Daniel Santos: Breaking Down the College Admissions Journey on The Way to College Podcast

Here's our next walk. something with another episode, the Weed at College podcast. And you know, when I created the podcast, I created it to be a resource to students primarily because most of my students, I think, found themselves in a position where they felt all of this pressure. They've made it to college for the most part and we had questions about, okay, what's next? You know, what am I supposed to do? And once I get my degree right, is this all I'm going to do for the rest of my life? I heard that a lot. And I, you know, and since starting the podcast, right, I think I've continued to address that, but I've also grown the podcast to provide a variety of perspectives. And I think as of late, over the last year, I've connected with folks who are providing resources to students who maybe are trying to get to college, students who are trying to navigate to the college admissions process because it is difficult. I had actually my most recent podcast guest, Justin Reyes, talked about how he was helping his niece to get into community college and how even he and his wife with all of their degrees still found it a little difficult. And so I'm excited to connect with today's guests and to first hear his journey, but then talk about the work that he's doing, which I think is critical and is a tremendous resource to students all over the country. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it over to my guest. And Daniel, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners and viewers out there? Of course. So hi everyone. And thank you, Jose, for having me on today's show. My name is Daniel Santos, and I'm the CEO of Preparary College Admissions Counseling, where college admissions consultants and company that since our inception back in 2012 has worked with over 14,000 students to navigate the college admissions process. Students from all 50 US states and over 60 countries internationally to sort of navigate the process on for our underclassmen, how do I build a winning college admissions profile? How do I show the best version of myself or become the best version of myself to an admissions for an admissions committee? And for 11th and 12th grade students, how do I take this raw material that I've been sort of working towards building and developing this profile since I was a freshman and presented in the best light to admissions committee? How do I tell my story in a way that's authentic to who I am while also making me a more competitive college applicant? And it's been a really cool journey, these over this last decade. And I'm excited to share a little bit about that with you and your listeners today. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us. In Daniel with all of my guests, I always ask the same question to get us going and that question is, where does your own journey, where does your educational journey begin? Sure, great question. So my educational journey really begins a small K-12 charter school institution. I started at that school when I was in fifth grade and while I was a really nurturing and loving environment and that school really changed my life without that school, I wouldn't have ever started this business and I wouldn't, you know, sort of be who I am today, but it wasn't an academically challenging community. There was little resources around college admissions and why our school counselors were nurturing and driven. They had massive student caseloads and honestly didn't have the information to really thoughtfully support us through this process. And so while I was, time I graduated high school, top 10% of my class really academically ambitious, and the kind of kid who really would have benefited from being challenged and being steered to maybe more competitive academic environments or just steered towards being more intentional really in this college admissions process, that never really happened. And when I got into college, I sort of realized that the school I was at maybe wasn't the best fit for me. And I started to learn about a lot of other opportunities around different schools, the fact that students go out of state, the fact that there's a thing called the Ivy League and Marit Bay scholarship and Questbridge and Posse scholarship. And when I started to discover that sort of that learning became the beginning of my story and I desperately wanted to create those sets of opportunities and those sets of resources and eventually the knowledge and strategy for other students to navigate this process. And after that experience, the beginning of a properly really started by supporting students from my own community to navigate this process. And the first student that we worked with got a full ride to Stanford, Harvard, and Yale that never really happened for students from his zip code. And so that experience really taught us that with the right information, the right resources, all sorts of students can be really competitive in this process. Daniel, one congratulations on this work. And it's clear that you have a personal stake in this work because of your own experience, because of where you're coming from. But also that awareness, right, just having that awareness as a college student that, hey, man, there were a lot of opportunities for students out there. And I didn't have those opportunities or maybe I could create those opportunities for others. We, when we're young, we're often asked and encouraged to think about what it is that we want to do when we grow up. And I don't know that, you know, young Daniel in high school was thinking about that with the work that you're doing now. What were you thinking about? And what was the messaging you were getting from your parents? Yeah, great question. So I wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. I wasn't high school. I was a big biology kid anatomy physiology. I really enjoyed the sciences. Don't worry, I'm not a pediatric surgeon. That would be bad for I think a lot of people. And I think actually the messaging with for my parents at the time was really validating. They really wanted me to pursue medicine. They wanted me to pursue that field. And I think, sort of, again, in retrospect, with more guidance, I probably would have discovered early on that that wasn't a good fit. That the things that really drove me were people. I was always a really social person, super community oriented, working with other people, managing people, leading people, sort