Should You Work with an IEC (Independent Educational Consultant)? With Kristina Dooley – College Bound Mentor Podcast #38

Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #38 and you’ll hear us talk whether you should work with an IEC (Independent Educational Consultant) with Kristina Dooley. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #38: Should You Work with an IEC (Independent Educational Consultant)? With Kristina Dooley

An IEC (Independent Educational Consultant) can be a huge help on your student’s high school & college journey. How do you know whether an IEC is right for you – and what should you look for in an IEC? In this episode, we welcome on Kristina Dooley, a Certified Educational Planner and Founder of Estrela Consulting – a multi-consultant educational consulting firm based in Ohio. In addition to her 18 years of experience as an IEC, Kristina has previously served as a college admission officer, a school-based college counselor, and as a Past President of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). Here’s a small sample of what you’ll hear in this episode:

• Hear what an IEC actually does
• The dynamic between school counselors & IECs
• Key questions to ask an IEC to find out if they’re the right fit
• The drastic ways the industry has changed in the last 5 years
• And why campus visits are more essential than ever.

Connect with Kristina at EstrelaConsulting.com and on LinkedIn, and Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

• Should You Work with an IEC (Independent Educational Consultant)? With Kristina Dooley
  • [0:19] Welcome to the College Bound Mentor
  • [1:17] What is an Independent Educational Consultant (IEC) and what do they do?
  • [1:55] Common myths about educational consultants
  • [3:06] How IECs differ from high school counselors
  • [4:48] The counselor’s role when a student also works with an IEC
  • [6:30] Building strong IEC–school counselor relationships
  • [7:23] How associations like NACAC and IECA foster collaboration
  • [10:54] Key questions families should ask when hiring an IEC
  • [12:24] What not to ask – focusing too much on outcomes
  • [15:33] How AI (Artificial Intellligence) is changing college counseling and application review (Common App, AI in education)
  • [18:01] Will short-form video interviews (like InitialView Glimpse) reshape admissions?
  • [22:26] The pros and cons of virtual campus visits (Campus tours)
  • [24:46] The “TikTok effect” on admissions advice – and how to separate facts from hype
  • [28:32] Which families really need an IEC (and which might not)
  • [32:22] What surprised Kristina most as IECA President
  • [34:32] Insights from her NACAC presentation on counselor advisory boards
  • [36:58] Emerging college admissions trends (testing policies, Southern migration, etc.)
  • [41:46] How private equity is reshaping the IEC industry
  • [42:58] Why consultants must now track college financial health (IPEDS, College Scorecard)
  • [46:12] Final reflections – connection, collaboration, and boundaries
  • Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00
Hey, CBMers. Welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa. Abby.

02:43
And on today’s episode, we’re going to chat with Kristina Dooley about how to find an educational consultant and what exactly an educational consultant does. Kristina Dooley is a certified educational planner and founder of Estrela Consulting, a multi-consultant educational consulting firm based in Ohio. In addition to her 18 years of experience as an IEC, Kristina has previously served as both a college admissions officer and as a school-based college counselor. Kristina is the past president of the Independent Educational Consultant Association, IECA.

03:13
and holds membership in NACAC, OACAC, and the International ACAC. So welcome, Kristina. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. Yeah, it’s our pleasure. It’s our pleasure. So why don’t we start off just for those who are listening. may not know. What actually we call it an IEC. What is an IEC? So an independent educational consultant, the way that I explain it to people who look at me kind of funny when I tell them what I do for a living is that

03:43
Essentially, we support students through a variety of different educational searches. Many of us work in the college planning space, so working with students going through the college search and application process, but there are also educational consultants who help with things like independent and boarding school searches, therapeutic program searches, grad school searches, really a lot of different variations. But I’d say the vast majority of educational consultants are working primarily with kids looking at colleges.

04:11
And what do you think are some myths and truths about what an IEC will do, can do, value, et cetera? I would say probably the one that I hear most often is that there’s an assumption that IECs are completing the application pieces for students, that they’re filling in the applications, they’re writing the essays, they’re doing all the things and then handing it over to a student to then turn it in as their own work. And I would say that’s

04:38
That’s probably the greatest myth. the unfortunate piece of it is that there are bad players in our industry that are doing that. The vast majority of us are not and are held to ethics codes by our professional associations that I think we’d follow anyway, even if we weren’t members of those organizations. But unfortunately, there are some people out there not doing great things and doing exactly what people maybe are assuming educational consultants do. um I think the other myth that I

05:07
that I think about often because I worked in a school is a lot of people assume that we fully replace school counselors and that’s just not the case. There’s a lot of things that we don’t do and that are not part of our tasks when we’re working with students that the school counselor really needs to be involved in a part of. So I think those are two major ones. And it’s interesting because a lot of families will ask, usually it’s when they’re at a private school, but even at a public school, what do you do that’s different?

