it can also really depend on whether or not you're in an engineering program, finance or accounting program or business-related majors--or if the school has a really great job network. In the case of Dartmouth, there's no business major, only and undergraduate engineering major, interestingly Dartmouth graduates do very well among employers and undergraduates at this elite hybrid on the whole earn more than almost all the other colleges in the US. Dartmouth’s job network happens to include many students who find work on Wall Street.

Lifelong friendships are also a huge benefit of attending college. I can't stress enough how important it is to go all four years to the same school to get the most out of your college networks. The people you go to college with going to potentially be the friendships you cherish and maintain for the rest of your life. You may even meet the love of your life at a college. Some colleges brag that 50 percent of their students marry other students within the same college.

Now, as we discussed, college is life's second-biggest investment. It’s a great investment and one that pays dividends--as Ben Franklin put it: “investment in knowledge pays that pays the best interest”. It was true in Ben Franklin’s time and it's still true today.

11 Let's talk about the realities of the choices you face. Are you looking for one degree and then a job? It’s really important for you nail this question down. Are you looking to attend a graduate school after your undergraduate experience? Those are two different realities that could require different types of undergraduate college types to be successful. If you are getting just one degree and then a job, the thing you need to figure is what your major is going to be--you may have to put the blinders on and focus on a pre-professional major like engineering or business. If your major is business, you've got to just do business pretty much. Of course, you may take elective courses outside of business. For example, it’s always a good idea to take a writing class or any other introductory classes that interest you.

When studying business as an undergraduate, you're going to focus on a curriculum that includes accounting courses, information systems, marketing and all of the different areas that go into operating and managing businesses. In engineering it's the same kind of thing you will focus on mainly engineering topics. And usually for pre-professional majors like engineering, the path to a degree is very structured in an established curriculum where you're focused on the science basics and then later during your four years in college on labs that involve engineering. When you focus and apply your knowledge as in engineering major, you really improve your chances of getting recruited directly by an employer after four years in college. So it's important to consider if you want a pre-professional option. The other approach is to wait until graduate school to focus on a profession.

For attending graduate school, it matters a lot less what you major in as an undergraduate. You can major in anything if you want to go to an MBA program. If you plan to attend law school it doesn't really matter what your undergraduate major is. If you want to be a doctor, you must take a pre-medical science sequence. There are ways to take a social science or even humanities major such as literature or philosophy that would be acceptable for medical schools. Even if you don’t take any science in college, there's even a way to still apply to medical schools by taking what is called a

12 post-baccalaureate year of science for medical schools, which we'll discuss later. To be. “pre-med”, you only need to take a certain track or curriculum that includes organic and inorganic chemistry and a number of other science classes and medical schools are fine with you taking these after you graduate from college. Your college has a health sciences advisor and you should be talking to your health science advisor to make sure that you're taking the right classes for admission to medical school.

If you are Ph.D. bound it's really important to do research as an undergraduate with a professor. Co-authoring research will help propel you into a graduate program—master or Ph.D. For most master of science or master of arts graduate programs you much better off doing undergraduate research before applying.

Next, let's talk about cost. I know this is a huge consideration, and it's on most people's minds, especially your parents' minds. Usually parents don't want to worry their kids too much about the cost of college. A good way to look at it, a thumbnail sketch, is that the cost difference between public and private colleges, is about half the price. Private colleges cost on average, somewhere between $50,000 to $70,000 while public universities are roughly half that cost. There are factors that contribute greatly to increasing these costs such as location. For example, expensive real estate in New York City can increase the price.

The costs I am mentioning include room and board and your tuition. In contrast to private college costs in-state public universities and colleges run about $30,000 to $35,000. Let me say just say one thing about the cost of private colleges: when your family is paying $60,000 to $70,000 a year the majority of students will often receive some financial aid and/or scholarships. At public universities fewer students are likely to receive financial aid and scholarships. Another important thing to keep in mind is that public universities in your state are half the price of private universities. That's an easy way to remember it. And be sure to also remember that most private college students are not paying the full cost because they are partially subsidized by financial aid and merit scholarships.

