Latest / Voices for Voices® / Stars, Stress, and Standardized Tests: Guiding Teens Through the College Maze | Episode 227

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Stars, Stress, and Standardized Tests: Guiding Teens Through the College Maze | Episode 227 · Voices for Voices®

• 0:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast.
• 0:04
  Justin Alan Hayes: I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes.
• 0:10
  Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us today.
• 0:12
  Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for your support here in the States and across the world.
• 0:16
  Justin Alan Hayes: If you can give us a big thumbs up, if you can subscribe, that would be wonderful.
• 0:20
  Justin Alan Hayes: It will help us continue towards that goal of helping 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.
• 0:28
  Justin Alan Hayes: We have surpassed, obviously, you can see, the 200 episode milestone, which is awesome, and we're going to hit 300 as a total of in-studio and remote episodes by the end of 2025.
• 0:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: So very excited for that, and if nobody was watching or listening, I wouldn't probably be doing this.
• 0:52
  Justin Alan Hayes: So really a big thank you to everybody, whether this is your first episode you're tuning in or you've watched all 200 plus at the point this is airing and becoming live, very excited to have our guest in studio.
• 1:11
  Justin Alan Hayes: She's a friend of my sister's and so that's kind of like part of the connection.
• 1:19
  Justin Alan Hayes: But then the other connection is what we also try to talk about on our show is the career aspect.
• 1:29
  Justin Alan Hayes: The getting ready for college, just all those things that come up, is in that space, and so she is a big proponent and a big pillar and a foundation for a lot of Zasko children here in the area, and she may have clients at other areas outside of Northeast Ohio.
• 2:01
  Justin Alan Hayes: So, without further ado, I want to introduce Kristina Dooley CEP, which means Certified Educational Planner to the show.
• 2:11
  Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us.
• 2:12
  Kristina Dooley: Thank you for having me.
• 2:13
  Kristina Dooley: I'm happy to be here.
• 2:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: Absolutely.
• 2:15
  Justin Alan Hayes: So we can just get started on.
• 2:17
  Justin Alan Hayes: How did you get interested in the work that you do?
• 2:20
  Justin Alan Hayes: Somebody might have those same interests and they might say oh yeah, that sounds like something I like.
• 2:28
  Justin Alan Hayes: I might look at some work like this that's a good question.
• 2:31
  Kristina Dooley: So when I was well, I'll back up just a little bit and just talk about my own path to education in general.
• 2:39
  Kristina Dooley: So I was a first generation college student.
• 2:41
  Kristina Dooley: I went to college at Hiram College here in Ohio and when I was in college I changed my major from what I went.
• 2:50
  Kristina Dooley: I think a lot.
• 2:51
  Kristina Dooley: It's about 70% of students change their major from what they put on their application to what they actually end up doing, but I was one of those people.
• 2:58
  Kristina Dooley: I thought I was going to study biology and then maybe go on to medical school.
• 3:02
  Kristina Dooley: I really didn't know because as a first-generation student, so I wasn't really sure how you even got to do those things.
• 3:09
  Kristina Dooley: When I got to college, I realized that I really loved the communication classes I was taking.
• 3:12
  Kristina Dooley: I loved my sociology classes.
• 3:13
  Kristina Dooley: I loved learning about people, which I still do actually.
• 3:17
  Kristina Dooley: I ended up double majoring in communication and sociology and wasn't quite sure what that meant in terms of a career, what I wanted to do beyond that.
• 3:27
  Kristina Dooley: I had some internships throughout my time as an undergrad and thought that maybe I would go into something in journalism, public relations.
• 3:35
  Kristina Dooley: So when I graduated from Hiram, I ended up working in the admission office there, which a lot of people do.
• 3:41
  Kristina Dooley: If you're a tour guide, it's kind of a natural pathway If you're looking for a job.
• 3:45
  Kristina Dooley: Oftentimes there's openings in the admission office.
• 3:47
  Kristina Dooley: And so I thought, well, I've purchased this product already.
