SPEAKER_02 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. You know, folks often ask me how to navigate the maze of college emissions and high-stakes test prep without spending hours of time or wasting thousands and thousands of dollars getting nowhere. And the answers usually involve finding the people who have learned the rules of the game that the system isn't telling you and crack the code. That's why I am very excited to welcome my guest today, Mark Stucker, who is uh joining us here straight from Atlanta. Mark, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

So, Mark, tell the audience what you do and how you uh contribute to the educational space.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah, so I help families and with the college admission process. So we have a team, you know, all we're all over the country. I we're not small, like there's a lot of one-person, most people that do this are one-person operations, but we're also not one of these huge companies as well. So we help students and families with things like building college lists, understanding how the admission process works, under how decisions are made, where they can get scholarships, where they're competitive, where they're not, building action plans with to-dos and check-ins, all kinds of things around admission strategies to increase their chances of getting in the schools that they target. And there's just a real need for that because a lot of surveys have shown that the average high school, the ratio of counselors to students is around 400 to one. In some states, it's a thousand to one. One study Yeah, one study found that the average high school student has 25 total minutes with their counselor over the course of four years. And this process is extremely complex, extremely complex. And uh not only that, but most college counselors in high schools, and God bless them, I run a support group for counselors, and we have a lot of them in there who are doing the best that they can. Most of the training programs don't emphasize college counseling. Maybe a course or two. Some of them don't even have that. You know, they're doing all kinds of things, right? They're doing crisis management, personal counseling, they're doing all the logistical things like switching courses for people and meetings, communication with parents. I mean, administering tests and they're doing a lot of stuff. So yeah, so hence there's a huge need. And so we sort of walk people through through that process. Our focus is on authenticity. We're not out here trying to make people look present themselves different than who they are. You know, I like to use the example of if you're going for your first job, you're not going to have an imposter stand in for you in the interview. You're also not going to get a facelift the night before. But you are going to do certain things. You're probably going to make sure your hair and your shoes and your suit and everything looks as good as it can. You're going to put your best foot forward, but it's still you. So there's a lot you can do from a strategy standpoint to increase the chances of getting in certain schools. And there's a lot you can do to make sure that you get a good financial aid package from the places you're admitted. And so, yeah, that's the process. So working with mostly 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. There are some people that start in 9th, but I would say 9th is more of, you know, casual checking in two to four times a year, making sure you're picking the right courses, doing the right things over the summer, that sort of thing. So yeah, it's a it's tremendously rewarding work. Uh, I love it. And I'm blessed to have a great team that works with me.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

So you started the college coaching company School Match for You, which you are the owner and founder of. And you also co-founded a podcast, Your College Bound Kid Podcast. And you are the author of a college admission book, 171 Answers, which I think you have there on your desk. If you want to show the audience 171 answers answers to college questions.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, the subtitle is 171 answers to the most asked college admissions questions. So what I did is I just took the most commonly asked questions I get as a college counselor, and I turned each one into a chapter, and uh, and each one has a story that's got an illustrator that, you know, kind of illustrate the story and have a human interest story. And so there's an interesting story there. I've always had this passion for a long time, quarter century, to make college knowledge available to all, to break down this Byzantine and complex process and to help people to understand, you know, what they can do to give their kids more options. And so from 2012 to 2014, I did a 10-hour college admissions video series called Game Ranger. And the idea was trying to reach people of all income brackets, like you can pay for private college coaching, but some people it's in their budget, some it's not. So what if we came up with this 10-hour counselor in a box concept? You know, it was like $279, 10 hours. You know, you have some failures along the way. I spent $100,000 on that, and total totals, total sales were $36,000. So I lost $64,000. But you learned Wait a minute. You mean your return was $36,000 on a hundred thousand dollar investment? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have some scars when you're an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah, I hear you.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

You know, one of the things from that that I learned was lots of things. One, people were, I'd go around and speak in the country and I'd say, I was thinking, look, this is like a fraction, you'll save a tremendous amount of money, but people are like, Yeah, but I want to talk to you. Or they would say, Yeah, but I don't have 10 hours. So I'm busy. So that's why the concept of the book, it's sort of like the idea of like go to the table of contents. So if you want to know how many colleges should I apply to, jump to that chapter, read, you know, 500 words and stuff. That was the I that was the origin. But sort of had this passion to get the word out. The book came out 16, the Kindle version 17, and then the podcast in the fall of 17. We were all ready to launch. We did our first episode, and we thought, I don't know if this is good enough. We hired a really good consultant, did six months of like learning, you know, as much as we could. And then we launched in February of 2018, and we started out with one episode a week, every single week, never missed. Same time, you know, midnight, Eastern time we dropped. And then 2021, we expanded to every Monday, Thursday, two episodes a week. And I had to, of course, expand the co-ho staff. So it's a passion amid the most interesting, fascinating people all around the world. We travel around, do receptions with listeners. I just scheduled a bunch coming up here. I've got one in Minneapolis, one in Madison, and two or three in Chicago. I'm excited about. It's awesome. Yeah. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