13 About qualifying for financial aid--how do you do that? I want to outline the steps briefly here. First, you determine whether or not your family is eligible for financial aid before you apply. I recommend this step especially if you're applying to private schools. Not all private colleges are need-blind, meaning that they might discriminate against you based on the fact that you're asking or even indicating that you may apply for financial aid. Because of this bias among private colleges, it's smart to figure out ahead of time if your family qualifies and then only apply if you qualify for financial aid.

Public schools don't worry quite as much about financial aid. There's a couple of ways to determine if you qualify for financial aid. Please look for “Estimated Family Contribution calculators” online. They calculate whether or not you qualify for aid. To run these calculators, you will need your parents’ most recent year’s tax return—usually referred to as Form 1040. Ask their permission and then with your parents’ tax form in- hand go to “estimated family contribution” or EFC calculator. You may use the College Board's web site which has a calculator or a calculator on each college’s website. When you make this calculation likely you will be using the federal methodology, which is what the FAFSA, the free financial aid form, uses. To start, please use either FinAid.org’s or College Board’s calculator first before you use a college’s calculator. Each college’s website calculator uses their own formula, so while it’s fine to use, please keep in mind that not every school's calculator will be exactly the same. It may be better to use College Board’s or FinAid.org’s calculator before using a website calculator on a college’s website.

Once you figure out your family contribution, run the numbers for a public and a private college using the public price tag of $35,000 or the private college price tag of $65,000 or $70,000--this includes room and board and tuition. From the calculation, you should get an EFC number. You may then use this number to determine roughly how much each college will expect you and your parents to pay to attend. The difference will be made up by loans, grants, work-study and other forms of financial aid offered by the college.

14 Another thing to consider when looking at colleges is does the school match your values? We talked about this before and I want to delve into this a bit more because this is such an important factor when you're looking at finding the right colleges. You shouldn't even consider attending a college that doesn't match your values. It's like joining a company if you're an entrepreneur. You can join any company but if you join a company that matches your values, even if the company fails, you won't have wasted your time because it matched your values. If the company takes off--well, that’s great.

It's the same thing with colleges. If the college matches your core values as a person and your operating principles, then it's the right kind of place for you. You also likely won't just have one college that will match your values, hopefully you’ll find many colleges that match who you are across range of admission difficulty levels. We'll talk about that in our later sessions. To get started, I want you to think about whether or not the schools that are on your list and you're most interested in match your personal values. Here's a couple of examples: if you're somebody who values adventure, where do you look for a college that might share your love of adventure? One college, a great example would be Dartmouth College. It's an Ivy League hybrid type university in New Hampshire surrounded by forest where they have a famous “outings club” that leads camping and outdoor adventures for a majority of students. You can see that adventure is in Dartmouth’s DNA—if you share this value Dartmouth may be a great place to attend from this specific perspective.

If “family” is your value, liberal arts colleges tend to be great places to look for a match because these most clearly exemplify the interaction between teachers and students forming a type of family. In addition, if “personal responsibility” is one of your values a Quaker college might be a good place to look. There's a big role for students in self- governance by council and everybody helps to manage the council’s policies at Quaker colleges. Quaker colleges include Whittier College in California and Haverford and Swarthmore colleges in Pennsylvania. For people for whom “duty” and “honor” are core values, schools with an honor code might be appealing. Examples include College of

15 William and Mary and Virginia Military Institute. If “hard work” is your core value, then you might look at colleges where there isn't much grade inflation, where grading is taken seriously, and where there's a heavy workload that students enjoy. Colleges like Swarthmore, Davidson and College of William and Mary are great examples of really where the value of hard work has to be there.

Another factor for choosing colleges is looking at the outcomes. It’s more important to ask yourself what does the college produce in reality at the end of four years? Beyond a great name, does the student who attends actually earn more money or have a better time path to graduate school? This is where the tire hits the road. If we talk about starting salaries for graduates after four years, for a B.A. or BS., PayScale’s yearly rankings of colleges, based on salaries, is the most helpful source of information.