05:36
than the college counselors at our high school? Like we’re paying all this money, why do we need you? What would you tell them? I think that the main piece of it is that if we look at student to counselor ratios in US public schools, especially, not so not, I’ll talk about private schools in a second, but I think in public schools, thinking about just the counselors capacity to really dig deeply into. oh

06:00
individualized lists with students, for example, that may be hard, especially if students are looking at very specific types of majors or programs, that takes a lot of research hours to do that. And then also just even the evaluation process of what the students put together in their applications, the essays, the activity list, if they’re putting together any supplemental essays, all those things, that’s a lot of time for one school counselor, two school counselors to be handling. So I think that’s where, that’s big difference.

06:27
I think in terms of private schools, know we actually have great relationships with a lot of private school counselors. And when they refer students to us, it isn’t so that they can hand them off. It’s actually really so that we can work in tandem with them to put together a really solid school list. And maybe there are schools that they are not familiar with. Even private school counselors don’t necessarily have the time or capacity to visit schools the way that independent educational consultants do, because this is our.

06:54
our only job. not handling things like course scheduling. We’re not handling things like setting up PSAT tests. And so we have some additional time to be able to get out onto campuses and really have a broader sense of what’s available out there. What would you say then, along those lines, is the role of the high school counselor when a student is also working with an IEC?

07:18
That’s a great question. uh I for me, the school counselor is an integral part of the process because not only do they do what we’d say is kind of like the the office functions like sending of of transcripts and uh school profile recommendations and all of those kind of administrative things, but I do think that the school counselor actually can play a significant role in a lot of students processes because.

07:43
They are essentially in the school setting with the students. understand the curriculum within the school. They understand the trajectory that the students been on academically and why that has happened. Sometimes consultants, independent educational consultants start working with students maybe as sophomores or juniors. And so they may not have the full scope of the picture of why was that student placed in that math trajectory as a freshman? And so I think I’ve had

08:09
great conversations with school counselors about some of that back information, which is helpful to me in recommending options to them or even things like if a student has a diagnosed learning difference and they are getting some accommodations in school, the school counselor can help give some context around what does that look like and what do they see in terms of needs for that student going forward. So I do think that’s why it’s so I do think it’s important that IECs start to bridge gaps in relation.

08:36
build relationships with school counselors, especially in their own communities, because we’re all really trying to help the students as a team. And so I try to stress that a lot, maybe I have rose-colored glasses, but I have those relationships with school counselors, and I find it really valuable. And how have you developed them? Because we’re totally open to it, and we love to have that. But sometimes we’re seen as, I don’t know, there’s just sort of this divide between the school counselors and the IECs. And you were a school counselor.

09:05
So I don’t know if that helps a little bit, but what have you done? How have you done that to prove that? That’s a great question. don’t have a secret sauce, but I think the main thing is I’ve gone into my outreach to schools assuming that they’ll look at me as a peer. I try not to go in thinking that they’re gonna think of me as a negative in that process.

09:31
Of course, you’re 100 % correct. I’ve certainly had school counselors that don’t appreciate my involvement with a family. And that is what it is. But what I have found has worked in terms of kind of bridging those or building relationships with school counselors is I have worked really hard to become involved in a lot of the same professional associations that they’re in, like NACAC, for example, or my regional ACAC, which I think is important for them to see you in the same spaces.

10:01
and know that you’re learning in a lot of those same ways that they are. The other way, and this is kind of unique maybe to us, is that we actually have started just a few years ago doing some intentional outreach to school counselors where when we’re offering programming, whether that’s webinars, whether that’s in-person events, we add them to email lists.

10:25
with their permission, we’ll send them information. And they have been actually very grateful for that. When we host a webinar on something like aviation programs or performing arts programs or highly selective admissions, they are thankful, I think, because they don’t have the bandwidth or time to be able to put together programming like that to share with their families. And we very intentionally make those kinds of.

10:49
professional development things or webinars or events. We tried very much to not make them overly promotional for Estrella. Estrella Consulting is the name of my business. We try not to push that on people in those. We really want them to feel more educational. We have also, and it’s interesting the timing of us chatting now because we just held our second, we’re now calling it our second annual because we’ll continue it going on from this year, uh a day long.

11:17
workshop for administrators in local school districts. We did it last year at the request of a local assistant superintendent who said, know, when families are upset about something happening in our school district about college stuff, they call the superintendent’s office or they call the principal. And oftentimes those people don’t really know the landscape of higher ed and don’t really know how to respond to those parents who are upset about something that

11:41
in many cases is actually a non-event. It’s something that they really, yes, they’re upset, but it’s emotional, it’s less fact-based. so this assistant superintendent basically asked us if we could put a workshop on for administrators to really give them an understanding in a succinct way about what does the college process look like in 2025 or 2026? What does that look like? What should be?

12:08
we’d be paying attention to as a district in terms of our educational programming, our um staffing, all of those things, what we’re allowing our school counselors to do. And so we did that last year. It was excellent. We had about 50 people who attended from almost 30 different school districts.