We we've just started this like a year ago, less than a year ago. So no, I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, we're we're hoping they get get a lot bigger. Um, I've had some pretty cool guests on as well, including yourself.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Let me share something quickly. My first month. Of course, our first month, we had 212 downloads, you know, and then a lot of times it will be over 50,000 now. So it just grows over time, you know?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah, definitely compounded interest. But Mark, I'm interested in talking to you because uh, like myself, you've kind of sat on both sides of the aisle here. So the high school counselor and a missions officer, and now you're you know, you're running a company that does coaching consulting consulting for college missions. I'll be honest, when I got into this in 2020, 2023, we started to have some growth in the AP test prep. I had no idea college counseling even existed. Uh it certainly wasn't a thing on my radar when I graduated in 2020. So now, 20 years removed from that, it seems like there are a ton of college coaching companies out there. Like, I guess you know, kind of you've seen it, you're you present a uniqueness that I think that we also like to brand ourselves as a uniqueness because we're both inside and outside the system. What is having that duality teach you that most parents will never hear from maybe one side or the other, just a school counselor or just a college consultant?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah, it's actually really helpful. I look for that. I really look for that a lot. Like if you look at our co-hosts on our podcast, it's a mixture. Like we have some VP of enrollments top person in the whole office or on our podcast as co-hosts. And we have some other people that are roadrunners and traveling and they're on the road, and maybe they're, you know, not entry-level, but they're not, you know, they're here in the real questions. They're important. And then, and then we have a lot of college counselors that used to be admissions. And I find it's a really insightful perspective. I can also oftentimes tell when I interview a thought leader, you can see by their answers if they've been on both sides of the desk a lot of times, it really comes through. I think the biggest thing is when you have done admissions, you really understand the role institutional priorities play in shaping a class. You know, um I'm gonna quote my friend Rick Clark, who's over Georgia Tech's admission office. You can really boil admissions down to really two simple things: supply and demand, number of applications for spots, and what are the institutional priorities of the institution? And people, parents and others tend to not understand that. They'll say something like, you know, my kid had a 1560 GP SAT score, and they were number two in their class, and this school took this other, I'm I'm exaggerating here, schmuck, you know, they describe them like a schmuck, but they don't use that word, right? They took this other schmuck who had like a hundred points lower on the SAT and was like ranked 19th in our class. Like this system is all messed up, and they they have no idea that from an institutional standpoint, you are trying to make your school stronger. And I use a lot of analogies. I try to talk in analogies because a pitcher's worth a thousand words and I find they really penetrate. So, you know, sometimes I'll talk about if you have a football team, I don't care if you're the seventh best quarterback in the state or the country, if I already have four or five really good quarterbacks, you know, I need wide receivers and linemen and kickers and defensive tackles, then that's what I need to make my team stronger. Or sometimes I'll use the orchestra example. I already have like seven incredible violinists, I need bassoonists, and I need someone who can play the oboe. Like that's going to make the better music. So people have a really hard time with that. It's part of it's a propriety. We're so individual and meritocratic. But schools have charges and they have things that they have to do that come down from the top, and they're their dictates, and they need to fulfill them. It could be something as simple as public schools. Like if you look at the most selective public schools in the country, you know, when people think of the most selective public schools, they'll think of things like UCLA and Berkeley and Georgia Tech and Michigan and Texas and Virginia and UNC. All these, all of those states have caps on their out-of-state enrollment, you know, because individual taxpayers, you know, in the state say, why am I paying all this money for my own state institution? My kid can't come in, so can't get in. So then schools erect percentages of in-state-out-state. And so that guides and governs their admission process, right? It's lots of different things. There's priority admits, whether it's athletes or artists or faculty kids or staff or administrative kids or celebrity kids, because you get a lot of publicity, or donors or alumni. Then there's all kinds of other things, too, that you, as an institution, like if you value a learning laboratory and people coming together from all different walks of life and learning from each other, then you're gonna value things like you know, having people from rural places and inner city places and wide range of socioeconomic and international diversity. So that all these things are things that you understand on the inside makes for a better school, but people don't really understand that. They don't understand how that shapes and governs decisions. So I'd say that's probably the single biggest misperception. But there's others as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Well, I think we are consistently knowing less and less about this because it doesn't seem straightforward at all anymore. So the institution of priorities is interesting, right? Because the I think the hardest thing for parents to understand is those also can change year to year. Um, you can get new deans or new presidents, and on a dime, it can switch from a whole different so the stuff that worked last year isn't gonna work this year. Case in point, we had a kid at my my school school get into CMU from Pittsburgh, but and he wrote a very in in their institutional priorities, we're looking for kids to stay in Pittsburgh after they got the degrees.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