Here's an example of the PayScale undergraduate rankings report. This represents people who didn't go on to graduate school and just got only a bachelor degree. At the top of the list you can see Harvey Mudd, Princeton, and Caltech. Let's look at Harvey Mudd College for a minute. Harvey Mudd is a very small science and engineering school that looks and feels like a liberal arts college--meaning it has under 1,000 undergraduate students who are focused on engineering and sciences. And it's in the Claremont Cluster, one of 5 undergraduate colleges clustered in the same area east of Los Angeles in California. Harvey Mudd graduates’ starting salaries begin at $64,400 and mid-career salaries, or salaries 10 years later, average $121,000, which is pretty great and the third-highest in the United States--higher than Harvard’s starting and mid- career salaries as a comparison. Most people think: go to Harvard to make money. In fact, it looks like it's Princeton, Caltech and Harvey Mudd, where students make more money than Harvard. While the differences between pay from each college are minimal here, this pay ranking helps to gives you an idea of how colleges may differ!

Another success factor, one that I pay a lot of attention to is graduate school “feeders”. If you want to go to grad school, professional school in this case, the best study was done by the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. The focus is getting students into the

16 top three professional graduate schools like medicine, law, and business: Harvard Law School, Yale Medicine or Chicago Business. The interesting thing about the Wall Street Journal’s study of feeder colleges to top grad schools is that the best undergraduate feeders would be the ones you might think that would be there anyway—including Ivy League and Stanford. For example, Yale comes in its number 2 spot, M.I.T. is number 8. And then at number 22, Claremont McKenna, which is in California, and part of the same cluster of schools that Harvey Mudd is part of. Claremont McKenna is a liberal arts college that focuses on philosophy, politics, and economics. It's close to a 1,000 students. Other interesting findings include 50 Morehouse College at number 29 out of thousands of colleges in the US. Morehouse is all male and historically African- American. This is the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Samuel L. Jackson.

At number 39 is Brandeis University, which is probably the most famous Jewish university in America. Named after Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, this amazing hybrid university is somewhere between a liberal arts college and research university in the way it functions and in its size. Based in Boston Massachusetts Brandeis is a great feeder into Yale Medical School and Harvard’s business and law schools. The next school here is at number 46 on the list. I might also mention that just beyond the top 50 college feeders to elite business, law and medical graduate schools, you'd find little colleges like Wabash College, another all-male college, at number 51. There's a large. number of liberal arts colleges that make the top 50 list and beyond to form the top feeders into elite business, law and medical graduate programs. Liberal arts colleges punch way above their weight in terms of helping you get to all graduate school programs including professional and Ph.D.

Now, in terms of a really important success factor, one that people don't look at often enough—“happiness”. And so how do you measure happiness on college campuses? The best way is to talk to students that are currently at the colleges. Go and interview them. If you can't do that in-person, a resource to look at is Niche.com and StudentsReview.com. Plug in the college’s name and you can get all kinds of

17 information about students’ happiness and satisfaction with the college. There's also a lot of articles, educational news related to colleges and you can also read these more in-depth reviews. Reviews on StudentsReview.com are particular interesting because they're uncensored. Students will put up the review, negative review or positive, or give you advice. They're reviews are fascinating to read. But you've got to take the really negative ones with a grain of salt because they can be pretty negative.

Another success factor in determining the right colleges is whether or not the college develops leadership. Now, if you're interested in leading you’re most likely interested in service. A great source of information for looking at schools that help develop leaders as a central or core part of their missions is Forbes Magazine’s college rankings. One of the things that Forbes’ rankings look at is leadership—for example, development of CEO’s. For example, in Forbes’ rankings Pomona and Williams colleges--two liberal arts perform very well as do Ivies like Princeton and also the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which is free, by the way. To get into West Point, you must obtain a recommendation from a senator or congressperson or military officer and take a physical fitness test. Attending a military academy is a great way to develop leadership.