12:23
We had a second, district who asked us to do it in their district this year. We did it again. It was equally fabulous before I arrived home from that event this year. I had an email from another district saying, please bring that to our district. give a new business model there, because they had no idea they doing. That’s awesome. Yeah, but there were many school counselors there too, and that was great. think them seeing us presenting information and us really demonstrating our expertise helped. Maybe if they had some negative feelings about

12:53
independent educational consultants seeing my colleagues and I presenting on topics like financial aid, testing, all those kinds of things. I think it maybe changed some of their perceptions about what we do and just the amount of work that we actually really do put into becoming well-versed professionals in this space. That’s excellent. Yeah. It’s really cool. So um if a family is asking, and we all get these calls, right?

13:21
Families will always say, well, did I miss anything? What else should I ask? So what do you think would be, I don’t want to put you on the spot, but like sort of three to five key questions that you think a family should ask to try to understand if it’s the right fit for them? For me, a very important thing I mentioned, there are people who, a lot of people refer to them as dabblers in our space, know, people that aren’t, that are doing this.

13:49
because maybe they’ve had a child that’s gone through the process and they have suddenly become an expert in college planning. I think it’s really important if you’re vetting an IEC to know their credentials. What are they involved in? Are they part of a professional association that requires them to sign an ethics code annually? I think that’s important. know people, there are some IECs who feel that they don’t need to be affiliated with an organization. And I think that that is a big mistake. I think it’s important and I think families should be asking that kind of thing.

14:17
I think asking things about how are you learning about schools and financial aid and all of those things? How do you stay up on what’s happening in this space? Any different than a parent could be doing? What would make it different than a parent Googling the answers to something or using AI to generate a college list? I think parents should be asking, how are you learning things that I’m not gonna know? ah And I think that’s really important. And there’s a lot of answers to that. We visit campuses and obviously we…

14:46
participating in professional conferences. I don’t know how many webinars we listen to in a year or more podcasts like this. I think oh that’s really important as well. And I think one of the things that is a question that I would, if I may say a question that I actually wish families would not focus on, and that is solely outcomes.

15:09
I wish families wouldn’t say how many of your students have gotten into XYZ University, because that has no bearing on their child. It’s not us getting kids in. That’s the other thing. It kind of makes my skin call and we say, we got them in. Because I don’t get kids in anywhere. They get in a Exactly. They get themselves in with our help. They sort of work and they get. Exactly. I know that’s one of my pet peeves as well. I just had a conversation yesterday.

15:37
Like, what’s your, you know, what’s your mid-grade or what’s your success rate? And I was like, you know what, it’s really just depends on the student. mean, sometimes students are reaching too high, which there’s no, I said, I’m not magical. We can’t like make them something that they’re not, but if someone’s appropriately reaching and you know, then we’re going to help them get into the right fit for them, right?

16:00
So that is a great point about the, you what is your success rate? Cause it varies so much by student and by what the needs of the student and the family is, you know? I just got how many of your kids get into the Ivy leagues. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And I think the Ivy leagues aren’t right for the vast majority of kids. So that actually makes sense to us. But I think, and we’ve had kids go to the Ivies, but we don’t lead with that because that’s not, again, it’s not, in fact, for me, oh

16:29
My favorite statistic annually, if you ask our team, what is the thing that I really focus on? It’s typically either one of two things. One, the number of different colleges where our students are accepted and also new colleges to our list. I love when we can say we’ve got 12 colleges that have just been added to our list of schools where students have been admitted that have never been on our list before. And that’s to me indicative of us truly finding fit for kids because it.

16:55
Just because we have this list, it’s not cookie cutter. We don’t have 20 schools that every kid should be applying to. It just doesn’t, it shouldn’t work that way. Of course, you know, depending on where you’re located regionally, you may have flagship schools that everyone is applying to. It’s kind of just a thing, right? But I think when you’re able to identify other schools and, and I just, I get excited about those kinds of opportunities to help kids find schools that are not necessarily those ones that.

17:23
everyone is applying to. Especially when you go visit a school and you’re always thinking like, would this, which of my clients in my list might this, you know, fit? And then maybe it doesn’t even happen until a year or two later where you meet a student, you’re like, my God, this would be there. Like, this is a place for you. And I love when families will say, you know what, you helped me. And in our minds, like we know all these schools, right? So it doesn’t seem like it’s such an unusual school, but like a family will say,

17:52
you know, we went the school, I’d never even heard of it before you. And it was like Wesleyan, you know, it was like, never even heard of the school. was like the perfect fit for my child. And for me, when I met that person, I was like, oh, that’s the school for you. And it was, it didn’t seem like it was such a big stretch because it was just, I kind of have that art and the science of making the match, right? Which I think AI is doing a pretty good job, but I still feel like there’s not that sort of um intuition, I guess. Right. Yep. Inaction. Yeah.

18:22
For sure. um Okay, switching topics a little bit. ah I think this could be its own uh podcast, but how have you seen the industry change in the last five years? My head is being flooded with overwhelmed changes that I’m thinking about now. if you were to say uh the few biggest changes that have really impacted your work, what would you say?

