First, here’s our big news. Today, Arun Ponnusamy, formerly of Open Road Education, is rejoining Collegewise as a partner and college counselor.
Who is Arun?
In the last 15 years, Arun has run his own college counseling business, directed one of our Collegewise offices, worked as an Assistant Director of Admissions at both the University of Chicago and Caltech, and enjoyed a stint as an Application Reader at UCLA. I’ve never met anyone who knows more about college admissions and how to help families navigate it than Arun does. And I’ve done some of my best work at Collegewise in tandem with him.
What will Arun be doing at Collegewise?
Arun and I have enjoyed collaborating together informally on some fun projects over the last year. But we want to do more. We want a family in Detroit to be able to watch my college essay workshop online so I can show them that every kid has a story to tell. We want the brand new counselor at a high school in Fargo, ND to have the option of completing the 40-hour Collegewise counselor training without ever having to leave her office. And we want a student in Hong Kong to have access to Arun’s advice about how to make your Common Application a lot less common.
We believe that every family should have access to the best college planning advice no matter what your budget is. So whether you just want some free advice from our blog, a little guidance with an essay or application, or a college admissions expert to guide you through the entire process, Collegewise will be here with the best product or person for you.
What do we want to accomplish?
A big impact starts with big dreams; we want to change the college admissions world. We want Collegewise to help a lot more families make sense of a process that has gotten much more stressful and complicated than it needs to be. And Arun and I have decided that the best way for us to reach that goal is to work together again—full time—in the same company.
New offerings from Collegewise
Here’s what we’ll be releasing in the next eight months.
May
Online Collegewise counseling
Students anywhere in both the United States and the world will be able to meet with a Collegewise counselor by video chat.
Is There a Future Doctor in The House?: A Guide to Choosing a College and Preparing for Life As a Pre-Med
A lot of high school students who tell us they want to be doctors are a lot less certain about how to get there. Our book tells you everything you need to know.
June
College planning calendars
Want to know exactly what to do and when to do it? We’ll release the Collegewise college-planning calendars, accessible online so that 9th-12th grade families will know exactly what college planning steps to take and when to take them.
July
Story Finders: How to Help Students Write More Effective College Essays (Without Helping Too Much)
For teachers and counselors, we’ll help you help your students with a DVD of our college essay workshop plus a manual to show you how we help students brainstorm and edit college essays without hijacking the kids’ process and helping too much.
August
“Page Turners: How to Write a College Essay"
Just in time for seniors about to start your college applications. A lot of good kids write bad college essays. So we’ll show you how to find and share your best stories (hopefully before you write an essay about how a community service project taught you that it’s important to help people).
September
"How to Make your Common Application a Lot Less Common”
Arun will walk students step-by-step through how to fill out the Common Application, sharing all of his tips to make your application more compelling. And he’ll show you how to avoid simple mistakes many students make.
October
20 school specific essay guidelines
We'll choose the latest short-essay prompts from 20 popular colleges and show students exactly how to approach them.
November
“The Collegewise Guide to College Interviews"
You don’t have to be a suave charmer to have a great college interview. We’ll tell you what to expect, what to prepare, and even what to wear to your college interviews.
December
“The Collegewise Way: How to Plan for College and Still Enjoy the Ride"
It's our how-to book for everything college admissions-related. From picking a high school, to finding the right colleges, to deciding which admissions offer to accept, we'll share everything we've taught (and learned) after helping over 3,000 students gain admission to college since 1999.
That’s what we’ll be doing for the rest of 2011. We’ve got a whole list of other projects (like financial aid advice, college counselor training, and college planning tools for schools) in the pipeline for 2012, but that’s a topic for a later blog post.
Where and when to find them
In just a few weeks, we'll be opening our online store where you'll be able to find all of these new products as we release them. If you'd like us to tell you when each of these new offerings is available, just sign up here and we'll email you first (before we even announce it on our blog).
So please join me in welcoming Arun back to Collegewise. We’re so excited to be working together again and to help a lot more kids get into college in the years to come.
Teri Kuwahara says
Congratulations Kevin and Arun! Looking forward to seeing your new releases. Keep up the great work!