So he just so happened to know that from his counselor and wrote a very Pittsburgh-friendly essay and nailed the interview saying about how he doesn't want to go anywhere else and got in without any fancy internships, research projects, passion projects, things like that. Just good grades, and there you go. He was unique enough in that. And I think that's I guess that's what's hard about this, is because you have more you have more Val Victorians than you have open seats in freshman classes at Ivy League, just a starter. So they're not looking for the top kids, they're looking for diverse to match what their their profile is. So I guess what is more important for uh a parent to hear, because a parent's I and I'm just assuming because we work with a lot of the same similar parents, yeah, just based on the initial conversation. They're coming here with preconceived notions of where their kids want to go to, especially for like business or STEM. Like, I want this school, but it's mostly surface level. Like I want to go to Harvard, but they don't have like they don't have really a deeper connection to why. So for kids that are like in in this or parents that are listening, what is more important in that? Is it the name and of the school, or is it like target fit in terms of what what you tell parents and approach that and how and if that target fit is not Harvard, it is, but this is a really great school where the kid is a perfect match. How do you navigate families through that?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

It's a great question. It's unequivocally fit and match. I mean, that's why my company's called School Match for You. That's why any of our listeners know I end almost every single episode, and I just recorded episode 644 earlier today, and the majority of our episodes by saying it's not where you go, it's not where you go, it's not where you go. And I literally pound the pound the table on the third one. And I say, but it's what you do when you get there, and it's what you do when you get out of there. That is what will determine your career success. And I drive that message home because it's true. I mean, you can check, there's research after research after research to show this and to prove it. Uh, one of the things I do, sometimes I'll show them data. Like one thing that's helpful, you can check this out when you get out. Go both something both Harvard and Yale do is they produce a list every year of where our current students went to undergrad. And you're gonna see such a wide swath of schools. They're gonna see non-selective schools that admit almost everybody. And then you'll see some, you know, moderately selective, highly selective, and they value a wide range of kids, and they can see there's talent everywhere, and people know this, right? A lot of times people end up going to colleges because of money or because it's convenient, you know, and companies know that there's talent, there's talent everywhere. Now, I will say this there are a few professions that are a little more name conscious, brand conscious than others. Like there's a difference between somebody that wants to go to one of the New York City banks and do investment banking, than there is somebody who wants to be a medical doctor. I mean, one of my clients went to MIT for undergrad. He's a medical doctor in Chicago, and he's in his 50s, and he said, I can I can name four times in my life I've ever been asked where I ever went to college, where I went to med school, where I did my residency, and I share an office with somebody that went to a school with a 90% admit rate. You know, so Mark, that person didn't go to a BSMD program. No, they did not go to a BSMD program.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