18:52
I think certainly AI has changed a lot of things. I think it will continue to change things. I don’t think we’ve seen even a little snippet of it yet in terms of how it’s going to change our work. And I think there’s people that I think are helping our, especially our industry, learn how to use AI to supplement what we do versus replace it. And also how to teach our students uh ways to use AI.

19:21
to support their processes without feeling like that’s going to be the thing that’s going to guide me 100%, you know, that I’m going to just plug something in and be able to go with it. I think also it’ll change the application review process. know there’s, uh during the workshop we presented recently to school administrators, we talked about, that was the main question that came up from school counselors and administrators is how our college is using AI to review applicants, not,

19:50
how our applicants using it, but how our college is using it. And there aren’t many schools that have come out publicly with how they’re using it. think they’re a little leery of saying how they’re using it, but some have. And I shared an anecdote from the Daily Tar Heel that UNC had. They basically did, they said, this is how we’re using it. We’re using it to evaluate essays at the front end and assign an essay score.

20:16
And there was a screenshot that they shared that a student had gone in to their file and they were able to see how that was used. And I’ve heard of other schools, obviously, that are schools that have hard and fast requirements in terms of like requirements, you four years of English, three years of math, you know, that kind of thing. And having AI kind of do a first pass of the transcripts to make sure those basic things are there. And that makes sense to me with the broad number of applications that are out there. uh

20:40
But I think the other thing that’s changing, and maybe this is an impact of AI, is I actually have said this a couple times recently, that I think we will start to see major shifts in terms of essay work with students and the value of the essay and the process for that reason. But I think many schools and like Glimpse, for example, from initial view has come on the scene in terms of bringing people. uh

21:05
you know, a visual and actual personality to the student. How do you get that without having a 30 minute in-person interview, which colleges just don’t have the capacity to do that anymore. And so these glimpse videos, think, I think they’re onto something with that. I think that that could potentially be some one way that they are, our profession starts changing as we may have to, as IECs, for example, start learning how to help students be able to do their elevator pitch, you know, or do something that’s like a 30, you know, or 60 to

21:35
second to a minute. I feel like that’s hard for a lot of kids to do that. I mean, some kids are natural at doing it, but I think it puts a lot of pressure on kids who aren’t perhaps as strong visually or strong on video. Some kids, it’s like second nature to them, but some kids, it’s a challenge. And I think it is all of these different things. I had heard, and I hadn’t validated this, but someone said that they heard that there was going to be a…

22:00
basically a prompt that would show up on a screen and the kid would have to write their essay right there and then. Have you heard that? I have seen that actually. I had a student applying to a university and she was applying to engineering program. She had to log on at a certain time and the prompts would pop up and it was recorded also. So she was also being recorded. Her keystrokes were being, it was all recorded and they were just short answer prompts.

22:26
They weren’t overly challenging, but very anxiety inducing. will say that she reported back afterwards. uh That was, em oh, of course I’m going to blank on which school it was. I want to say University of Toronto, but I feel like you need to fact check me on that. ah It was an international institution. uh But I will say for her, it was the questions, she said they were not challenging, but again, it was.

22:53
She didn’t know what to expect. There wasn’t much given to her in advance about what those questions would be. They weren’t hard, though. They were very almost, almost if you picture the supplemental 150 word essay, but even slightly shorter, kind of very direct question. And I could see schools doing that. But again, I don’t know. I imagine that that’s just a technology.

23:18
technological evaluation of some sort that’s doing that, not a human necessarily evaluating those. don’t know. I’m not sure how that. Yeah, I don’t know what that’s going to be. They have those in, you know, for medical school, they have like MMI, but it’s more that they put out the prompt and then you have to respond, but you’re doing it. Some of it isn’t writing, but most of it is verbally. So yeah, it’s being for that. So that brings up an issue for people who have learning challenges who aren’t able to it down. so.

23:47
Yeah, and I think a lot of those things, know, when we think about the there’s we think about essays and that’s a challenge for some students. And then you think about verbal things or you think about things like that. think there’s I don’t know if schools will have to have different options for students to choose from, which I think would make sense because students could choose what their comfort level is with different things. But I think that’s definitely that’s going to that. I just can’t imagine a world where five to 10 years from now

24:17
we will have a 650 word common app essay. And that is, it’s hard for me to think that that’s still gonna go away completely. Yeah, I don’t think it’ll, I don’t know if it’ll go away completely, but like I said, I wonder if it will become an option, know, that we’ve got a couple different ways that you can demonstrate something. I mean, you also think about the schools that are asking for students to submit graded papers, you know, there’s so many different things, I guess. And some students,

24:47
You know, I never want to say something that’s like, oh, it’s not fair. like having the same set of standards for every student when it’s, when students are given the ability to be educated differently and express their aptitudes differently in the educational settings that they’re in in high school, and then expecting them all to have the exact same something, I think is a little, I don’t know. I don’t know.

25:14
I don’t know what that’s going to look like. wish I did. wish I could say and it’s is hard and I will actually say and I think you might know this Lisa, but like I have 9th. I have triplets myself that are in 9th grade and I struggle to even think about what their college application is going to look like. You know, I I think it will be very similar to what’s happening now, but I, for example, I mentioned like glimpse videos.