• 3:50
  Kristina Dooley: I think I'd be pretty good at selling it.
• 3:52
  Kristina Dooley: And so I worked in the admission office there while I was going to graduate school at Kent State and I was going to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent and again thought I'm going to go into public relations or a journalist or something like that.
• 4:07
  Kristina Dooley: But what I realized while I was working in the admission office at Hiram was that I actually really loved working with teenagers, which my husband would say, like who likes working with teenagers?
• 4:17
  Kristina Dooley: Right, but but I actually I find that that time in someone's life is so pivotal.
• 4:24
  Kristina Dooley: I mean there's so many decisions that have to be made, and I mean the reality is, most of those students, their brains aren't even fully developed yet, you know.
• 4:31
  Kristina Dooley: So there's a lot of big choices that they have to make and I loved it.
• 4:34
  Kristina Dooley: I loved being part of that.
• 4:36
  Kristina Dooley: Even if they didn't end up coming to Hiram.
• 4:38
  Kristina Dooley: I liked helping them figure out what kinds of colleges might be good for them, and I met people who worked as independent educational consultants, which is what I do now, and I would meet these people at professional conferences and they would tell me about their job, which was basically helping guide students to the right fit colleges, based on a lot of different factors, and I used to think to myself when I grow up, that's what I want to do.
• 5:03
  Kristina Dooley: And so I worked at Hiram for a bit, but then I left and I went to Andrews Osborne Academy, which is in Willoughby, ohio, and it's a boarding school, and so I was the director of admission there.
• 5:14
  Kristina Dooley: I was also one of the school counselors for a little bit of time, and so I got to work with the students there, helping them navigate the college search, and again still kind of had this dream in my mind that I wanted to be an independent educational consultant and help kids all over the place with this process.
• 5:30
  Kristina Dooley: And so in 2008, my husband's job actually relocated us to Sao Paulo, brazil, and so the name of my business is Estrela Consulting, and Estrela is the Portuguese word for star, as opposed to Estreia, the Spanish with two L's, mine's with one L, and I, essentially, when we moved to Sao Paulo, brazil, I started working with families that were expat families, brazilian families that were navigating both the boarding school search process as well as the college search process.
• 6:01
  Kristina Dooley: So that's kind of where the foundings of my work in this space came from, and I still, like teenagers, actually I mean I still even.
• 6:11
  Kristina Dooley: Every year I get to work with a new batch of students and I'm really fortunate that since I started Estrela back in 2008,.
• 6:18
  Kristina Dooley: We've grown and now we actually have there are actually five of us five consultants, and then we have another client experience manager who works with me.
• 6:27
  Kristina Dooley: I have a great team and we all really love the process with the students and there's a lot of I'm sure we're going to get into this, but there's a lot going on for those kids during this, like you said, really transformational time for them.
• 6:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: So getting started kind of like as an entrepreneur, that could be looked at a little bit scary of how do I get started, who do I talk to?
• 6:53
  Justin Alan Hayes: When you were in in brazil, uh, and even before, how, how did you navigate to even get to the point that obviously you have the name of the astrological consulting but get to the point of, like, you know you're getting clients and how you navigate that?
• 7:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: Because I think communication is huge.
• 7:17
  Justin Alan Hayes: We're all using our phones and so I'm sure over the years things have changed, or maybe not.
• 7:24
  Kristina Dooley: I'm sure over the years things have changed, or maybe not no, and it's true.
• 7:28
  Kristina Dooley: I think for me, one of the things that was very natural when I first started Estrela was that I am absolutely a person who likes to engage with people, and so I really just dove right in networking in Sao Paulo.
• 7:41
  Kristina Dooley: I got involved in a lot of the types of organizations they have there for international families.
• 7:45
  Kristina Dooley: There was an American Society of Sao Paulo and International Newcomers Club, and so I joined all those things and I would basically go and I would tell them you know, this is my background and now I'm wanting to do this with students and you know, as I think a lot of entrepreneurs hope for someone took a chance.
• 8:03
  Kristina Dooley: You know, someone said, sure, you know, yeah, I would love for you to help my student.