How the heck that is he a doctor? How is that possible?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, don't get me started on BSMD programs. We'll be here for now. But shit, we should win. So there's a lot of evidence like that. You have to, it's really challenging. This is the hardest part of the job. You know, I was having lunch with uh former client of mine, and and she had recommended her sister, who she knew was a little what we what we used to call a pill, a piece of work. And I can't, of course, say what's even with the sister, you gotta, you know, violate confidentiality. But she was saying, How's it, how's it going? And and I just said, you know, I love my job, but sometimes my job is hard. And she said something, and for some reason this is so simple, but it just hit me right through the eyes. She said, Of course your job is hard. You have to tell parents something about their kids they don't want to hear. So what you what I try to do, and I try to suss this out right in the initial consultation, but it's not sometimes it's hard. I try to differentiate between the person that is obsessed with sta obsessed with, you know, whether it's you want to use the term status prestige or selectivity or T20 mentality, whatever, when it comes to colleges, because they just love their kid and they just want to give their kid every single advantage and they're so and they're really convinced that that's how I give my kid a leg up. Yeah. Um, versus the one who wants a name they can drop at a cocktail party because they're different. And so, you know, I remember back when I was doing admissions, I was recruiting the Upper East Side in New York. I was having a conversation with the admission with the placement director at an Upper East Side school, and he was expressing frustration to me that he would bring in certain schools to make presentations to expose their kids to a wide range of schools. And some of the parents would be mad, why are you bringing why are you bringing in these schools? Like, you know, they weren't sexy enough. So he had a meeting with one and he was trying to explain just how you fit and match, and you know, you find the kid at the right school. And like the dad says to him, No, he cut him right off. He said, No, you need to understand something. I need a name that's gonna play well at the country club. So I tried to differentiate because those are two very different people. Right. But you what happens is over time you have stories. Like I had a student that family hired me to work with him. And um, this was a transfer student, and I worked with a lot of transfer students. I've never worked with one that that was this unhappy with the school. So pretty early on I had to say, like, can I ask you a question? Like, you really, really don't like this place. Like, why did you come? And he said, It had an 8% admit rate. How can I turn that down? So he came to understand that selectivity is not everything. Selectivity is important at some level. Like the person, the caliber, the people you're around does matter. But that doesn't necessarily equate to, oh, it has to be Ivy or Ivy plus. You know, public schools, some public schools are incredibly selective, some schools have honors colleges. You pick and choose the people you're around. There's living learning communities, there's lots of ways to take a school and to have a good cadre of high-achieving kids around you and to pick out the right professors and to get a great education. So I first have to sort of make that discernment, and then it's my job to convince people that so many people that don't go to brand name school have incredible careers. And one thing that I've done that's been kind of effective I've encouraged our listeners on our podcast to play this game. You know, it can be with your kid, and there's variations of it where you just see someone who's impressive on TV and you kind of guess. Let's guess where the kid went to college, where the person went to college. And we have this little game where it's almost impossible to pick the school. So then when you're both wrong, you you look at how many miles away your school was versus where they went versus the other. And if you're closer, you get a point. And people have done different variations of the game. And we just had a podcast listener call in and say, Oh my goodness, I was really, really struggling with my kid. They weren't going to a brand name. I'm taking a lot of heat in the parent community, and I played your game. And oh my goodness, I cannot believe how many people we are so impressed with that didn't go to brands. Most people don't go to brand name schools. There's a small number of those schools, and there's all kinds of jobs out there. So there's a person for whom once they're convinced they don't have to go to one of those schools to have a great college experience and to have a great career, they're perfectly fine with it. Nothing, and nothing's wrong with having aspirational schools. But what bothers me, like I'm always I always want kids to feel good about who they are. And I use I like to use this analogy. We've created this world where, you know, if you don't go to the NBA All Star game, you're a loser. And what I mean by that is It's kind of what you said. There's schools in this country that admit one in three, one in four valedictorians. And then there's people all over the country that have bought into the canard that if I work hard enough and do everything, then I'll get into that school. And then they're judging themselves on as a success or lack of success, whether they accomplish that. And they're setting themselves up for failure. And they're setting themselves up for real self-esteem hits. So once again, you know, I believe in straight talk. So when I'm working with families, most families value, you know, the expertise of letting their kid know honestly whether you have a shot at the school or not. And if not, you know, we need to look at others on the list. But there's just a lot of things. You build up stories over time. It the other the one thing that I've learned is you get more than one bite of the apple. Sometimes I'm the first person to tell the student that going to Duke is a long shot for, you know, and or I've in my 26 years, I haven't seen seen someone with your profile get get in there. So I think we honestly need to look at other and you know, their crests fallen, and sometimes it's really hard. But then, you know what? They start to have other evidence come in. A lot of times it's actually easier for the kids than the parents. There's a parents, it's changed so much from when they went, they can't adjust, they can't handle that. But the kid might know, well, this ridiculously smart kid who's a grade above me got denied. And so the kids start to hear that. And they start, so eventually they most of them come around. And they also come around to realizing that there's not just 20 amazing schools in this country. Like, do we really believe out of 22,275 four-year accredited bachelor granting institutions, only 1% of them are good? Is that really what we believe? Right. You think maybe 5% are good? Well, there's 110 schools. All right. And that opens up tons more options for you. Or 220 are good. Now we have 10%. So, you know, there's things you work with sometimes. But what I have found is if the number one thing that matters the most is that I drop a name that impresses people, then if I have a student that doesn't match that profile, we have we have a little bit of work on our hands. And I get it. I had a student say to me the other day something, and it was so honest and so raw and it's how a lot of people feel. You know, she said, when I tell people where I'm going to college, that's a 10th grader. When I tell people where I'm going to college, I want them immediately to think, damn, that girl is smart.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

