Voices for Voices®

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

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 227

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

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Finding the perfect college match is about much more than rankings and acceptance rates. Kristina Dooley knows this firsthand – as a first-generation college student who changed her major after discovering unexpected passions, she understands the complexity of educational decisions facing today's teenagers.

Navigating the college planning process requires balancing academic preparation, social fit, and financial reality. Kristina founded Estrela Consulting to guide students through these critical choices, creating a curriculum that helps them identify their interests and aptitudes before determining which schools might be their best match. What started as entrepreneurial networking in São Paulo, Brazil has grown into a thriving team of consultants who maintain relationships with families long after acceptance letters arrive.

The mental health implications of college planning cannot be overlooked. One-third of college students transfer from their first institution, typically because they didn't find the right social environment. Through her work with Estrela and State of Mind Hudson, Kristina addresses the immense pressure teenagers face to excel in every area while still maintaining their wellbeing. As she poignantly asks, "Parents want their kids to shoot for the stars, to have an Ivy League education – but at what cost?"

Standardized testing presents another challenge in this landscape. While many institutions have adopted test-optional policies since COVID, selective schools still require ACT or SAT scores. Kristina provides practical guidance on test preparation while maintaining perspective on their importance in the broader admissions process.

Kristina Dooley, Certified Educational Planner and founder of Estrela Consulting, shares her journey from first-generation college student to educational consultant helping students find their perfect college match. Drawing from her experience in college admissions and working internationally, she discusses how her passion for guiding teenagers through pivotal life decisions shaped her career path.

• First-generation college student who discovered her passion for helping teenagers navigate education decisions
• Founded Estrela Consulting in 2008 while living in Brazil, working with international families on college planning
• Uses academic, social, and financial factors to determine college fit, noting one-third of students transfer from their first college
• Passionate about student mental health through her work with State of Mind Hudson
• Helps students as early as 8th grade with career exploration and course planning
• Provides guidance on standardized testing realities in the post-COVID landscape
• Takes pride in students feeling confident about their application work, regardless of outcomes

Families can learn more about Estrela Consulting's services through their free monthly e-newsletter, webinars available on their YouTube channel, or by scheduling a free consultation at estrelaconsulting.com.

#CollegePrep #TeenStress #StandardizedTests #CollegeMaze #HighSchoolLife #ParentingTeens #EducationTips #CollegeApplication #StudentSuccess #EducationMatters #CareerGuidance #FuturePreparation #CollegeTransition #TeenGuidance #StudentSupport

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your support here in the States and across the world. If you can give us a big thumbs up, if you can subscribe, that would be wonderful. It will help us continue towards that goal of helping 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.

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.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So very excited for that, and if nobody was watching or listening, I wouldn't probably be doing this. 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. She's a friend of my sister's and so that's kind of like part of the connection. But then the other connection is what we also try to talk about on our show is the career aspect. 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. So, without further ado, I want to introduce Kristina Dooley CEP, which means Certified Educational Planner to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Kristina Dooley:

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Absolutely. So we can just get started on. How did you get interested in the work that you do? Somebody might have those same interests and they might say oh yeah, that sounds like something I like. I might look at some work like this that's a good question.

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. So I was a first generation college student. I went to college at Hiram College here in Ohio and when I was in college I changed my major from what I went. I think a lot. 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. I thought I was going to study biology and then maybe go on to medical school. 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. When I got to college, I realized that I really loved the communication classes I was taking. I loved my sociology classes. I loved learning about people, which I still do actually.

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. I had some internships throughout my time as an undergrad and thought that maybe I would go into something in journalism, public relations. So when I graduated from Hiram, I ended up working in the admission office there, which a lot of people do. If you're a tour guide, it's kind of a natural pathway If you're looking for a job. Oftentimes there's openings in the admission office. And so I thought, well, I've purchased this product already. I think I'd be pretty good at selling it. 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.

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? Right, but but I actually I find that that time in someone's life is so pivotal. 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. So there's a lot of big choices that they have to make and I loved it. I loved being part of that. Even if they didn't end up coming to Hiram. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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,. 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. 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.

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? 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? Because I think communication is huge. We're all using our phones and so I'm sure over the years things have changed, or maybe not.

Kristina Dooley:

I'm sure over the years things have changed, or maybe not no, and it's true. 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. I got involved in a lot of the types of organizations they have there for international families. 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. You know, someone said, sure, you know, yeah, I would love for you to help my student. 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.

Kristina Dooley:

We have teachers that will refer families to us. 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. They'll refer families to us. 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. 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. It's not transactional, it's very much that we're getting in. It's a big part of their, their whole life. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. Maybe now they might teach a little bit more in college and in school. 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.

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. 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. Can you share just a little bit about that, because I think it's a big passion?

Kristina Dooley:

Absolutely so. State of Mind. 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. And the way that you do that is through the course of the program, which is almost a year long. 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. One of the things that was very clear was they said what we're going to do is we're going to do this. 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. One of the things that was very clear was they said we love this community, we love our school, but boy are we stressed. This is very competitive. There's a lot of pressure on us to be successful in the classroom, on the field, on the stage, whatever that is. 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. And so that was how State of Mind Hudson was born, and I'm still on the board. 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.

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.

