Issue date: August 26, 1998
By JENNIFER DESAI
It's only August, but Menlo Park college counselor Betsy Frederick is already thinking about January. "Most college applications are due at the beginning of January," she says. "We have clients who have been working on theirs since their junior year, but there's always a crush of people coming in who are just getting started now."
A few blocks away on Oak Grove Avenue, Nevin Lantz is concluding his first seminar for teens who have taken a comprehensive set of tests and exercises designed to assess their strengths, interests -- and, possibly, majors in college. "Kids are subjected to standardized testing, but that doesn't always give the full picture," he says. "Most college and career counseling looks at a person from the outside in, but I think you have to look from the inside out to find what you're really best at, what you want to do."
Test-preparation services like Princeton Review and Stanley Kaplan have long tutored high school students preparing to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which most colleges require as part of their admissions criteria; more recently, "learning centers" like Sylvan and Score have begun to target a middle-school crowd anxious to learn study skills and boost their grades.
For all the tutoring firms -- both national chains and independent businesses -- that have sprung up on the Peninsula in the past few years, there are only a few companies that offer college counseling, and they're all in Menlo Park.
"This is an affluent area, and one that's very focused on academic achievement," Betsy Frederick says. "Many parents send their children to us because they don't want to miss out on any opportunity to help their kids get into school."
For Ms. Frederick, the president and co-founder of College Counseling Service, and Nevin Lantz of The Highlands Program, college counseling is a business. Using their arsenals of information, motivation -- and, as necessary, what Ms. Frederick describes as hand-holding -- both say they can make the process productive, if not exactly enjoyable. And while neither service is cheap, for parents who are looking at four years of college tuition in their future, a few hundred dollars more can seem trivial by comparison.
College Counseling Service
"I'd been a guidance counselor in the San Carlos public school system for 12 years, and they'd recently limited counselors to just one per school," she says. "With that level of staffing, being a guidance counselor is limited more to attendance and behavior problems than long-term planning."
In the years since, the business has grown to a staff of seven counselors and co-founder Barbara Menta has started her own office in Redwood City, but the focus has remained pretty much the same, Ms. Frederick says.
"We try to educate our kids to keep their options open. And we try to let them know from the start which schools on their lists will be a reach for them, which are likely bets, and which are backups. It helps prevent real crises later on."
About half her clients are from public schools, and half from private. "We have seven counselors here, which is more than many public schools," Ms. Frederick says. "And we have students from private schools, which often have strong counselors of their own." She estimates that, at peak season, she'll have 20 to 25 seniors on her client list, as well as the 10 to 15 walk-ins who need emergency help with their essays. "We try to accommodate them as we can, but we do give priority to the students who are part of the ongoing program," she says.
Ms. Frederick has a master's degree in counseling and guidance. But the backbone of her business success, she says, is firsthand knowledge about the colleges to which her clients are likely to apply. Her staff of counselors crisscrosses the country looking at colleges, talking to students, and getting a sense of what campus life is like. "The viewbooks really do start to look alike after a while," Ms. Frederick says.
The counselors travel in spring, well before the autumn blitz of desperate seniors begins. This year, the Virginia schools were in April; Southern California took up most of the month of May; London schools were in June (the counselors do visit a limited number of programs abroad, including a few in France); and a trip to soak up the Minnesota scene is scheduled for this October. "California kids are funny," Ms. Frederick says. "Either they want to stay in California or they want to go all the way East; unless they have some Midwest in their background, the only schools they'll consider there are U. Michigan or maybe Northwestern."
Ms. Frederick says students should ideally start thinking seriously about their college choices during junior year -- when many students take their first crack at the dreaded SAT -- and perhaps visit schools over the summer. Her company offers a program for juniors, in which students meet with their counselor six or seven times for aid in researching colleges, doing practice interviews on videotape, or discussing individual admissions concerns the student might have.
"You get the whole range of students," Ms. Frederick says. "There are some really focused kids who know they're going on to 7 years of medical school, and then there are some who just have no clue."
For students who are completely unsure about possible careers, there's a one-hour vocational interest test to give students a sense of where their interests might take them.
"It's really a tool for them to start thinking," Ms. Frederick says. "For example, if the test shows a strong interest in something like accounting, we might look at the job market, and look into which schools offer the best accounting program."
She's cautious about specializing too soon, though. "Typically, kids change majors several times in college; you don't want them to limit their options too much."
For seniors, Ms. Frederick offers a structured program which meets every week or two during the critical autumn months, as well as counseling on an hourly basis.
"The essay is a really important part of the process: I tell students it's the one part of the package they can control. By senior year, the grades are in place, and the SATs are pretty much where they're likely to be. But the essay is where they can really shine," she says.
Students can look at sample essays and critique them before writing their own applications. Readers and counselors critique student essay drafts and suggest improvements, as well. "We try to get the kids thinking like admissions officers. Last year, Stanford had 50 applicants with perfect 1,600 scores on their SATs, and they only accepted about half of them. There have to be other factors that influence the final decision," she says.
For all the stress that can come with counseling college-bound students, Ms. Frederick says she loves every part of the process. "I get to do exactly what I like most. And there's always a happy ending when you help someone get where they want to go."
Hourly rates at College Counseling Service are $100. A one-on-one SAT prep course costs $650; the junior/senior program, which meets in the spring of junior year and fall of senior year, costs $2,500. A senior year program is $2,000.
The Highlands Program
The Highlands Program began in 1994 in Atlanta, when founders Bob D. McDonald and Don Hutcheson -- who were experiencing mid-life career crises of their own at the time -- went looking for a program that blended career counseling, personal introspection, and the more quantitative information clinical testing can measure. Finding none, they founded the program, which now has some 80 licensees across the country. Many licensees work primarily with corporate clients or adults who are searching for a new career, but the program is now branching out to a younger clientele.
"This is not therapy," says Nevin Lantz, a clinical psychologist who says his many clients suffering from career burnout attracted him to become a counselor with the program. "The stereotype of therapy is that you undergo it when there's something wrong. This is a way of being proactive, of figuring out where your strengths are."
After 20 years of private practice, Mr. Lantz became a Highlands Program licensee in 1995. This summer he is completing his first workshop for teens; eight clients completed the seminar and testing, and Mr. Lantz says the calls from interested parents are picking up as the fall approaches. "It's hard to schedule the seminar portion of the workshop during the summer," he says. "Everyone's schedules are different, and there's the problem of vacation. It's been really difficult just getting everyone in the same room."
The abilities battery -- and the two-hour feedback session in which the results are explained in detail -- are part of a process that stresses identifying internal motivations and abilities. "The whole person is like a jigsaw puzzle," Mr. Nevin says. "For many of us, those pieces are scattered around, some of them face down so the picture can't be seen, some of them in separate rooms. This process at least helps get the pieces all on the same table."
Students participate in four three-hour sessions dealing with other facets of themselves -- including family background, goal-setting, and values -- to help kids construct a more focused vision of their futures, or at least areas they'd like to try.
The Highlands Program doesn't offer specific advice about particular colleges or programs; the emphasis here is on finding the individual student's strengths and seeing where they might lead. "If students go to college with two or three clear ideas for their future or career goals, they can greatly increase their chances of enjoying college and being successful," Mr. Lantz says.
Self-knowledge isn't cheap: the test and two-hour feedback session cost $500, and the seminars are an additional $850. A lengthier set of seminars for career-changing adults is $1,500.
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