25:36
I already am thinking, oh gosh, what would my kids talk about in a glimpse video? What, they talk about me? So thinking about that kind of thing and how different that is um in terms of the process. think the other thing that’s changed in going back to the question about what’s changed in our profession or industries, I think they’re just the sheer number of people doing this work.

26:05
the access to information. We do a lot of things virtually. One of the things I’ve heard so much lately is, there still value in actually physically going to visit campuses? And I’m just the campus visit junkie. So I feel like, gosh, I wouldn’t want to do this work if I was just learning everything through a screen. I feel like that wouldn’t, for me, work. But I think it’s broadened the number of people that can do this work, maybe.

26:33
because they do have access to things virtually. But I think that if you go, there’s nothing that replaces a campus visit because even if you see it really, even if you watch videos, et cetera, it’s not the same as being on campus and seeing the vibe and he’s dropping on students, talking to students and really just seeing what it feels like on that campus. Because I’ve had such different perceptions of a school until I go visit it. And then I visited and I have a completely different idea of who would

27:03
whom it would serve well and what are the students like and what’s the experience gonna be like? And it changes over time. Like, you you go back to schools and you visit them and they’re like, oh I agree. And it’s a feeling. It’s kind of the same gut you’d get if you’re interviewing for a job. You can’t quite articulate why you feel like it’s a good fit. I’ll never forget when my son showed up on the campus that he ended up attending. He graduated a couple of years ago. It wasn’t even on his list. And he was just on it. You know, we were doing a trip and I was visiting some schools for work.

27:32
And we went to the one that he thought was his number one choice. And he was like, yikes, this doesn’t feel quite right. it wasn’t Lisa was working with him and Lisa the whole time been like, you know, that’s not the school for him. I’m like, I know, but he’s got to figure that out for himself. And then we went to the school that he ended up going to. And before anything happened, before he even saw a person, it was literally nothing like he described. And he was like, this is it. And I was like, what, what, what, what about it? What about it? he was like, can’t, can’t explain it. I feel like I’m home. I’m like, okay. And you know what? He was super right.

28:03
Yeah. Well, I think one of the industries our industry often gets compared to are realtors. And I think it’s a good analogy, actually, because it is like if you just had a, you know, just going on to Zillow and looking at the listing, you know, you’re not seeing the neighborhood, you’re not seeing the cracks in the foundation, you’re not seeing, you know, all those things, but that’s where we can say to them, hey, I’ve been there. You really need to go because here’s what’s, like, here’s what you’re not seeing just through that little snapshot that you’re getting.

28:32
you know, through an online search or something. Yeah. Speaking of, so I feel like there’s a TikTok effect on our industry that takes many, many um forms. um And Lisa, if there’s something specific that you want to hear about TikTok, for me, when I think about it, I think that there are some like faux experts out there giving questionable advice. And then also the kids are seeing kids talk about their essays and

29:02
everything else. um So I think there’s just like this flood of strangely formatted information out there. Lisa, do you, what’s your take on TikTok? What do you want to hear about? Well, I mean, I think it’s the same thing because people, students will, family students will come and say, oh, I heard this on TikTok or what about this? This is what uh so-and-so said on TikTok or even on social media or whatever it is. And that my essay has to be like this. Yeah. that.

29:31
or this is what I’m supposed to do for that. And so it’s hard as an IEC because you’ve worked with the student, you know the student really well, you understand what drives them and there’s a purpose for what they’re telling or showing in their stories. And then all of a sudden it’s like, this particular, whatever it is has said that it should be like this, but they don’t know the person and they don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. So how have you seen that as well?

30:01
No, I agree with everything you’re just saying about all of that. And I mean, full disclosure, I don’t tick or talk. I don’t either. don’t tick or talk either. Yes, it’s not just students, it’s parents too. You know, that’s the thing too. It’s not just the students that we hear that from anymore, it’s parents too. And I think it’s out of control, but it’s almost, it’s almost, you know, if you think

30:31
Who would, and I’m going to be dating myself saying this, but thinking about what I probably all at some point growing up watched shows like Jerry Springer or Maury Povich or like Ricky Lake or one of those talk shows and hear these things on there and sounds right. It sounds like, and so thinking like, how do you know who the experts are? How do you know? Because someone’s giving them a platform to share that. And obviously with TikTok it’s

30:59
anybody can be doing that. uh And so it’s, I do tell my students, actually some of them will share funny ones with me, they’ll tell me about them that they actually they think are funny because they’re so crazy, that it’s unbelievable. And so I’m hoping that that’s turning is that students are seeing things and they’re starting to realize like that sounds a little bit ridiculous or that. um

31:24
essay topics, you know, that really be what I shou you know? And so at least not just going and doing say I’m actually hearing about like and they don’ it on tiktok. I should sa think are embarrassed to ad