This episode is brought to you by supported tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focused on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supportedtutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. And I think that's that's probably the you use a lot. You said you taught like analogies. I think that's the real conversation there is where are the goalposts. I think a lot of those families, the goalpost is if my kid gets into this school, they will the rest of their life is going to be cake and they'll be successful. Versus the, and I guess the ironic thing about that is the colleges are not lit, they don't care if you can get in. They want to know what are you, especially the top ones. They want to know who you're going to become because of like, right? So Harvard does not have to do any marketing, Stanford does not have to do any marketing. Why? Because their graduates are their marketing, they're their alumni are their marketing. So why should they want you? And it's kind of, and using another analogy, which you you're welcome to use this on your calls, but you just gave me inspiration to it. It's almost like because of the of the limited kids we've helped through this process, it's almost like chasing the girl at the bar, almost like the girl doesn't want you because you want her. She wants the guy that's not paying attention to her. And it's like it's almost like that in college admissions. And and what I think the the the transformation is is the authenticity, right? So many kids, as I think, driven by the parents, are being told or branded or marketed to that they need the X, they need a passion project here, they need this crazy internship here, they need this research project to get into this school when a kid can get in by just being themselves authentic authentically, not faking anything. They're not perfect, they're not, they don't have to fake anything on the profile. They do obviously meet the minimum academic requirements, but they're more unique and they stand out in a sea of all these things. And I think I just I'm I'm interested in from hearing from your perspective, because you've been in it a lot longer than I have. The the field of college coaching has beencome crowded with a lot of noise and sales and marketing. And oftentimes people are being sold a false bill of goods that doesn't actually do anything except empty the pockets of otherwise unsuspecting parents. Just speak on that, I guess, in a little bit because you seem like a very authentic person from the ground up. So, I mean, that's what we aim to be as well. But I I do you see the big brands out there too that are just saying you need this, this, this. I'm like, yeah, you need a passion project because they're an affiliate with a company that gives you a passion project for another six thousand dollars, which they'll get a cut for. Like, and you're waiting until you like don't. I told a kid straight up two weeks ago, joined our pro. I'm like, no, you're not gonna do a passion project your senior year. Why? Because you waited till your senior year to start a passion project, and you're gonna spend all this time for your summer when you could be just rounding out your application, and the school's gonna be like, okay, why did you start this thing you were so passionate about three months ago to get into your school? Cool. Moving on to the next one.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

So yeah, I agree with everything you said there and more. Uh, I did an interview with Christoph Gutentok, former dean at Duke for you know 30 some plus years recently on this exact topic. I would talk to him at conferences about the rise, there's been astronomical rise of kids that start charities, that start nonprofits, that get published research, and they think that's their elixir, and it's not. And you know, when what's that saying? When everything is special, nothing special, like like there's so many kids doing this, and it and most of the time it has this fingerprints of either some consultant or some ambitious parent that used connections to hook their kid up.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

And at the most selective level, I have to interject because I gotta give a shout out to Brian Regan, the comedian. It's the modern day version of you you built your parent building the volcano for the science fair.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah, but it but it's you know, the most selective level, they're asking a lot of questions when they see this. You know, one, you know, first of all, and I hear this over, I interview the leading thought leaders in the country in college admissions. I was like, you know what impresses me more? Go join an organization that's struggling and turn it around. That's more impressive. You know. I had a seasoned college admission officer on my podcast the other day, and this question came in, what can my kid do senior year to stand out? We're going into the summer. And one of the things she said, you know what, you know what impresses us? Go get a really hard job. So she talked about her daughter, you know, who went off to Wellesley, you know, getting a job as a server. And when people rout in the bathroom, she's got to clean it up, and they're in a tourist industry area, so you get a lot of mistreatment from people on I gotta be the airport and blah, blah, blah. You need to have, you know, a lot of indignant behavior and having to manage that and navigate that. And then reflect on what you learned, how you grew, how you changed, how, you know, the experience you had. Now, don't get me wrong, one of the biggest myths out there is that this extracurricular is gonna tip me in. That is such a, you know, bunch of malarkey. It's just not how it works. But yeah, the whole passion project and the research projects and the nonprofit, it's this, you're right. There's this whole commercially driven industry out there where people are charging a fortune and people are buying into it. Like more, I'm getting told over and over sometimes in the counseling, like, are you gonna help me with a passion project? The only time I really see passion projects really, really work is when the kid has so much passion that they would do the project if it wasn't related to college admission because they're just driven because they love it so much, and that infectious love for their subject enables them to make a difference in sizable ways. Like, when you look at extracurriculars for most well-resourced kids that are applying to the most selective schools, their extracurriculars, not always, but most of the time, they look like someone who's 45 years old. Like their extracurriculars are ridiculous. So you just doing this little thing doesn't stand out at all. And it more often than not, you know, looks at makes an mission officer look under the hood and say, okay, does this, is this, you know, fabricated or contrived? That doesn't mean, now, don't get me wrong, there's a saying that mission officers say, which is, we don't judge what we don't know. So they're always trying to re-to admit, believe it or not. They want to give the kid the benefit of the doubt. But I'm saying the bar is just really, really, really high that you did something that improved people's lives that showed you were an agent of change in some very significant ways. And one of the questions admission officers look at right away and they say, Is this thing, is this thing that you start at going to exist when you leave? And if there's no evidence that it is, you know, it it it it it doesn't move the needle the way people think. And there's so many myths out there about you know, people are always looking for the secret sauce. There is no secret. I mean, there's themes. There's themes. Every college wants a good student, a good citizen, and someone that's gonna, you know, be a significant trip contributor. They want people that are gonna come in and make a big splash. You know, in my in my college admissions video series, I literally went out to water and I threw a little pebble in the water. It made a little ripple, and then I picked up the biggest rock I could pick up. We had a film crew, obviously it makes a big splash, and I'm like, admission officers want the kid who's gonna make the big splash. They do want that on their campus, and they want it for 60 years as an alumni. But sometimes it's not even extracurriculars, it's personal qualities. You know, it's the person that is incredibly compassionate, it's the person that demonstrates an unbelievable kindness, it's the person that can get along with every type of different person and bring them together, who models grid and resilience, like, you know, who overcome adversity. Like, there's so many different ways you can demonstrate impact. And schools are looking at it, the more selective schools are looking at this from the process of what did you do with the resources that you have? And if you're coming from a well-resourced area, you know, and they can see that, they see all that evidence, they see it in your zip code, they see it in your parents' professions, they see it in everything, your schools like you're surrounded by a lot of people doing a lot of these kinds of things. This is what they're reading all the time. You need to be rare. Colleges want what they don't have, and like you said, they want people who are interesting and unique.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

