Alex

What’s a piece of advice that you would give a high school freshman as far as leading up to that meeting? What can they do throughout their sort of high school career to best prepare themselves for that meeting with you? 

Rana

I would tell students to try their best, challenge themselves academically, get involved in extracurriculars that they are really interested in. So that’s generally the advice. Then, from that, people go and do crazy and bizarre things. But doing that and still being a high school student, still having fun in your life, still sleeping and eating and not stressing themselves to the point of illness I don’t know, like, this is the Cold War or something. 

Alex

Do you have any stories of triumph or perhaps also failure that you’d like to share? 

Rana

One of the stories of triumph for me was a student who I worked with who was bipolar, who had been suspended in high school three times but really wanted to go to college. But he had made a relationship with a psychologist or psychiatrist he was seeing, and he thought at the time that he might want to major in psychology and become some kind of counselor to work with students. So he was motivated despite all of his problems. And I was thinking like, okay, this isn’t going to be so easy. He ended up going to Kutztown, which is a public in Pennsylvania. He ended up doing really well there and he was able to transfer to Rutgers in the middle of his college career. 

Kids of that age are learning to become independent people. That means they need to separate from their parents, which is a natural and healthy thing to do at that age, which makes it difficult in many cases for the parents to be the one helping the student, even if they are knowledgeable. 

Alex

Absolutely. How do you alter your approach for alternative learning styles or ADHD?

Rana

In terms of the student? I like to talk to them and find out what they think their strengths are and their weaknesses, and how they learn best. The way I work with them might change based on how they work best in terms of do they listen? Do they need to see things in writing? Do they need to have a big picture of what’s coming up? But also in terms of understanding what their learning differences are and what accommodations they have in high school and talking to them about how college and high school differ in terms of accommodations and to make them understand that it’s not a smart idea. It’s not a good idea to say, oh, I’m not going to take any accommodations in college because I’m going to be a new me, when really their needs probably will not have changed. It’s a difficult transition for any student and more so for someone who has a learning difference or ADHD, some of them will probably have to do with what accommodations they need. 

Alex

Do you alter your approach for students with anxiety, particularly, I’m curious, with clinical anxiety? 

Rana

Anxiety has some of the same criteria, and it’ll vary a lot depending. Is it general anxiety? Is it test anxiety? Is it social anxiety? How they are dealing with it? Are they under the care of a psychologist or a psychiatrist? And then what will their needs be in college? Are there things that I can do to make the meetings more comfortable for them? Am I going to make them anxious? I try to break down the process into small, manageable pieces. I sometimes find that I have students who something has happened to them during the day and they just can’t focus at a particular meeting, in which case I say, okay, well, we’ll have to reschedule on a day that’s better for you. 

Alex

One thing that stuck out to me in my conversation with Rana about implementation was the way that she described the process of picking schools for kids as being both a sort of art and a science. There’s certainly some deduction, I guess, that happens as far as which schools have a strong fine arts program, was the example that she used, a good swimming program if you’re really into swimming. There are some finite sort of qualities of schools that you have, but then there’s also an art to it as well. And I think this is why educational consultants make such an effort to visit so many campuses, because you want to get the feel of a campus as well. And I really think that’s an underrated part of where a kid ends up at school and whether or not they thrive there. One thing that we brought up in segment number two was the negotiation between, sort of, parent and child. And I think every parent and child relationship is different, which is what makes this such a complex process. But I think finding a way to negotiate that really determines the success of the placement at the end of the day. You know, how much the parent steps back or is involved in the college process itself, the financial piece of that, how much is the parent involved in that or not involved? I think every situation is different, though. There are some patterns, but it can get very sticky, I think. I think really that’s where good educational consultants separate themselves from average ones.