31:44
And then I when I dig a little deeper and it’s not even like a parent Facebook group, which I can say, okay, I understand that, but they’re, won’t admit that they’re seeing it on Tic Tac. Yeah. That’s a really good point too. Lisa. Yeah. For chat, they say, I read it somewhere. I read somewhere that, yeah, I have a, I have a kid working on a Dartmouth essay, why Dartmouth? It’s a hundred words. And he’s like,

32:12
I read somewhere where every essay has to have an anecdote. And I was like, well, if you can pull off an anecdote in a hundred and impactful anecdote in a hundred words, you go for it. But read the question carefully. They’re asking why Dartmouth is a good thing. So yeah, but no, everyone has to have an anecdote. I’m like, okay, if you say so chat or chat GPT, exactly. funny. Okay. Let’s see. Are there,

32:39
Are there occasions where you talk to families and you think, you you don’t really need an IEC or, you you meet people and you’re like, oh, you really need an IEC. So what kinds of families need us and what kind of families um don’t need that kind of support in your mind? I think sometimes the families that reach out where, and I mentioned we have great relationships with a lot of our school counselors in the area. So there are times when I, when what they’re telling me is something that

33:09
Maybe the family doesn’t realize that the school will actually be able to support them fully with that, whatever that need is. uh But I would say even in those cases, a lot of times families feel like they need something to supplement that work. So maybe they’re not using us for a full college planning package. And the way that our services are is we have families who can work with us for three, five, 10, 35 hours. So there’s different options that they can engage our services. So some will.

33:38
hire us, for example, for like a three hour package, but it’s really to supplement the really good work that they’re getting or support they’re getting from their school counselor. I also think sometimes if a student’s application process, if they’re applying to all of our, for example, let’s say they’re applying to all of a state’s, uh state schools that don’t have any additional supplements and the schools are accepting 70 % higher of their applicants. You know, I think there’s situations, I think it’s real.

34:07
It’s individual, of course, depending on the student. I think in situations like that where maybe they just need some direction. They don’t necessarily need uh expertise. It’s almost like they need some of the mechanics. They just need you to help them understand what the process pieces are. But then once they hit submit on that first application, they’re ready to go with the rest of them. And they understand what they need to do. But I think with students, if a school is reviewing an essay, I do think that essay work

34:35
even for those schools that have a higher acceptance rate, but they’re looking at the essay, I do think that we can be helpful with that because I tell students often that that main common FSA, we encourage them to repurpose that for scholarship applications or other things. So I do feel like we can still be helpful in that. So I don’t find a lot of families that reach out to us in particular, where I say to them, you don’t need us, but.

35:03
I also were honest with them about how much they need us, if that makes sense. So I don’t oversell them and say, you need to engage us for this full shebang. families that do need us, it’s when they call and they just are, and I say this in a kind way, spewing misinformation, but it’s been fed to them, where it’s like we.

35:25
Again, maybe that’s through social media, maybe it’s chat GPT, maybe it’s the Friday night football games, they’re hearing all this stuff and they come and we realize we got to correct a lot of that information that they’ve just been fed and direct them in the right way so that they are doing things. And maybe that’s in list development. Maybe they are just really, it’s the list that they’ve told us and that’s on our, we have a questionnaire that our client experience manager asks.

35:51
some of these, it’s a template of questions when she does a discovery call. And one of the questions is, know, are you, do you have already schools that you’re looking at? then uh are you, are, are, the student a legacy and the anticipation is that they’re going to apply to those schools? You know, cause some of that information is very helpful for us to understand their mindset and also the beginnings of what their expectations are for us and whether or not we want to work with them. Because that’s the other thing I tell IECs all the time. You don’t, you don’t have to,

36:20
take on a family. Yeah, that’s a choice. so, yeah, so we’re really specific about, do have families that we will refer out to other consultants or, you know, to the IUCA directory because we’re not the right fit for them. Right. And I think that’s true. It is very much like, you know, finding a college, finding a college consultant, it’s the chemistry and you have to make sure you get up there. What surprised you, I’m going to switch gears a little bit, but what surprised you in your role as the president of IUCA? And for those of, uh

36:49
for our listeners who don’t know, that’s the Independent Educational Consultant Association, which is an association of IECs across the board. So what surprised you in that role? I think what surprised me was, and my presidency was during the pandemic, so I was, a lot of surprises there, but I would say, and I don’t know why this was surprising to me because I know lots of IECs.

37:17
But I was actually really surprised and em infused with excitement about our profession by the way that people supported one another in our profession and continued to do that. Because I felt like, especially during that time, there was just so much shenanigans going on that it was, you know, everyone really needed people, especially those who were independent, truly independent solo practitioners. uh

37:46
needed people and I found that the support network was incredible and also for me, I would say the I felt so supported as president of IECA. I still do to this day. I still have people who are so kind, know, and want to help me as an IEC, but also in my role as a leader in the association. And I never I tell people all the time, the members and the

38:12
committee chairs and the affinity group leaders, the board members, the staff, they all made me look really good. I mean, I was the president, but there was a whole lot of people that were doing great things. And again, there were people I met that I didn’t know. And so was just, it was great to be able to do that, but that support, even how strong the regional groups were, I knew my own regional group, but some of our regional groups in IECA, I mean, they are incredible just in terms of the support network that they provide to one another.

