College Counseling Master Class
Smarter counseling, for more kids, in less time, with better results.
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What if you could get better, faster?
Are you a Wiser in your first or second year who’s still finding your way to greatness as a counselor? Do you look at our most experienced counselors here and worry, “I’ll never be that good at this?” Have you ever wished that the path to counseling mastery here could be just a little faster and easier?
If so, we built the College Counseling Master Class just for you. Learn how to work and counsel like our very best counselors.
Our most seasoned veterans spent years learning and experimenting to find what works best. You can learn it much faster. You have this course.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- How to work like the greats in every aspect of counseling, from creating smart college lists, to finding the best stories for essays, to managing a smooth application process.
- How to deliver the very best customer service, and why that should never mean satisfying your customer’s every whim.
- How to avoid common bad counseling habits that are so hard to break once you’ve adopted them.
- How to manage a larger caseload and still have plenty of life, time, and sanity outside of work.
- How to make sure everything, from your office to your Skype settings, to your LinkedIn profile look as good as your counseling is.
- How to enjoy the thrill of getting better without the angst of struggling to keep up.
- What it means to be a professional at Collegewise and in the world of higher education.
- Which tools and technology will make counseling easier and more organized.
- How to lay the tracks, day-by-day, month-by-month, to do the very best counseling of your career.
You can view the course syllabus here.
Any Collegewise first or second year Wiser who aspires to get better and is willing to do the work will benefit from this course. It takes years to become a college counseling expert. But it takes just twelve weeks to see, think, and work like one.
Your (Masterful) Master Class Instructors
Arun Ponnusamy
Arun is our Chief Academic Officer, a title he believed carried more gravitas than the once-proposed, “Chief Nutty Professor.”
Kevin McMullin
Kevin founded Collegewise nearly 20 years ago. He acknowledges this factoid is starting to sound a lot like, “A lifetime ago, Kevin was kind of a big deal in high school.”
Allison Lopour
Allison is our Executive Director of Talent who lobbied hard for a Master Class session entitled, “The Transformative Powers of Burger King and Yoga Pants.”
Frank Martinez
Frank is our filmmaker and has been referred to (by his mother) as, “The greatest storyteller of his generation.”
Course Curriculum
Class 1: Basic principles
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Preview00 - Introduction (1:14)
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Preview01 - Work with lots of kids (3:07)
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Preview02 - Treat it like a craft (5:08)
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Preview03 - Build a scalable practice (2:11)
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Preview04 - Mind your family's feelings (3:05)
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Preview05 - Don't force adoption of Collegewise values (1:55)
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Preview06 - Set good expectations with everything you do (3:05)
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Preview07 - Treat different customers differently (2:51)
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Preview08 - Don't call them crazy (1:33)
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Preview09 - Share the workload (1:31)
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Preview10 - Focus on what you can control (3:33)
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PreviewNext steps (1:02)
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PreviewAssignments for this lesson
Class 2: What does great customer service look like?
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days
after you enroll
Class 3: Bad habits next door
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after you enroll
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the course work?
Every 1-2 weeks, we’ll release one lesson covering a particular Master Class topic. Each lesson includes a short video that you can watch on-demand (videos are 5-30 minutes long), and an assignment to help you practice and perfect what you have just viewed. Assignments might include additional short readings, a timely project with classmates, or a follow-up meeting with one or more of the trainers.
How long does the course last?
The first lesson will be available on August 29 and you can begin as soon as you’d like (the second lesson will be available after Labor Day). The course will end during the final week of Senior Season 2018.
I’m still in the learning stage. Am I really ready for a “Master Class”?
If you’ve successfully completed Collegewise training and are officially meeting with kids, you’re ready. The concepts we’ll teach are less advanced than the learning and results that will ensue.
It’s busy season. How much time is this going to take?
You’ll watch ten videos, each between 5-30 minutes long, between now and the end of senior season. Most of the assignments outside of the videos will overlap nicely with the work you’re already doing. That’s intentional. We don’t want to add more work to your already rapidly-filling plate. We want to help you better manage the work that’s already there. Think of it like meeting regularly with a private tutor to help you through organic chemistry. Sure, those meetings will take up some time. But that time would otherwise have been spent struggling and worrying that med school just might not be for you.
Will we interact with the instructors?
Yes, at least until you get sick of us. The trainers will be showing up regularly online to answer questions, hold discussions, and review your progress. We don’t want this to be a passive course where you do everything on your own. We’ll be in this together—it’s up to you and to us to make sure you get as much as possible out of the course.
Is this course mandatory?
No. All real learning is voluntarily (except the painful kind).
Will I be judged negatively if I choose not to enroll?
No. But please consider what kind of progress you’re making before you decide not to enroll. If you and your manager agree that you’re firing on all counseling cylinders, well on your way to filling up, and excited about the challenge of working with as many or more kids like the veterans do, it’s hard to judge you for making the decision not to enroll. But if you’re struggling, if you’re not making the progress you or your manager hoped you’d make, or if you’re just not feeling as successful as you’d like to be, this is your opportunity to address those things.
You mentioned something about giving us more kids. How will that work?
Marketing and sales believes that the demand will be there for us to get you the kids. If that doesn’t come through, we’ll bring more kids into the scholarship program.
How many kids will I be expected to work with?
That depends on how many kids you already have and how long you’ve been here. We’d like to help each of you beat your assigned number this year so that you can feel good about your performance and optimistic about your ability to add more in the future.
Why can’t veterans join?
A successful project starts with a clear sense of who and what it’s for. We don’t want to convince veterans to change the very methods that are already working well for them. For now, we want to teach newer counselors more effective ways to counsel. And we want the opportunity to prove that the course works before we broaden it to everyone.
Will veterans be invited to enroll in the future?
Yes. If we get the results we expect, we’ll open the course up in 2019 for veterans who want to join and are open to learning new—and we think even better—ways of counseling.
We know you’re busy. We know this might sound equal parts thrilling and intimidating. But why spend more time learning, experimenting and struggling to get as good as we all know you can be? Take this course, and we promise you’ll do better counseling for more kids, you’ll spend less time doing it, and you’ll be well on your way down your own path towards greatness.