• 8:06
  Kristina Dooley: And then from there it just kind of my referral sources grew and grew and grew because I had families that were happy with the outcomes and students that were happy with the outcomes, and so people would then refer other families to me and over the years we actually we just had a meeting on Monday with some of our rising senior parents and I was sharing with them that right now, about 80% of our clients are referrals from other families, from educators.
• 8:34
  Kristina Dooley: We have teachers that will refer families to us.
• 8:37
  Kristina Dooley: We have school counselors that will refer to us, other independent consultants like me who maybe don't have capacity or they feel like they're not the right fit.
• 8:43
  Kristina Dooley: They'll refer families to us.
• 8:45
  Kristina Dooley: So we get a lot of families that way and this past year actually, more than a third of our students that we worked with were siblings.
• 8:52
  Kristina Dooley: So once a family works with us, again we tend to and I'll say this because I'm really proud of my team we develop really strong relationships with the families.
• 9:05
  Kristina Dooley: It's not transactional, it's very much that we're getting in.
• 9:08
  Kristina Dooley: It's a big part of their, their whole life.
• 9:10
  Kristina Dooley: So getting involved in this process where they trust us to help their student, enough we really get ingrained with those families and so they.
• 9:18
  Kristina Dooley: We have some families where we have the third, fourth sibling in the family that's working with us and we love that, we love, we love repeat, repeat customers in that way and I to talk about.
• 9:30
  Justin Alan Hayes: Somebody gave, gave you a chance, and I think a big thing for viewers and listeners and even us, that the answer is always going to be no if we don't ask.
• 9:41
  Justin Alan Hayes: And so you asked and asked and asked and then, yeah, it probably didn't happen overnight and I think that's that's a thing.
• 9:50
  Justin Alan Hayes: But we don't want to give up after like, oh wow, they weren't interested, or maybe it takes two or three times to connect with, with, with people and and those are things they they don't really teach a whole lot of it.
• 10:02
  Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe now they might teach a little bit more in college and in school.
• 10:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, but again, like her deterring of it, the answer is always no if you don't ask and you miss all the shots that you don't take and all those types of cliches, it's true.
• 10:20
  Justin Alan Hayes: So, yeah, being a go-getter is, I think, imperative for entrepreneurs and the work, and you also spent some time and you may be still part of it, I'm not quite sure, state of Mind Hudson, and you may be still part of it, I'm not quite sure, state of Mind Hudson.
• 10:38
  Justin Alan Hayes: So, from, like, the mental health side, even outside of State of Mind Hudson, like you mentioned, there's a lot going on with the kids and what they're dealing with, and so you, I'd say, made a little bit of a diversifying kind of your portfolio of things that you do into that.
• 10:57
  Justin Alan Hayes: Can you share just a little bit about that, because I think it's a big passion?
• 11:03
  Kristina Dooley: Absolutely so.
• 11:04
  Kristina Dooley: State of Mind.
• 11:05
  Kristina Dooley: Hudson was a project of Leadership Hudson, so I was in the class of 2019 in Leadership Hudson, and each year the Leadership Hudson class decides on a project that they want to put together that will somehow improve the community that we're in.
• 11:19
  Kristina Dooley: And the way that you do that is through the course of the program, which is almost a year long.
• 11:25
  Kristina Dooley: You visit different places in town, in our community, here in Hudson, and the day that was transformational for us in terms of deciding that we wanted to do something in mental health was they call it the schools day and basically our group of 13 in the leadership Hudson class that year we visited a couple of the local schools elementary schools all the way up to high school and we got to meet with students and administrators and teachers and to a school it didn't matter which school it was, whether it was a private school, public school, catholic school the students in all of those schools.
• 11:53
  Kristina Dooley: One of the things that was very clear was they said what we're going to do is we're going to do this.
• 11:57
  Kristina Dooley: It didn't matter which school it was, whether it was a private school, public school, catholic school, the students in all of those schools.
• 12:00
  Kristina Dooley: One of the things that was very clear was they said we love this community, we love our school, but boy are we stressed.
