Welcome to College Smart Start. Hi. I'm Jodi Furman, and I'm your host. I'm also an experienced college counselor and a mom of three. I was wanting to go over and kind of give you guys an overview of who I am, what I do, why I do it, and just kind of give you a very kind of casual understanding that we're going to do a deep dive into different episodes. So if you're going to listen to one episode, this is probably the best one to start with. So a little bit of background about me. I'll try to keep that short and sweet. So I was born in Canada, raised in South Florida. I went to undergrad in North Carolina, graduate school in New York. Even though I'm not truly a New Yorker, kind of identify as one my family. I'm a fifth generation New Yorker, so I'm very direct. But I also lived in the South for a while, so I like to be kind to kind of the benefit of both of those places, and so that's kind of who I am. What I do is the following. I help students get into the college of their choice. I can help students whether they're looking for an Ivy League school or MIT or those really highly selective schools. But I also work with students who their goal is to be able to get out of college debt free, to chase merit, to find financial aid, to find the programs that they're looking for. So it's not that I can only work with students who are looking for those schools that have 1, 2, 3, 4% acceptance rates. Really, my goal is that to find the right college for you, not just the best college according to a rating or a ranking, because ultimately it's about fit and yes finances and yes academics and everything else. So it's really about finding your pathway through and the college admissions process has really gotten, frankly insane, and my goal is to bring some sanity and some levity with ethical ways, of course, especially with all the scandals that we've seen over the last couple of years. But college admissions has changed a lot in the last 30 years, since I applied to college, and certainly it's changed a lot in the last three years, with a lot of changes to things like, what is test optional, what is test blind.
And while we're not going to get into all the intricacies and the details today, what we are going to do is get into all of those things in the next few episodes, but just to give you a really high level of understanding about the things that I can and potentially can't help with. And ultimately, strategy is really key, and that strategy has to be driven by what your goal is. It's not one size fits all for a student that is looking at the most selective schools in the country, or a student who's looking to get a full ride. That might be the same student, but the same strategy is not going to work for Harvard, which does, by the way, not give any merit doesn't matter. They do, however, meet financial need versus a school that might be really generous and give a lot of either full tuition or full rides, meaning tuition fees, room and board and everything in between.
So my goal really is to give you guys the tools so you know what to do, how to do it and when to do it, and how to do that well and effectively. It's really frustrating, both as a parent and as a college counselor, to see how stressful this whole process is. And it seems that the step, the very second that a student starts in ninth grade, that all of a sudden High School is about a conduit to go to college, and that definitely is part of what students definitely do need to think about goals and things of that nature. There's things that they should be doing, maybe things that they shouldn't be doing, but my goal also is for students to live in the moment, to have fun. Not everything needs to be about college admissions. That said there are some few targeted things that I think that students should be focusing on. But again, what those things are is going to dependent on who you are and what your goals are. So that strategy is really key, but from a really high level, I want to talk about being well rounded. I know that that was something that I was told over and over and over again when I was in high school, you need to be well rounded. You need to join more clubs. You need more leadership. You need this. You need that. And while that's not a bad strategy, that may not be needed, let's go back to a student that might be looking at the Ivies. That student can't be well rounded. That's not going to do it. In order to get yourself into a selective school, you either need to be a recruited athlete. That's your path. Fantastic. You need to be a child of an alumni who also is a donor, and using the Ivies eight, eight to nine figures is what they're looking for.