38:42
And that really was, I think, something that was a surprise to me because I didn’t realize how much that was happening in our association. Yeah, we are a very supportive group. guess it’s because we’re all in this profession to help other people. So we like to help each other. I think it’s really nice. So you recently presented at NACAC. What did you present on? Yeah, I presented on creating effective counselor advisory boards.

39:10
And the impetus for that was I’ve served on several counselor advisory boards over the years, which essentially for those who aren’t familiar is counselor advisory boards are groups of school counselors, IECs, CBO representatives, college-bound organizations uh that basically serve to advise admission offices and on things that they should or shouldn’t be doing in terms of recruitment and visits and those kinds of things. And so I’ve been on several over the years and

39:39
have found that they really vary in terms of the, I would say the value that they’re providing to both the institution and to the people participating because everybody is a volunteer. And so I thought it would be helpful to share. We had a panel of people sharing both as a participant and then we had some folks from the college side who shared what they’re doing with their counselor advisory boards and giving advice, everything from.

40:05
How do you choose members? What do you talk about or what do you task people to do when they’re part of that? To even some of the things we even talked about, some of the legal considerations, ethical considerations of having people on a counselor advisory board. And it was great. We was really well attended. In fact, just this morning, I have an email in my inbox from the Ohio Association for College Admission Counseling asking us if we’ll repeat it at the OACAC conference in the spring because it was really well received.

40:33
Well, that’s awesome. Well, good. Well, it seems like you are creating your kind of all of your curriculum to just go across the nation and present. You know, I’m going to take that at least. I didn’t know. But I do all these, you know, a lot of these things are self-serving. It sounds, know, like I, yes, of course it’s great. I love putting together stuff like that to help my peers and colleagues.

40:57
But a lot of the stuff like that, or if I host a webinar or I do something like that, a lot of the times it’s because I want things to be great for me and my colleagues too. If I want to serve on a counselor advisory board and I want it to be useful and I want it to be helpful to them. And so I think, OK, how can we make everyone’s be good? And same thing with this workshop I mentioned earlier with the school counselors and the administrators. want those relationships. I want to be welcomed by my school side peers and all of that.

41:27
Yeah. Okay. Well, given that you’re, you have such a nice broad view of the industry in terms of clients and administrators. uh Can you tell us what are the trends in college admissions that you’re expecting to see? Cause we’re just getting started on hearing about admissions for this year, but what are the trends that you’re expecting to see this year that are different from what we saw last year? So changes.

41:56
Well, I think some of the testing things, think, you know, this right now we’re seeing kind of a slow startup, a boulder starting to roll with schools going back to requiring test scores. And I’m in Ohio, so the Ohio State University is requiring scores for students again starting next year. That’s a big change in my world and truthfully was somewhat unexpected in terms of timing in our space. I don’t know that people thought that they’d always remain test optional, but

42:25
But I think the timing was fairly abrupt, I think, for a lot of people. So I think we’ll see some more of that. again, we’ve just seen some of that in the last couple of weeks. And that’ll change things. I think for us, the biggest change, and this started to happen last year, is this southern migration, the number of students in the Northeast, the Midwest, that are just wanting to all go South. And I don’t know if you guys are seeing that too.

42:55
It’s crazy the schools in the South that used to feel really accessible for kids from Ohio or from other places up here in the Midwest uh that even kids who getting into Ohio State was a challenge and they could get into some of those Southern big SCC schools, for example, and it’s just not the case. They’re just much more selective and that’s going to continue, I think very much. And so, you we saw it with schools like Clemson.

43:22
Obviously some of those other schools like Georgia, some of them already been a little bit selective Tennessee, but I hope.

43:30
There’s a couple of schools I even hate. hesitate to even name them because I don’t want people to. You’ll tell us later. No, the reason I’m hesitant to mention them is because I don’t want students applying to them because those are the schools that have been so wonderful, not just for acceptance, but really generous with merit money and attracting some of our students from here. have students who attend, and I will actually name two of them.

43:55
Alabama and Kentucky, we’ve had students go and especially they get into the honors program, know, or something, those experiences for them are phenomenal. I have kids graduating from those schools who say, oh my gosh, I wouldn’t have changed that for the world, but I did not know that that was even a play. I did not know that. So they’re grateful. Again, that’s where I think the value of an IEC is sometimes students and parents have a view of.

44:20
of what they know those schools. They’ve heard, you they see them on Saturday football games, you know, but they don’t know necessarily some of the guts in terms of the academic potential that’s there. And that’s where I feel like we can really provide that to them. So again, I think that’s probably the like most glaring trend that we’re seeing right now is, oh gosh, what’s happening there? And we’ve got lots of great public institutions, but we’ve seen a lot of kids looking outside of the state.