• 12:07
  Kristina Dooley: This is very competitive.
• 12:09
  Kristina Dooley: There's a lot of pressure on us to be successful in the classroom, on the field, on the stage, whatever that is.
• 12:16
  Kristina Dooley: And so the 13 of us at the end of that day went back to town hall here in Hudson and we sat around a table and we basically all agreed in that moment that, whatever our project would be, it would be focused on mental health.
• 12:30
  Kristina Dooley: And so that was how State of Mind Hudson was born, and I'm still on the board.
• 12:36
  Kristina Dooley: I'm a founding member, I'm still on the board, I'm a founding member, I'm still on the board, I'm past president of it and I'm still really passionate about it because I do.
• 12:43
  Kristina Dooley: I work with students in Hudson, but I also work with kids all over the country and internationally as well, and I have my own kids, and it is really hard to see the pressure that kids are under to be the best in every way and to not feel like they're enough.
• 12:56
  Kristina Dooley: And for me, the pressure that kids are under to be the best in every way and to not feel like they're enough, and for me I feel like that's something that is.
• 13:04
  Kristina Dooley: It's a hard thing for parents.
• 13:06
  Kristina Dooley: I think too and because I work with them in my professional life it's a hard thing for parents to not want their kids to shoot for the stars, to be, you know, to to have their name in lights, to have an Ivy league education, um, but at what cost, you know, and I just had a conversation with one of my colleagues this morning about this, about um, you know what are, what are you sacrificing when you do those things?
• 13:31
  Kristina Dooley: And oftentimes that is your mental health, and so it's that that.
• 13:34
  Kristina Dooley: So, yes, I'm very passionate about the mental health, especially when it comes to young people, for sure.
• 13:40
  Justin Alan Hayes: So the the the work that you do, the different, because I'll let you talk about, like the different types of projects, like like what the what a day in the life of Kristina is is like, and the conversations and the curriculum and how you kind of work, work through that.
• 13:59
  Justin Alan Hayes: So if somebody which I think there's gonna be more than just somebody watching or listening that may want to reach out, learn more about you know, okay, so what's the nuts and bolts of it?
• 14:13
  Kristina Dooley: so we, the way that we work with families.
• 14:16
  Kristina Dooley: We have processes in place and you know, kind of like a curriculum that we go through with each class.
• 14:22
  Kristina Dooley: One of the most common questions we get at Estrela is when do we have to start working with you, like, when's the ideal time to start this process, the earliest that families can work with us?
• 14:31
  Kristina Dooley: We do have an eighth and ninth grade early start program, and that's less geared towards let's put a list of colleges together and go visit.
• 14:40
  Kristina Dooley: It's more about looking at the students interests and aptitudes, what are the things they like, and then talking about careers, what are the things that might align to some of those things that bring you joy and that you're good at, and so we have those conversations with them.
• 14:54
  Kristina Dooley: We also talk with them about scheduling in high school, which has become something you know what back and when we were in high school, which has become something you know back when we were in high school.
• 15:00
  Kristina Dooley: I don't remember really putting much thought into my high school course schedule until maybe the week that we were doing it.
• 15:06
  Kristina Dooley: Now kids are having to plan years in advance what their high school schedule will be like, especially if they want to go into something like engineering, nursing computer science, something that's very math or science-based.
• 15:17
  Kristina Dooley: They really have to be on a specific trajectory to get up to like calculus, for example.
• 15:22
  Kristina Dooley: So that's where those eighth and ninth grade families we're working with them on that.
• 15:26
  Kristina Dooley: But most of our families for college consulting or college planning will work with us beginning in sophomore year, sometimes early junior year, and we help them with everything from identifying right fit colleges and we usually use like three from identifying right fit colleges and we usually use like three main things academic, social and financial.
• 15:41
  Kristina Dooley: So it can be the best fit for a family with academics and social, but if you can't afford it, then it's not going to be the right fit.
• 15:49
  Kristina Dooley: So that's a big part of what we do as well.