So, from your experience, now I'm blessed enough to be in a school that has a very robust college admissions process. But even that, and we're actually under the CDC recommendations of 250 to one, but like the kids that are in my programs, a lot of them are coming from Texas or Georgia or Florida and California, and especially the AP kids. I'm like, I don't even know what's going on in these schools with their teaching. Like, it's just insane what that not covering the curriculum, things like that. But at this point, like if you want to go to college and you're aiming at like just say the top 10%, because that's like what 250 schools, top 10% of schools in this country, can you successfully do it without a college admissions counselor?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yeah, absolutely. Just like you can do well on just like you can do well on the SAT without an SAT tutor. A lot of people, you know, self-study and and do extremely well. You know, we have people that listen to our podcast all the time and our DIYers, and then they'll write in afterward and these long, heart-moving emails about how they took all the knowledge that they gleaned about how schools make decisions and what colleges look for, and they applied it with their own kid and hear the results. Like we hear that all the time. So, you know, it's a personal preference, whether somebody wants it's just it's no different than am I gonna fix my own car or am I gonna you know take it to the mechanic? Like some people are gonna be DIYers and they're gonna do it themselves, and some people are gonna outsource and put some and give you know experts some guidance. You know, there's one thing I want to say that you said, you know, before. While it's true that like the Harvards, the Yales, the Stanfords, the Princetons, the Dukes, the Browns, you know, Northwesterns, all these schools, they don't have to do the same things that most of the schools have to to attract applicants. These schools are incredibly fiercely competitive. Like, for example, we had four kids get in Yale this year. Only one went. Because if you're getting in Yale, you're getting in a bunch of Yale's competitors. And then and these schools protect their admit rate. That's part of how they build their brand. They don't like admitting students who don't come. That's partly how the every from from the board to the provost to the faculty to parents and future parents and past parents and you know, students, partly how they judge schools is their acceptance rates. Nobody's impressed if you're at a high, highly selective school if you're full. If you're at a very, you know, maybe if you go all the way to the other side of the spectrum, they might be incredibly impressed if you're at full enrollment and you meet your budget. So they're kind of evaluated by all these different metrics. So those schools are incredibly fiercely competitive with each other. When you're getting in one, you're strong enough to get in others. And one thing that's happened in recent years is just kids are applying to more schools. It's making it a lot harder for these schools to predict yield. And a whole other story about all the sophisticated ways that they're trying to use to figure out which of these kids is serious about me. So while it's true that they don't have to do the things the other schools, they're gonna be full, they're gonna be full with really strong kids, they're gonna meet their budget. They still don't want to sort of slip in the perception to their peers by the people that are evaluating them. So they don't like losing out on the applicants that they want. And they know if you're getting into our school and you're getting into a bunch of others, and we're gonna have to really work hard to yield you.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