Another success factor that I really like looking at is the top scholarships. What are the top scholarships that help you pay for graduate school? Colleges that generate top fellowships and scholarships for graduate school exist in every state. It’s really fascinating to look at Rhodes Scholarship rankings. There's only 32 scholars in the US per year. So it's the most elite graduate school scholarship. And it pays for two years at Oxford University. Fulbright Scholarships for study abroad are another graduate scholarship that's pretty tough to get.

Fulbright pays for just under one year of study. You’ll need at least an undergraduate GPA of 3.5 or better to be competitive. It also helps to do research with a professor as an undergraduate. And, having great letters of recommendation is pretty much standard. Fulbright rankings, which schools produce the most Fulbright Scholars are a great way of measuring undergraduate quality. In the “research university” category,

18 Michigan and Villanova did a really great job at producing Fulbright Scholars. So did Princeton. Among the hybrids Rollins College and University of Portland did a really great job and at the liberal arts level, smaller school level, Bates and Pitzer colleges do very well. Those are just some of the ways to look at graduate school placement quality.

Another success factor is Ph.D. productivity in the sciences. If you're looking at where people really do the best academically and get paid to attend, 5 to 7 years beyond their bachelor degree, per-capita Ph.D rankings put out by National Science Foundation are really helpful. Where did people go is for their first degrees and then go on to get a Ph.D. in biology, chemistry, physics or engineering. It’s helpful to review the top 50 science and engineering schools that produce Ph.D.’s at the highest rate. Please view. Table 4 for per-capita rankings. You’ll see that there are some big suprises. For example, Kalamazoo College in Michigan does extremely well at helping its graduates earn Ph.D’s in science and engineering. Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Is also high on the list. It’s very interesting to see schools that did really well and others that didn't do as well.

Another thing to think about, when you're choosing schools is what are your practical considerations in a college and in the college experience you want? For example, I'd like a drug free or alcohol free dorm or I'd like to be in a rural place or not in a rural place. What do you demand from a college? What are your practical considerations or “mandatories”—the things you really want while spending four years at a college? Let’s first examine the possibilities.

The first thing you should look at is the academic program and specific majors to make sure that you're getting what you want—specific skills and experiences to achieve your life’s goal. If your goal includes becoming an astronomer you might look at colleges with astronomy classes. Maybe your requirement is a strong theater program? Whatever your practical requirements are you need to make sure that that the colleges on your list offer most of what you want in a college including the outcomes you expect in terms of jobs or graduate school placement.

19 Another key thing to consider is financial aid and scholarships. For most students paying for college is a critical factor. I would say the best way to figure this out is to review each college’s financial aid or need-based aid awards. Most colleges offer loans but you will also want to see if colleges offer grants. The other type of scholarship are non-need based or “merit scholarships” based on value or talent that the student brings to the college—usually these are given by “safety” or 75% admission chance colleges rather than “reach” or 25% chance colleges. To find out which colleges give the most merit money, you can look at then you can kind of do a bit of sleuthing on the Internet. The best source of data regarding which colleges give which amounts of merit awards is a ranking by Kiplinger Report that shows a kind of a rundown of all of non-need based (merit) awards and percentages of students winning these awards. The ranking also shows financial or need-based aid as well.

Another factor to consider when looking at colleges is location. Many students put urban schools at the top of their list. Others want to be in “splendid isolation” where the world comes to them and where they can retreat and work hard. Rural areas can be great for avoiding distractions and there are many great Little Ivies in rural areas. There are also suburban schools near cities that appeal to many people. Location is an interesting thing to think about. After you've looked at your life goals and your values and whether or not each college on your list gives you the precise skills and experiences to achieve your goals, you can consider more practical criteria like urban, suburban, or rural locations.

In addition to location, many students worry about attending a college that’s too small or too large. Smaller means more personal attention for you and so it shouldn't be viewed necessarily as a negative. Large universities offer a wide variety of courses and pre- professional majors. It's more important what you what you're getting out of college. Certainly the size and fit issue can be relevant but only after determining what types of outcomes you’d like the college to give you.

20 Other practical considerations when it comes to choosing colleges may include ethnic, racial, and economic diversity, Greek life, fraternities and sororities, and the social scene on-campuses.