• 15:51
  Kristina Dooley: And then the social piece is incredibly important with students, more so than I think they understand, because right now in US colleges at least one out of every three students will transfer from their first college.
• 16:04
  Kristina Dooley: So there's a lot of kids ending up places where it's not the right fit for them.
• 16:08
  Kristina Dooley: And there's a survey that's done of college students nationwide.
• 16:13
  Kristina Dooley: That's called the National Survey of Student Engagement.
• 16:14
  Kristina Dooley: And on that survey one of the questions is if you've transferred, you know why what would?
• 16:19
  Kristina Dooley: The reasons why and the highest number of reasons all around are basically around social.
• 16:27
  Kristina Dooley: This was not the right fit for me.
• 16:29
  Kristina Dooley: Socially, this is not.
• 16:30
  Kristina Dooley: It doesn't feel right.
• 16:31
  Kristina Dooley: It's too big.
• 16:32
  Kristina Dooley: You know all those kinds of things.
• 16:33
  Kristina Dooley: And so when we're helping families, we're really helping the student identify like what, where are you going to find your place?
• 16:39
  Kristina Dooley: And and then obviously academics that's probably the easiest one to assess because you can find, you know, lists of majors and what they offer.
• 16:45
  Kristina Dooley: The other two are a little bit more complicated.
• 16:48
  Kristina Dooley: So we do help families, kind of guide them through those things.
• 16:51
  Kristina Dooley: And again, the affordability piece is there.
• 16:52
  Kristina Dooley: We don't.
• 16:59
  Kristina Dooley: One of the things that's interesting is in the media there are people who I would say they use the same kinds of professional titles as we use, but they are not doing the same things.
• 17:04
  Kristina Dooley: They're doing things very unethically.
• 17:05
  Kristina Dooley: We're all members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which is basically our professional association.
• 17:12
  Kristina Dooley: We sign an ethics code annually.
• 17:15
  Kristina Dooley: We do things very much on the up and up.
• 17:17
  Kristina Dooley: The work is always the students' work.
• 17:19
  Kristina Dooley: We're there to guide them.
• 17:20
  Kristina Dooley: You know they're driving and we're in the passenger seat and we're helping them with all of those steps that are involved with applying to college.
• 17:27
  Kristina Dooley: And then essentially, we work with them through the application process and all the way through the end of senior year, getting them launched and we're really proud of a lot of our students.
• 17:36
  Kristina Dooley: We never year getting them launched and we're really proud a lot of our students.
• 17:39
  Kristina Dooley: We we never get rid of them.
• 17:39
  Kristina Dooley: They they still keep in touch with us and keep us posted on how college is going.
• 17:41
  Kristina Dooley: It's great for us to know like, was it a great match and nearly all of our students stay where they land and that's, you know, what we want in the end.
• 17:48
  Kristina Dooley: So, yeah, so that's kind of like the gist of what we do.
• 17:52
  Kristina Dooley: But families can, they can, they can basically hire us or engage our services for different kinds of things.
• 17:58
  Kristina Dooley: We have an essay writing package, for example, where we help the student with brainstorming ideas for essays.
• 18:02
  Kristina Dooley: We have an aptitudes and careers assessments package, so there's some other like smaller options as well.
• 18:09
  Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, wow that that's so broad and it it seems you're, you're helping like the whole person, you're not just concerned about one area or the other.
• 18:24
  Justin Alan Hayes: And getting that feedback after they kind of get through the process and you getting that feedback that this was very helpful and that kind of I'm'm sure, validates the work that you do and if there's any tweaks, then that's a great way.
• 18:43
  Justin Alan Hayes: So getting game feedback, I think some some people think it's like oh, they're, they're just gonna say something negative, these reviews and yeah, so that's that, that's big.
• 18:54
  Justin Alan Hayes: I think that's important, no matter what, if somebody has their own business or if they work with a larger business and they're just a part of it.
• 19:02
  Justin Alan Hayes: That is the work that I'm doing.