of developing people-centric products is something that I think I discovered through my experience with Preparities. But having known that when I was, you know, sophomore of junior in high school, I probably wouldn't have applied to college as a bio major, change my major maybe four or five times by the time I wasn't undergrad. Because I just would have been more informed. I would have had maybe someone there to challenge my perspective and help me discover things that as a 15-year-old, you kind of can't really discover on your own. And I think that what you describe is common for a lot of students, where we get particular messaging or we see what's around us, what is it that we're exposed to? And okay, I'm going to be a surgeon or I'm going to be a doctor or a lawyer, what have you. But really, I don't know that there's a lot of, and I think about my own work with students. Of reflection and thinking about, like you said, recognizing that your social recognizing that you love doing the community work and being involved in that, you know, and helping others. And so I appreciate you going there and telling us about that. You described your high school in, or your school experience, you go to this charter school, but you did say, your counselors maybe were overworked or that they were their caseload was too large, right? Let me ask you, who helped you navigate the college in Michigan's process? Yeah, good question. It was a lot of googling at the time, just really spending hours on places like college confidential. And again, we did have school counselors at my school who were helpful to the degree that they had the time to be and to the degree that they themselves had the knowledge to be. And I did lean on them. I just, another thing is that I really started the college application process in September of 12th grade. When, now sort of being in this space, I recognize that the college application process starts the very first day of high school. And for students who might even be taking high school level courses in middle school, it starts earlier than that and that intentionality around the courses is you select the extra curriculars that you get involved in. And like you said, that introspection, that reflection of who and what do I care about? How do I pursue and highlight this to admissions officers? Is another huge part of the process that I think still to this day. And as a high school student, I was a really action oriented person. And so I decided one day was going to be pediatric surgery. It didn't question it much. And I just like, you know, moved forward in that direction. And with more pause and reflection, I probably would have chosen a, chosen a path. Excuse me, that would have gotten me to where I'm at sooner. Yeah. Well, well, thank you. Thank you for that. And I think, and I think one thing, one point that I think both of us can agree on. Right. This is not to disparage our counselors out there. But, you know, to your point, you know, they have a lot of students that they've got, right? And so to the degree that they can help the student, random, a lot of them go above and beyond helping their students, but there's so much information. There's so much to navigate. There's so much thought that that goes into the whole the entire application process. And just as you said, that journey begins, you know, as early as your first day of high school and for some earlier, depending on the courses that they're taking as medical middle school students. So thank you. Thank you for for that. Now, Daniel, you're, you're in college and you're, you're, you're having all of these, you know, they, you're recognizing, right, that that about the opportunities that exist, that maybe you didn't have and how you could create those. Now, let me ask you, when did, when did your company, when did that idea sort of crystallize your head thinking, there's something here, there's something that I can do. Where were you in your college journey? Yeah, great question. It was actually really early on. It was around my freshman, my sophomore year. And it was, when I started to realize that biology wasn't the path for me. It was first semester chemistry. And if you know bio majors, you know, that first semester chemistry is, changes a lot of people's mind. And I was one of those people. And it was during that winter break with a friend of mine, from high school that I was reflecting and sort of realizing, like, oh, this pediatric surgery is just a sort of story that I told myself and I believed over and over and never really challenged. I have to figure out what other interests I have, what other goals I have, and through that sort of realization for myself, I sort of, I began to reflect and realize, oh, no, this, this gap in understanding, this, this gap in reflection and really started in high school. And in that same sort of vein where I started to realize, like, oh, academically, the university and that isn't the best fit for me. I started to realize that sort of simultaneously. And I made the best out of it, by, you know, by time I graduated. But really the way I thought of college at the time was, go to the school and actually intern as much as I can so I can spend as little time at this university and spend most of my time working towards as a career because I realized this wasn't the best school fit for me. I wasn't interested in transferring for sort of my family's financial reasons. But again, if I would have taken that learning and actually had it three years prior, four years prior, I wouldn't have been in the same predicament. How did you choose your college? Oh, good question. It was a really scientific decision where I sort of looked at the map of Florida and was like, what school is not, and you know, Miami-Dade County, but not crazy far. And that was it. There was nothing else involved. You know, around like what majors do they offer or what sort of graduate programming is available here? You know, the idea of going out of state was just not even in the realm of like possibility or feasibility for someone from my high school. It's just, we didn't even think that kids thought that that was the thing you did at the time at my high school. And so even aspiring to something other than that was just not possible because those opportunities, we weren't even aware existed. And as I sort of again went to undergrad and met kids from other states and started to connect with other people outside of just my high school that I went to from fifth grade all the way through high school graduation. I started to realize, oh, there's this whole set of opportunities that I didn't know existed. Yeah. Wow. Oh, man. And I think, you know, I'm excited to share this episode because I know there are going to be other students that are thinking sort of finding themselves right in that same predicament, thinking about where they want to go to school. But never thinking about, I could, I could really go away. I could go to another state. I could go to a private school versus a public school, right? And there's a conversation around that. So thank you for sharing your own experience with that because I think that's that's really important. Two, you talked about, and I think this is really powerful. And I don't think we talk about this enough. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves, right? And so you said, you know, you told you were going to be a surgeon. And that was the story you kept telling yourself. And it's such a it's such a powerful thing. How do we, I don't know that you can enter this, but how do we create a space? How do we cultivate a space where we can challenge like we ourselves. So like a student that finds themselves. And I ask this because, you know, for the most part, my my experience, my teaching experience, I've worked with first year students as a transition of college. And I see that so often with them. They've got this story that they've been building and they've been telling and pretty soon the family's telling it about them. And they don't create the space to challenge that story or to say that there could be an alternative. And so face with the setback, face with a challenging semester. Boom, I'm I'm checking out. I'm not coming back, you know, I'm leaving college because that was it. That was a story I tell. How do we create that space for young people? Yeah. I can tell you in terms of how we created here at PRAPRI. But I really think that it's it's quite a big onus to put on, you know, young students, whether it be a 15 year old sophomore or a 18 year old college freshman. It it's a challenge. And while in a lot of ways, we convinced ourselves that 18 year olds are adults in this country, you know, I think back to what I was doing as as the 18 year old and undergrad and it didn't really seem very adult like at the time. And I really think having people who understand the set of opportunities, people who are oftentimes older than you, who have more experience in you, who you have a sort of trusting relationship with to challenge your perspectives and say, hey, you say that you like this, but really as someone who's gotten to know you, who's starting to see what you're involved in, see what sort of lights you up, you're actually involved in this other thing. You know, if you, my company, we do this something called committee roof, where we essentially put together for our students a mock admissions committee made up of our former admissions officers from, you know, top schools like NYU, Purdue, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania. And we do this as early as ninth grade. So we don't wait to do this just for our applying seniors for this exact recent, I'll say. So actually a few months ago, I was sitting in committee review for sophomore, who was about to be a junior and her and her father have told themselves the story that she's a computer science kid. And that all she wanted to pursue is computer sciences. And as we sort of met together as a committee and reviewed the students profile, the committee really clearly saw, oh, you're not a computer science kid. You're a public health data science student. And one, you probably didn't realize that because you're sophomore and what the heck is public health when you're in 10th grade. And second, because you've been telling yourself, oh, my dad works on Amazon, he's an engineer, I have to be a computer engineer and sort of really having people in the room like adults who know you trust you can challenge a perspective. I think goes a really long way towards really helping you discover that on purpose or rather earlier on in this process. Yeah, wow. I love that. And I think, you know, for the parent, I love that you're able to provide that service for these young people because I think, because I think too often, right, one, we don't have access to that or we don't ever experience that. When we do, it's when maybe our professors are telling us this maybe isn't where you need to be or where you're supposed to be. So great. Thank you for that. You, so you're having all of these experiences, all of these things that are sort of informing the work that you're doing now. When did you take this and formalize it and say this, this is something that needs to happen. I know you said you started thinking about it as early as your freshman year, but when did you formalize the company and, you know, who did you tell? Because I mean, I think it's one thing to say I'm going to go back and I'm going to help some kids out of my community. But, you know, when we started, you said you've already helped, your company's already helped over 14,000 students. So yeah, who did you share? Who did you bring along on this journey? Great question. So actually, we sort of really informally started supporting students, not just from our community. And then it started to expand a little bit outside of our community to friends of friends in other places. And through study abroad programming that we participated in, friends that we met in China in Hong Kong that we started to provide counseling to myself and my co-founder. And that really began in 2013. And in 2016 is when we really started to scale, you know, I essentially quit my full-time job and said, I'm committing myself to this. And hired a really tiny team of kind of part-time counselors to support our students. And started to be more intentional about marketing our service. And actually, the first thing that we did was reach out to my alma mater to say, I was a student at your school. I know how much you guys wanted the best for us. And you really didn't have the know-how to navigate this process intentionally. And to leverage your really ambitious students to even make your school sort of a powerhouse in your accounting and your school district. And, you know, because of a great relationship that we had with the principal at the time, they were one of the first schools who signed on with us. And later that year, about 11 months later, we signed on two more schools as we started to