Another aspect to choosing a college for most students is social prestige. There are three types of prestige, social prestige, academic and economic prestige or earnings after college. To begin with, there's what I refer to as “cocktail party” prestige or the prestige that comes from mentioning the name of a college that is difficult to get into and everybody's heard of—like Stanford or MIT. Also, there academic prestige, which means that the graduate schools that you want to go to, either the law school or that medical school that they value. This is a very different type of prestige that really relies on the graduate schools themselves to define. For example, graduate schools love liberal arts colleges like Reed and Swarthmore and these are considered prestigious by all top tier graduate law, business, medicine and Ph.D. programs. Finally, there’s employer prestige. This is measured by PayScale’s ranking where employers pay bachelor degree graduates the highest starting and mid-career salaries. Harvey Mudd College for instance is usually the top earning college in the US. Harvey Mudd also happens to be the number 2 per-capita science and engineering PhD producer. So, Harvey Mudd has both employer prestige and graduate school prestige but when compared with Harvard or Stanford Harvey Mudd doesn’t have nearly as much social prestige. It’s really important to consider what types of prestige among the three types, social, academic and employer, that you actually need. What if I want it all—all three types of prestige? Then you're obviously looking at a school that's going to be a lot harder to get into because it's going to be much more of a crowded competitive and popular place. Great examples of colleges that offer all three types of prestige include Ivy League institutions with average admit rates of 10% or lower. But, if you're willing to trade off one of these types of prestige you can often end up with a really phenomenal school academically that gets you to graduate school but doesn't have the social prestige. An example of this is Knox College, a liberal arts college in Illinois that doesn't have social prestige but has a great reputation with grad schools as witnessed by 3/2 program in engineering with Columbia University and an early medical school admission

21 program with George Washington University Medical School. You could also end up with a college that gets you a great job but lacks graduate school placement prestige— like University of California, San Diego—the number 44 earning school in the country.

The consideration when looking for the right college match is religious affiliation. Most private colleges in America were once religiously affiliated and many still retain those ties, particularly Catholic universities. It may be important to note here that not all religiously affiliated colleges impose religion on students who attend. Many colleges do not require that students attend chapel or mass. When applying to religious schools it is important to indicate your interest and religious preferences because it’s important to them, it's that it's right for you to let them know since they get part of their funding from this affiliation.

Many religious colleges happen to be also interested in religious diversity. A lot of colleges, particularly Christian schools that are more affiliated with a particular denomination, may ask you about your religious life—this is something you may need to work that into your essays when you apply. So religious affiliation is a good consideration when looking at the best fit colleges for you. If you are interested in learning more about a campuses religious life you can find out more on Niche.com and StudentsReview.com. From these reviews you can also determine how much a part of daily life the religious aspect is on campus. Again, this may be an important consideration.

Another criteria for students is the possibility of athletic recruitment. There are three levels, D1, D2 and D3. For athletic recruitment Division 1 is the absolute toughest. You’ll need to be the best of the best to be considered for this type of recruitment. If you're a D1 athlete, likely your coaches and your parents are already talking to you about being recruited. You are likely statewide or even nationally ranked in your sport. Playing a Division 1 sport may also take the most time and sometimes it can be like having a full time job while you're going to college.

22 The first thing you should do to determine your division level is to ask your coach which division you are suited to for recruitment. They should give you an honest and accurate appraisal based on their previous years of experience. Most recruited athletes that we work with attend Division 3 colleges, which is like a varsity level at your high school. There are many great colleges in this division. It still might be a lot of work. Before signing up for recruitment, you might want to consider how much time you’re willing to invest in athletics while attending college. The other level of athletics is club teams and intramurals—these require a lot less time and can be a lot of fun as well. It’s important to make sure the school has the sports at the level that you're you're interested in that also matches your ability level.

The other thing to think about, as we talked about is job placement. It's critical, especially these days as students have greater concern than ever about getting jobs that are meaningful and well-paying. One of the ways you can test the colleges on your list is to determine job placement is to look online at the career services center webpages or call career services office to obtain a list of all of the recruiters on campus that past season. And maybe they'll even give you a list of the number of students that were hired by each firm. Job placement can also be roughly identified by reviewing PayScale rankings.