• 19:04
  Justin Alan Hayes: Matter Right emotional side of that.
• 19:10
  Justin Alan Hayes: How does that make you feel when you get that feedback?
• 19:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: Like the work you do, what gets you up in the morning and what keeps you going?
• 19:21
  Kristina Dooley: Yeah, and you're 100% right.
• 19:22
  Kristina Dooley: Asking for feedback is painful for a lot of people because and I am one of those people that I don't have a very thick skin, so I take a lot of things personally.
• 19:31
  Kristina Dooley: But I've learned over the years and actually one of my colleagues she's great at reminding me.
• 19:37
  Kristina Dooley: You know this is it's not personal.
• 19:38
  Kristina Dooley: When we ask for this kind of feedback, it's helping us do our job better and support kids and families better in the next cycle, and so we do.
• 19:44
  Kristina Dooley: We solicit feedback from we actually we survey our students midway through their senior year so we know not only how it went, but how it went so far, because we do have time to still.
• 19:56
  Kristina Dooley: If there's things that they feel like they could really use some extra support with, we want to be able to do that.
• 20:00
  Kristina Dooley: So we survey them at the mid-year point and then at the end of the year, we survey parents and students.
• 20:05
  Kristina Dooley: And you know how did it go?
• 20:06
  Kristina Dooley: Even things like was our communication enough?
• 20:09
  Kristina Dooley: Was it too much?
• 20:12
  Kristina Dooley: Were there things that you felt were too opaque?
• 20:13
  Kristina Dooley: You know, were there things that we knocked out of the park?
• 20:15
  Kristina Dooley: I mean, that's the thing.
• 20:16
  Kristina Dooley: Feedback can also be great, you know, and I always.
• 20:20
  Kristina Dooley: One of the things I always love to share is that when we do that mid-year survey of our seniors, my favorite response and it has been this way since we've been doing this survey for years is that the the one question that we get the highest rating on every single year from the mid-year survey from students is when they have to affirm.
• 20:39
  Kristina Dooley: There there's a list of statements and they have to firm which ones are are accurate for them, and the one that gets the highest is the statement I'm proud of the work I submitted and for me that's a huge win.
• 20:49
  Kristina Dooley: It's not I got into you know this, you know stellar school.
• 20:53
  Kristina Dooley: It's, I'm proud of what I did and that's what.
• 20:56
  Kristina Dooley: And for some of these kids they haven't gotten any decisions back yet.
• 20:59
  Kristina Dooley: So it's keeping keeping that light lit in them, because a negative decision you know if they're not accepted somewhere, can dim that really quickly or blow it all the way out, and so I like that we can capture it in the moment that they've just done it, because that's the reality.
• 21:15
  Kristina Dooley: They should be proud.
• 21:16
  Kristina Dooley: They've put a lot of work into it, not just the application process.
• 21:19
  Kristina Dooley: All the time leading up to that, which is that's what the application, basically encapsulates, is like what they've done up to that point.
• 21:26
  Kristina Dooley: It's not just a single moment in time, and so I love that.
• 21:29
  Kristina Dooley: So for me, yes, so there is some.
• 21:31
  Kristina Dooley: You know we and we have implemented some feedback we've gotten in the past where maybe something a great, a great thing example is, we had a communication tool that we were using and we were sending out these messages and we thought, oh, this is really good information for families, and we realized no one was watching these like pieces of information, and so, as painful as that was for us because we thought it was fantastic, we realized, okay, we have to pivot, we have to do something different.
• 21:57
  Kristina Dooley: So let's figure out what is going to work and what is going to be actually something that's going to be valuable for the families, because we're putting a lot of effort into this and if you don't ask for feedback, you're going to keep putting effort into things that maybe, like, don't make any difference at all so so true, and you want to spend the time because there's only a certain amount of time in each day and and the uh court, the load that each person in the organization that there's just, yeah, it just comes down to.
• 22:27
  Justin Alan Hayes: there's only a certain amount of time and you don't want to spend a ton of time on something and then go, oh, wow, for the last period of time it you know we were not doing things wrong, but what we thought and I know exactly how that feels it's like, oh, this is like the best thing.