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. It's a hard thing for parents. 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? And oftentimes that is your mental health, and so it's that that. So, yes, I'm very passionate about the mental health, especially when it comes to young people, for sure.

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. 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?

Kristina Dooley:

so we, the way that we work with families.

Kristina Dooley:

We have processes in place and you know, kind of like a curriculum that we go through with each class. 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? 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. 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. 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. I don't remember really putting much thought into my high school course schedule until maybe the week that we were doing it.

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. They really have to be on a specific trajectory to get up to like calculus, for example. So that's where those eighth and ninth grade families we're working with them on that. 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. 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. So that's a big part of what we do as well. 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. So there's a lot of kids ending up places where it's not the right fit for them. And there's a survey that's done of college students nationwide. That's called the National Survey of Student Engagement. And on that survey one of the questions is if you've transferred, you know why what would? The reasons why and the highest number of reasons all around are basically around social. This was not the right fit for me. Socially, this is not. It doesn't feel right. It's too big. You know all those kinds of things. And so when we're helping families, we're really helping the student identify like what, where are you going to find your place? 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. The other two are a little bit more complicated. So we do help families, kind of guide them through those things. And again, the affordability piece is there. We don't.

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. They're doing things very unethically. We're all members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which is basically our professional association. We sign an ethics code annually. We do things very much on the up and up.

Kristina Dooley:

The work is always the students' work. We're there to guide them. 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. 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. We never year getting them launched and we're really proud a lot of our students. We we never get rid of them.

Kristina Dooley:

They they still keep in touch with us and keep us posted on how college is going. 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. So, yeah, so that's kind of like the gist of what we do. But families can, they can, they can basically hire us or engage our services for different kinds of things. We have an essay writing package, for example, where we help the student with brainstorming ideas for essays. We have an aptitudes and careers assessments package, so there's some other like smaller options as well.

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. 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. 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. 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. That is the work that I'm doing. Matter Right emotional side of that. How does that make you feel when you get that feedback? Like the work you do, what gets you up in the morning and what keeps you going?

Kristina Dooley:

Yeah, and you're 100% right. 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. But I've learned over the years and actually one of my colleagues she's great at reminding me. You know this is it's not personal. 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. 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. If there's things that they feel like they could really use some extra support with, we want to be able to do that. So we survey them at the mid-year point and then at the end of the year, we survey parents and students. And you know how did it go? Even things like was our communication enough? Was it too much? Were there things that you felt were too opaque? You know, were there things that we knocked out of the park? I mean, that's the thing. Feedback can also be great, you know, and I always.

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. 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. It's not I got into you know this, you know stellar school. It's, I'm proud of what I did and that's what. And for some of these kids they haven't gotten any decisions back yet. 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. They should be proud. They've put a lot of work into it, not just the application process. 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. It's not just a single moment in time, and so I love that. So for me, yes, so there is some.

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. 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.

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. And then it's like, oh man, maybe let's try to work around that. And I think that's crucial for anybody, no matter where they're at in life, is find out what they're doing. Is it mattering to the people that they're working with? Does it matter to them? Or should there be a change in focus? Wow, it just the very, very eye-opening. So what are some of the tests? Standardized tests. I don't know if they still have them. I think they do. 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?

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?

Kristina Dooley:

Things have changed so much since COVID. 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. But many of them have decided not to go back to requiring tests. 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. 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. 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. So if you're applying to Georgia Tech University of Georgia, you have to submit a test score. You don't have a choice, and what they do with them it's up to them.

Kristina Dooley:

But anyway. So we tell students you know, start taking these tests. Most students will plateau by their third time taking one of these tests though. 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. It's the same kind of thing. I agree with you. I'm not a fan of the tests.

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. I think it's important that they. I don't love them because it does cause a lot of stress on kids to do really well. Nationally the averages range between a 23 and 25 on the ACT, for example. I would say for a lot of traditional colleges. Most colleges are accepting it's like 80% of colleges accept 50% than half of their applicants. The vast majority of colleges are accepting more than half of their applicants. What we hear about are the really selective schools that are accepting 5, 10, 15% of their applications.

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. So it can be a benefit. It can hurt, you know. 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. 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? It's a much more complicated process, more holistic now.

Kristina Dooley:

They're looking at other things too.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Right, so we're at the end of our time. Is there anything that didn't cover? Do you want to share? How can, how could someone get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Kristina Dooley:

Sure yeah, and I think one of the best ways. We have an e-newsletter that goes out every month. It's free and families can sign up for that on the astrellaconsultingcom website. 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. There's a lot of really great content on there. 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. Thank you so much for joining us.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome.

Kristina Dooley:

Thanks for having me.

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. 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. Amen. And lastly, I want to share a couple bits of information. So we again we're talking about a wide variety of topics, as you know, with our show and podcast.

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. org website. It's confidential 24-7, or you can reach them at 1-888-373-7888, tty 711. You can also text at 233-733. And then you can also chat. 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. That's a website, so some of us are a little easier to call or text. So you can call them at 988. You can also text them at 988 and then you can go to their website and you can use the chat feature. So we wanted to start sharing that information. We find that people are interested and it helps having that transcript in a lot of different ways. So thank you for joining us for this episode. I want to thank our in-studio guest, Kristina Dooley, Estrela Consulting. Check it out and until next time, please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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