44:48
Yeah, I was going to say Miami, Ohio. That’s that’s one that I think with kids from the East Coast, that’s always a sort of the southern equivalent. It definitely is. And it’s not the hard thing for us with families from this area is having them understand that some of those schools that were there, you know, I just fill out the paper and I’m in kind of places when they were a plaque when I was growing up here. It’s just not the case. We just even

45:17
We’ve been saying this for, I would say at least probably the last eight years about Ohio State as an example, about Miami certainly is one of them. um Cincinnati is getting very popular day. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot of the schools here that are popular with students from the Northeast and obviously a lot of our private colleges like Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, Case Western, know, we’ve got, Ohio is a great place. can’t It’s a great place. I remember I did a tour of Ohio schools and I really enjoyed that.

45:45
Well, it’s interesting because from, I’m in New Jersey and Abby’s down in Michigan, a lot of kids from New Jersey will go to Ohio State, because that was a school that you could still get into. Like there was an interest of non-Ohians, but New Jerseyans are good. So it is interesting. We just did a trends webinar and we had the same trends that we saw about the push to the Southern and also testing coming back. And the other thing that’s interesting about the testing is that,

46:10
Like we used to have a blanket thing like, okay, you’ve got to send your SAT or ACT scores like three to four weeks before you apply. And then during COVID, we kind of changed the language on that. And I feel like now we have to bring that back because now there are more schools that are requiring official test scores. And so it’s just easier to just be like, just send them out so that you don’t get caught up with not having those tests for a cent. So think that’s good. I don’t know if you have a pulse on this, but how much do you think private equity is impacting our industry?

46:40
I don’t have a great pulse on it. I think the impact of private equity is that this industry that has felt very Main Street to me, like Main Street shops of, walk in and people know you. That’s what I picture of what our industry was when I start. And I think private equity has the potential to change it, to make it feel much more corporate. I see some of my peer companies

47:10
that are being scooped up. And I don’t know. I don’t really have a pulse on it, but if I had to anticipate, that’s kind of the feeling that I have is that it will change that feel of things. Is that a good or bad? I don’t know. mean, certainly there’s an infusion of money to help support and grow and all those things could be helpful, but yeah, I’m not so sure. Yeah, I’m interested to see how it impacts it. So is there any last things or anything else that you want our listeners to know?

47:40
Mm.

47:43
can’t think of any, you guys asked so many great questions. This was very good. No, it was like very, like a lot of topics rolled into one. No, I think you hit so many great things. The only thing I’d say that I think is a hot topic area right now in our space, in IEC space that I have seen change since I started is the need for IECs to be

48:13
more financially adept, like to know what is happening in the financial landscape, but also even things like my colleague at Astrilla just presented to some IECs on financial health of institutions and how do you assess that? I mean, who would have thought that that was something we didn’t have to worry about, but in reality, I know just even in my region, the schools that have been closing or emerging as

48:40
I feel like we have to pay attention to that when IECs are traditionally, not everyone, but many IECs are known to look at some of those smaller private institutions because they’re awesome. And I went to a small private institution. But I think we need to be aware of what’s happening because we don’t want to refer kids somewhere that they have a…

49:08
likelihood of staying open for a year or two, you know, and so I hate that we’re in that situation, but I think that that is an area that is the financial piece. I financial aid and affordability, I think has been you either love it or it’s a pain in your side when you’re in this work.

49:25
In full disclosure that it’s a pain in my side. You know, it’s not an area I’ve ever really loved, but I have this great colleague who loves it. And so we’re a great team in that respect. But but I think it’s a necessarily evil. We have to be paying attention to costs and helping families understand the implications of cost, which I don’t think again, a lot of IECs almost when I started working as my IEC almost 20 years ago, that wasn’t something we weren’t.

49:50
sending net price calculators to people, know, or SAI calculators. We weren’t doing that kind of thing necessarily on the regular. And that is something we are doing all the time in our work now. So I think that’s a major, major change in our industry. Right. And it’s interesting that you said it, because I remember one time I did a survey among my clients and I was like, and I hadn’t really been doing financial aid. This was a while ago. This was probably 15 years ago.

50:16
And that was the one thing that people said, we need to have more information about that. I was like, oh, yes, that absolutely has to be something that we talk about. And I agree with you. is not even, there’s the smaller institutions that are closing or merging or getting acquired or being gifted to schools just out in Lake Tahoe over the summer. And Sierra Nevada, which is a very small college right in Northern Lake Tahoe and Incline Village, was actually gifted to University of Nevada, Reno.

50:45
And so it’s kind of this satellite campus and they’re adding nursing there. And they’re also doing these like Saturdays away or weekends away in Tahoe, which is kind of a cool thing that you wouldn’t see. But on the other side of it, even like the larger, you know, well established like Brown and Hopkins and schools are laying off tons of people. Purdue is, mean, Purdue, there’s a huge, they just got rid of all of their honors faculty.

51:11
So there’s a lot of things that are going on and it is hard to keep track of all of those. So I think that’s a really good point to be aware of that. So, well, thank you CBMers for tuning in and thank you, Kristina, for an amazing episode. It was so great to talk to you. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcasts and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. And if you like what you heard, please rate our podcast to boost our rankings so that more people can find us. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com. Until next time, you got this!