We've covered a lot so far in this first session. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and discuss now a couple different specialty areas. One is. learning disabilities. We're going to put a spotlight on learning disabilities. For those students with us that have a learning challenges, it’s really important to know that having a learning challenge is a big benefit when it comes to college admission. There's a significant number of students that have learning disabilities such as a language processing disorder, dysgraphia, or dyslexia.

If you have a learning challenge, it is important to think about a way to position yourself to “own” the learning challenge when you're applying. An example if you have lower grades and a learning challenge is not just to report your GPA as say “3.0 GPA,” but you can instead say “Top Performing Dyslexic Scholar, 3.0 GPA”, and then list the

23 name of your high school. So that kind of gives you an idea of how you can begin to niche or own the category to use it to your advantage.

Also, learning challenges also include medical disabilities. For example, if you have an eyesight or hearing loss you will put your grades and your testing in the context of this medical challenge. Colleges will love the fact that you’re working twice as hard as everyone else to get the same grade. Colleges also like the diversity that comes with admitting students with different ability levels and challenges. Positioning disabilities or learning challenges as strengths can actually benefit you in the admission process.

To build a learning challenges portfolio what you're going to do is get your high school records. What you need to find is your record of accommodation also known as Section 504 or IEP plan. Your parents should have this information and failing that your high school counselor should be able to help you locate this record.

The next thing you need to locate is your most recent learning disabilities or challenges assessment results—also known as a neuro-educational evaluation. If you don't have a learning disabilities assessment or medical assessment for your disability, you’ll need to get tested to generate this assessment. You can ask your school’s counselor to speak with the educational evaluator to see if they'll assess you for learning challenges. Some high schools will perform the assessment if your grades are low. If your grades aren't low you will likely need to identify and pay a private educational psychologist to do the diagnostic testing to identify if you have a learning disability or learning challenge.

Once you get your assessment results if you have a qualifying learning challenge or medical impairment, you will likely be able to bring your assessment to your high school counselor to begin the process of applying for accommodations. I want you to make sure that you're getting the accommodations that are due you right now in high school.

It's really important you have to establish that track record of accommodations in high school before applying to college. The goal is to put your grades and your testing in

24 context and help position you as one of the top-performing students rather than somebody who has an average GPA. Even if you believe that you do have an average GPA, you could actually be at the top-performing students with learning challenges— something which would help you gain admission to more colleges and potentially win merit scholarships as well. That’s really all there is to the learning disabilities portfolio.

Now, I'd like to focus a spotlight on pre-medical school admission programs. One interesting program that some colleges offer is what is referred to as “guaranteed” or “assured” medical admission programs. Some of these fast-track programs are seven- year programs. That means you go to college for four years and then you do three more. Some colleges require 4 more years, depending on the school. So that's really important.

Just to give you an example of these programs, and RPI in the Northeast both participate in a joint BS/MD program with Albany Medical College that tracks top performing high school students into medical schools after attending Union College’s undergraduate program. And in some cases, you don't even have to take the MCAT exam to get into medical school--Case Western Reserve University in Ohio is an example where BS/MD program students are assured of medical school admission if without taking the MCAT medical school exam.

There is one more very interesting pre-medical school program available to students. Post-college medical school prep programs or post-bacclaureate pre-medical programs are one-year programs. If you studied philosophy or history or something other than science and you want to go to med school, you can go to one of these post- baccalaureate one-year programs or just take the courses that are required for the pre- medical sequence at any college. And that will prepare you for medical school,. Thank you so much for participating in Session 1!

If you're looking for more advice than this session was able to provide, I want you to know that we offer individual consulting. If you look at the information in

25 https://collegematchus.com/individual-consulting/ And if you need to contact us for any information, there are contact details here as well. Please fill in the contact form for 1:1 individualized support; we will be in touch via email or phone:

I really enjoyed working with you in this session. I look forward to discussing session number 2. Thanks again.

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