So, what about is that where you recommend an early decision or early action plan for those and talk a little bit about how the early decision has become kind of like this shady whole process now?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah, and that's one of the most complicated counseling I do is early decision, because on the one hand, it can significantly increase your chances of getting in at a lumber school. There's no question about it. But on the other hand, and then so that can be check positive. Another check positive, knowing where you're going in in December, if you've really put the time in, can really make the senior year more. I mean, I had two kids. I have two kids, 30 and 27. One went early decision to Davidson, loved it, one of the best experiences of her life. And, you know, it was great for her. My other student went to the University of Georgia, then on offer it. She had a fantastic experience, never did it. So as a parent, I've seen one kid do one, one do another. But the positives for early decision are can significantly increase your chances of getting in. You can make the senior, if it works, the senior year can become so much more relaxing. You know where you're going by December, and then you can get integrated into the community and the network and you know, and start to build your peer group and all that. But there's some pretty bad negatives. And then the two big negatives would be one, you're leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table because you're not getting to see what someone else is gonna offer you. Right. And you might people don't realize they might be leaving like 200 grand on the table because another school is gonna offer them full tuition and they're sitting here committed to paying 100 grand somewhere. And then the other big downside of early decision, there's not enough talked about this. I've got two people I'm doing interviews with on this. Many, many people would make a different decision in May than they would make, say, September, October, than when they're committing. And the reason why I know this is I will say the majority of years in our company will have someone who gets deferred. So if, you know, or listen, there's no, when you apply, you can get admitted, denied, or deferred. Deferred means postponed to the regular round, either because they want to see the applicants that come in in regular decisions so they can compare to the whole pool, andor they want to see set senior year grades and see how you do follow senior year. And if you're deferred and you're applied ED, then it's no longer binding. So it was a whole big thing this year. Michigan was the first year they wrote out early decisions. They didn't know what they were doing. You know, they deferred a whole bunch of people. I don't think they had a chance to read all those applicants, really. And then they ended up later admitting a bunch of them, but they didn't have to go. So what I see happen most years in a company is someone gets deferred from ED, then they get admitted in the regular round, but in the meantime, they found a school they like more. So there's that's evidence. And this is a really hard process. For kids are trying to figure out themselves, they're trying to figure out the schools. You know, there's a lot of them. They might have they might not have visited at all. They might have just watched a video, or maybe they spent a little bit of time on a campus, maybe. So that's one of the drawbacks to early decision as well, is so many kids would make a different decision May 1st, which is National Candidate Reply Day, when you have to decide if you apply regular decision or early action, which is non-binding, versus if you come through the first, you know. So those, so there's two pretty significant drawbacks, but there's some significant advantages. And for the right kid who doesn't need to compare financial aid awards, or this is the tricky part. Let's say I have a kid that is tremendously financially needy. Sometimes early decision is the best thing for that kid because some of the most most of the most well-resourced schools have the best financial aid need-based. And so if you're getting in a Princeton, your offer is going to be ridiculous. And you wouldn't get that kind of offer from most of the other schools. And let's say you wouldn't get in in regular if you didn't apply now, Princeton doesn't have early decision. They have something called single choice early action. It's like restrictive early action where you can't apply ED to somewhere else. So that's but there's other schools like that as well that have incredibly generous. So that's what makes counseling with ED so complicated. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not great.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Let me end with this, probably an easy one. What is the number one question you get asked?