• 22:50
  Justin Alan Hayes: And then it's like, oh man, maybe let's try to work around that.
• 22:55
  Justin Alan Hayes: And I think that's crucial for anybody, no matter where they're at in life, is find out what they're doing.
• 23:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: Is it mattering to the people that they're working with?
• 23:11
  Justin Alan Hayes: Does it matter to them?
• 23:13
  Justin Alan Hayes: Or should there be a change in focus?
• 23:16
  Justin Alan Hayes: Wow, it just the very, very eye-opening.
• 23:23
  Justin Alan Hayes: So what are some of the tests?
• 23:29
  Justin Alan Hayes: Standardized tests.
• 23:32
  Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know if they still have them.
• 23:34
  Justin Alan Hayes: I think they do.
• 23:35
  Justin Alan Hayes: I hate standardized tests and my daughter in kindergarten they're doing testing, like this week, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, like my daughter's going through it what tests are the most common and how?
• 23:56
  Justin Alan Hayes: not to give specific details, but just in general, if somebody's worried, like oh my gosh, if they're doing prep and they're not getting answers right consistently, how does that impact a person?
• 24:10
  Kristina Dooley: Things have changed so much since COVID.
• 24:12
  Kristina Dooley: A lot of colleges have become test optional since COVID and part of that was actually in response to just not being able to test in person.
• 24:21
  Kristina Dooley: But many of them have decided not to go back to requiring tests.
• 24:25
  Kristina Dooley: There are some schools that are, I would say, the more selective schools Most of the Ivy League schools, for example, mit they've all gone back to requiring test scores and that's the ACT or the SAT.
• 24:35
  Kristina Dooley: And so we just tell students it's kind of a necessary evil for them to take the tests, and we don't encourage anybody to not take them because they don't necessarily know when they're sitting for those tests, which is usually in junior year that they don't necessarily know where they'll apply and it could be that a school that they're applying to requires it.
• 24:57
  Kristina Dooley: So, for example, there are even some states, like the state of Georgia, for example, all of their public institutions have to require the ACT or SAT.
• 25:06
  Kristina Dooley: So if you're applying to Georgia Tech University of Georgia, you have to submit a test score.
• 25:10
  Kristina Dooley: You don't have a choice, and what they do with them it's up to them.
• 25:13
  Kristina Dooley: But anyway.
• 25:15
  Kristina Dooley: So we tell students you know, start taking these tests.
• 25:18
  Kristina Dooley: Most students will plateau by their third time taking one of these tests though.
• 25:21
  Kristina Dooley: So I don't tell students go and you know, just keep testing, keep taking it over and over, especially if they're not doing any prep in between, because if they just keep sitting cold for a test, it I'm not expecting to PR because I haven't been practicing.
• 25:33
  Kristina Dooley: It's the same kind of thing.
• 25:34
  Kristina Dooley: I agree with you.
• 25:35
  Kristina Dooley: I'm not a fan of the tests.
• 25:36
  Kristina Dooley: I understand why they're used and I get that for some of those schools why they're reinstating them, but I don't love them because it does cause a lot of stress on kids to do really good tests.
• 25:45
  Kristina Dooley: I think it's important that they.
• 25:53
  Kristina Dooley: I don't love them because it does cause a lot of stress on kids to do really well.
• 25:57
  Kristina Dooley: Nationally the averages range between a 23 and 25 on the ACT, for example.
• 26:03
  Kristina Dooley: I would say for a lot of traditional colleges.
• 26:08
  Kristina Dooley: Most colleges are accepting it's like 80% of colleges accept 50% than half of their applicants.
• 26:14
  Kristina Dooley: The vast majority of colleges are accepting more than half of their applicants.
• 26:18
  Kristina Dooley: What we hear about are the really selective schools that are accepting 5, 10, 15% of their applications.