So the person who has that under their belt is going to need something very different for the rest of us mere mortals. What we're looking to do for a student who has really lofty ambitions is to make them pointy, not well rounded. Let me explain what I mean by that. Students can be exceptional. They can have perfect stats and scores. That's what I refer to as like the math: your GPA, how many APS, IBS, Ace dual enrollment courses that you've taken, how many honors classes versus how many regular classes that math is definitely important. So is your SAT or ACT, other than for the few schools that are either test blind or schools that are test optional, that kind of lean towards test blind, but good test scores for most schools other than about 15 to 20 absolutely open up doors. So test optional is not the same as test blind, and we'll go into a lot more detail about that in a future episode. But really what I want students to understand is that they need to have a point of view or a narrative, and that's what I call their magic. So rather than just joining 17 clubs and being the president of all of them, that might work really, really well, but for really selective schools, it doesn't. And frankly, most people don't need to stretch themselves so thin, because if you're doing all the things, probably not doing them all well, and if you are doing all the things and doing them well, you probably don't have a lot of time to have fun or ever to sleep. So finding that delicate balance and that strategy and that focus is really going to be imperative. So when I talk about magic, I talk about finding your voice and finding your story and finding your narrative. What makes your brain engage and say, Yeah, I want to do more of that. So if you know that you want to be an engineer, do you need to take math and science? Yeah, yeah, you do. But should you then also join 17 clubs that have nothing to do with math and science? No.
Now, speaking of the other side of my mouth, that doesn't mean everything that you do has to be about engineering and math and science. You absolutely can do things that you enjoy, volunteer work, a job. Not everything needs to be stacked up, but what we're looking for, or, most importantly, what the admissions committee is looking for, for a lot of students, is demonstrating an interest in what it is that you want to do, and that goes in layers. You have an academic layer. So taking courses like, again, using engineering as an example, math and science, maybe doing a summer program, you know, for engineering, so you can explore, do I really like the actual practice of engineering, or am I just doing this, because I've been told it's a good job you're good at math and science. You should be an engineer. Or do you just like the idea of being an engineer, which is a great profession and stable and high paying. So by exploring your interests, you're also helping to essentially confirm for yourself that this is the right pathway, because better to figure out this is the right or the wrong thing that you're doing while you're still in the safety of high school and not three years into an engineering program.
So what I help students do, one on one, and what I'm trying to help here more globally, is help students find unique, distinctive, effective and time effective and efficient ways to explore the things that they're interested in doing. So that's where we're going to be spending a lot of time over the next couple of episodes. So really, just want to give you guys a high level understanding of what's going on in the market, you know, understanding that there's different decision criteria that different schools use, very data driven. We can absolutely look at see what percentage of students are going to be accepted as school, what percentage are going to be denied, but we need to understand how they're making those decisions, and how you can essentially position yourself for that.
So my background is in marketing. And I have a business degree, undergrad from University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I have an MBA from the from Columbia Business School, which, yes, it's an Ivy. I also do have a certificate in college advising, also from Columbia, but from Teachers College. So my background is really in business and marketing and data and now analytics. So you might say, Who are you to tell me what to do? Like, shouldn't you be marketing a product? And while you are absolutely a person and not a product, the reality is, is that these schools are not going to get to know you in the same way that your parents might know you, that your teachers might know you, that your friends know you, how you know yourself, or even as your college counselor, if I was working one on one with you, how I would get to know you? What we're trying to do is take the three dimensional person that you are with all of your interests and all the things that make you interesting, and boil them down into essentially pieces of paper, electronic pieces of paper, but pieces of paper nonetheless.
So again, breaking down the college admissions process into what you should be doing and when you should be doing it, even starting sometimes as early, yes, as ninth grade, but also the mechanics of the actual process for applying, which typically starts at the very end of junior year, the summer between junior and senior year, as well as going into senior year, and when to do things like, what courses should you be taking? When should you take an SAT, should you take an ACT? When you should do those things? So those are all things that we're going to cover. So this is just a high level understanding to see if I'm the right person for you, as I tell all of my students, I may not be the right person for everybody, to help them guide. So I want to help you stay in the driver's seat. I want to help you navigate and help you explore. And I hope that you continue to follow me.
You could follow me on social media @CollegeSmartStart on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, where the old people hang out. So if it's not for you, for your parents, please remember to leave me a five star review and listen to us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows. Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to getting to know you.