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Probably how many colleges should I apply to? Uh, that one this uh it completely varies. There's all kinds of different circumstances, you know. Um, is money important? Are you applying to highly competitive majors? Have you visited, have you visited before? How organized are you when you're starting? How much work are you willing to put in? There's not an answer to that. Not a standard answer. I'd say for most kids, it depends. Are you looking at doing a national search, regional search? For most kids, you know, two to five schools in three buckets is good. Like a what we we like, I like to call a challenge school. Most people call it reach schools. I I like to use that word challenge because they're more challenging to get in, they're more challenging to get in clubs, they're gonna be more challenging. It takes a little bit of that allure off of harder to get in equals better that people think of when they say reach. So for me, that's a school with a 15 to 35 percent chance. So, you know, so it's not a perfect number, but a few in that bucket and then a few in the possible bucket, 35 to 74, 34 to 74 percent chance, and then probable bucket 75 up to the high 90s. Normally two to five, three to five in each of those if for someone doing a national search for most people, but there's lots and lots of exceptions to that. And it's not etched in stone. If someone's like, but I really like six schools in this bucket, well then apply to them. I always say to people, applying is not committing to go. You know, and I've also seen kids apply to 18 schools better than someone else applies to two if they're organized. So I'd say, you know, when you go through, but don't apply to someplace that you have no interest in ever going. You can never see yourself going. What a lot of people do is they're so drawn by their difficult to get in schools that they somebody's told them they can't have a top-heavy list like that. So then they add a bunch of schools, but in their mind mindset, they're like, I'm not going there, but I'll do this to get my parent, my counselor, somebody off my back. And that's a mistake because you might end up there. So vet your whole entire list. Years ago, 2003, I I worked with this student. She probably D D'd a brown, she never got in. I was trying to console her a little bit. She's like, What are you doing? You told me to love my whole list. I got I still got 10 more schools. I'm waiting here from why why are you acting all sad over here? I'm like, okay, she gets it. That's how I'm trying to get everybody right. The other question I'd say that I get equal to that, is it better to get an A in a less select, less rigorous class, or to get a B in the harder class? So I'd say those are the two most common questions I get.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Well, Mark, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. For folks out there listening that want to go deeper with you and learn more, um, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Yeah, so yourcollegeboundkid.com is our website. We have almost a thousand hours of free content up there. Really, really, really deep dives. You know, we have a lot of lists. We had over 6,000 listeners from college counselors every month. And we've had almost 20 that have been through all these UCLA training programs that that are out there, UCI, Irvine, Berkeley. We've had about 20 of them tell us they've learned more from our podcast than their, you know, their whole certificate. That's great. If someone might be interested in a free consultation, text me. I like text 404 664 4340. Just shoot me a text, 404 664 4340. We ask that. Anyone reviews our website first, which is schoolmatch number fourletter U.com. Review our services, look at everything, and then make sure any other decision maker is on the call. We do a 30-minute complimentary call just to make sure we're a good fit. So if you're interested in possibly consulting, I would go that route. If you want to get great free information, I interview all the industry giants. We ask the really tough questions. I tell you what, the episode that's going live tomorrow, you know, it'll be out by the time this airs, 644. That'd be a good one for someone to listen to to get a sense of the kind of conversations we have. But we're we're always trying to unpack this process and explain how the sausage is made. And I think your listeners would would find it to be helpful. We're we do have the most downloads of any college admissions podcast, you know, in the country, according to Apple, Spotify, and all the services. So I'm not saying we're the best, but I'm saying that we the most. Yeah, but some people out there are finding value to us. There's a lot of other fantastic ones as well. Well, if you ever need someone on AP, let me know. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. What's what's your area specialty on AP?

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Well, so I was predominantly AP history, but we've grown the company to support 27 AP subjects, kind of using a very similar process. But yeah, the AP history exam. I was a history, I was an IB and AP history teacher. Yeah. Before moving into administration. But then kind of got back into it. The pandemic got really good at it. So that's kind of our process with AP.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

I appreciate what you're doing here. Like, I, you know, like I'm very passionate about this. I love helping people with this process. It's fun to me. And uh, but it's complex and knowledge really is power. And when people get that knowledge, you know, it it's wonders what it can do for for kids. It's incredibly important that people have the right college list. That's the single biggest mistake I see is the wrong list. Everything everything goes down with the deck of cards. I can have a kid with a 1570 SAT 4.0, and they're totally depressed after this process because they have the right college list. I can have a kid with like a 27 and a 900 SAT. And and I'm literally thinking of someone right now who says, This is just so great. It just feels good having so so many people love you. And the way they're courting me, and then they end up walking away feeling better about themselves, all because one kid had the right list and the other kid didn't.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Oh, where you're wanted. I think that's probably the biggest thing. I had a kid who we dabbled in this of like a 3-1 and wanting to go to Florida and uh NYU. I'm like, it's just the cake, I call it the cake is baked in your senior year. Like, there's not we're not moving the needle here. So, like, but there are a lot of schools that will take you. And especially like I I would go, if you're gonna be a doctor, go as cheap as possible for undergrad. Like it's like no one cares where you went to undergrad. They care that you have a doctor, you're gonna be a that you're a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

So but Mark And there's some places that you can go where that have a great track record of placing kids in med school that that give that give great packages, you know, too. So, right, the average acceptance rate is 73% out there. There's lots of schools out there that you know that there's a school out there for every kid. And it's not just go where you're want it, it's know this process well enough so you're able, especially if you're a DIYer, so that you know how to self-assess whether or not you have a chance. Because most people underestimate the competition, they overestimate themselves. And if you figure with 20, you know, 26,000, 28,000 high schools out there, that's 56,000 kids, number one or number two in their class. And they all tend to apply to the same 20 schools. So people really need to properly know how to assess what are my chances at the schools of interest. And that's probably the single biggest mistake that I see that people make.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Awesome. Mark, thank you for your time. Great meeting you.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Hopefully we'll be in touch and uh we'll see you next time. I love this stuff. Anytime you need me, uh I'm pretty passionate about it. Thanks for having me on, Joe. All right. Well, thank you all for joining the Supported Learning Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

We'll see you next time. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.