• 26:26
  Kristina Dooley: For those schools, if a student is applying to one of the more selective colleges, if their ACT score is not in the high 30, you know, if they're not in a, it goes up to 36, if they're not a 34 or higher, it's very unlikely that that score is going to mean anything to that school.
• 26:40
  Kristina Dooley: So it can be a benefit.
• 26:42
  Kristina Dooley: It can hurt, you know.
• 26:44
  Kristina Dooley: I mean it can hurt if a student sends a low score to a school and it doesn't match with their grades, and grade inflation is a real thing right now that colleges are really struggling with because so many kids have over a 4.0 because of weighting and things like that.
• 26:59
  Kristina Dooley: It's hard now versus I know like when I was applying to colleges, you know it was up to a 4.0 is what you could get and you had a test score and they basically schools would look sometimes at like a matrix test score and ACT, act, and does that student meet our requirements?
• 27:15
  Kristina Dooley: It's a much more complicated process, more holistic now.
• 27:17
  Kristina Dooley: They're looking at other things too.
• 27:19
  Justin Alan Hayes: Right, so we're at the end of our time.
• 27:22
  Justin Alan Hayes: Is there anything that didn't cover?
• 27:24
  Justin Alan Hayes: Do you want to share?
• 27:25
  Justin Alan Hayes: How can, how could someone get in touch with you and the work that you do?
• 27:31
  Kristina Dooley: Sure yeah, and I think one of the best ways.
• 27:33
  Kristina Dooley: We have an e-newsletter that goes out every month.
• 27:36
  Kristina Dooley: It's free and families can sign up for that on the astrellaconsultingcom website.
• 27:41
  Kristina Dooley: The other thing is we do webinars every month that are free and we record them and we put them on our Astrella Consulting YouTube channel.
• 27:48
  Kristina Dooley: There's a lot of really great content on there.
• 27:50
  Kristina Dooley: So if someone's just trying to kind of get their feet and we have a free consultation for families, if they're interested in learning more, they can reach out and do an hour consultation with one of our team members to learn more about our processes.
• 27:58
  Kristina Dooley: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 28:04
  Justin Alan Hayes: You're welcome.
• 28:05
  Kristina Dooley: Thanks for having me.
• 28:06
  Justin Alan Hayes: Absolutely Support people in the local community, and the that you do is very, very important, and I just want to thank you for sharing time with us today.
• 28:19
  Justin Alan Hayes: So what we'll do to close the show, I will just go through the short prayer that I've learned has been helpful to me, and so it kind of goes like this God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
• 28:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: Amen.
• 28:45
  Justin Alan Hayes: And lastly, I want to share a couple bits of information.
• 28:50
  Justin Alan Hayes: So we again we're talking about a wide variety of topics, as you know, with our show and podcast.
• 28:59
  Justin Alan Hayes: So if you or somebody you know has been a victim of trafficking whether that's sex trafficking or that's labor trafficking reach out to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
• 29:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: org website.
• 29:16
  Justin Alan Hayes: It's confidential 24-7, or you can reach them at 1-888-373-7888, tty 711.
• 29:28
  Justin Alan Hayes: You can also text at 233-733.
• 29:33
  Justin Alan Hayes: And then you can also chat.
• 29:35
  Justin Alan Hayes: And then, lastly, if you or somebody you know is thinking talking about suicide and going through a mental health crisis, you can reach out to the website 988lifelineorg and you can also right can also.
• 29:54
  Justin Alan Hayes: That's a website, so some of us are a little easier to call or text.
• 29:58
  Justin Alan Hayes: So you can call them at 988.
• 30:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: You can also text them at 988 and then you can go to their website and you can use the chat feature.
• 30:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: So we wanted to start sharing that information.
• 30:11
  Justin Alan Hayes: We find that people are interested and it helps having that transcript in a lot of different ways.
• 30:19
  Justin Alan Hayes: So thank you for joining us for this episode.
• 30:22
  Justin Alan Hayes: I want to thank our in-studio guest, Kristina Dooley, Estrela Consulting.
• 30:27
  Justin Alan Hayes: Check it out and until next time, please be a voice for you or somebody in need.