continue to gradually grow the individual families that we support. And now we work with upwards of about 15 different schools to deliver their admissions counseling or just sort of be a supplemental resource for their students, specifically gear to college admissions counseling, and work with thousands of families to provide one-on-one advising to their high school students to navigate the college admissions process. Wow. Wow. You won congratulations. I think, you know, when you can find, when you can recognize, right, this is the work that I'm doing. And I think the lesson here right is that, you know, for young people out there who say, well, I want to do this and they think it's going to happen overnight. Two, I mean, I think your stories are great example. You talked about, you had a full-time job. And if you don't mind me asking, what was the full-time job before quitting and devoting all of your time to this? I was a case manager for a law firm, because at the time, you know, once pediatric surgery didn't work, I'll say, oh, it has to be law school. And that's where my mind went. Yeah. Okay. So, so recognizing, right, that that building anything, building things, building anything worthwhile, and for you clearly, this work again was informed by your experience and by your passion and commitment to young people, helping young people. But, you know, growing it and growing it slowly until you recognize, okay, now I think we're at a point where you can scale now. So, one, Kudos. Congratulations for all of your hard work. Thank you. And, you know, as a small business owner, myself, I know how difficult that is to show, yes, congratulations. You, you know, you mentioned something really important. Earlier, when you were talking about your own experience, and you said, you started your college application, college admissions journey, your senior year. All right. So, Daniel, I'm going to put you on the spot. We've got, and I'm, because I'm sure you've had, you've had some students that you're working with who find themselves in the same situation you're in. I know that I speak to students all the time. And, and I've been contacted by several students who are seniors, and they're kind of like, okay, now I'm ready to start. What advice would you give? Or what advice do you give young people who are just starting out? And because I know, I know you don't close it or on them. What do you, what do you tell them? Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's especially parents, they start to essentially ask like, you know, are we too late? You know, what do we do? And I think the very first thing that I usually respond to those parents is like, well, I have to get to know you first. And one thing I usually tell students, and it's sort of connected to the how to get to know, that I have to get to know you is a student. You have to get to know yourself. Right? I think there's something to be said about self awareness and emotional intelligence and the kind of college applicant that having those two skill sets will make you be. And it's something that virtually like every admissions office is looking for, but they don't sort of put it out there. And also, if you tell it, you know, junior to be emotional, intelligent, to, you know, well, okay, what's that? I mean, how does one do that? But I think that's something that I would really, I usually start with students. I try to deeply get to know them what their interests are. And sort of determine what's a reasonable fit for you. Right? Sometimes you might have these students who are coming to you with a really ambitious list that they're sort of, it's there because I don't know, they saw it on a Netflix show or they, you know, Gilmore Girls is making come back for high school students. So now, like, you know, there's like this big interest in highly, highly selective schools. But if you're maybe SAT score GPA is now on that playing field, okay, well, what is Case Western University? How have you heard of it? Is could that be a cool fit for you? What is Babson in college? You're interested in business or being entrepreneurial? What's that? And could that be a cool fit for you? So usually start by just kind of trying to diagnose where the students are and helping them understand that authenticity and intentionality in this process is a massively underrated score. I love that. I love that. And I appreciate that. I couldn't agree more. You, you know, Daniel, you've been doing this work for so long. It sounds like you've put together a real stand-up team around you. Let me ask, what is one of the biggest myths you find you have to dispel for families out there who are trying to navigate the college admissions process? Yeah. I think maybe, and this is usually say that the simple answer is the right answer. And it's that there is some secret sauce that will get a kid a golden ticket into their dream school. And the truth is that there isn't a combination of three leadership positions, one research position, excuse me, and a letter of recommendation from a current professor at that school that's a golden ticket to any university. I think understanding that this process is really subjective and should be constructed in a way that really makes your students the best version of themselves is the best way to sort of go through this process. And I think a lot of times families feel like, especially high school students feel like, okay, doing what I like or doing what I enjoy does not make me a good college applicant. And my response to that is untrue. The more that you can commit yourself to what you do enjoy and the more that you understand what those things are and that of course you're academically competitive and really committed to your academics, the stronger applicant that you will be and the more that future you will think yourself for that because you aren't going to probably change your major four or five times and realize that the school you applied to and got into isn't the best fit because you went through this process with a lot of intentionality unlike me. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. Daniel, for folks that would like to take advantage of your services, what do they find you? Yeah, best place that they can find us is our website, www.prepory.com. That's the best place to find us. If you'd like to reach out to me, you can follow me on LinkedIn or add me on LinkedIn. It's Daniel E Santos. Again, that's prep reading P-R-E-P-O-R-Y. Daniel, thank you. What I'll do is I'll make sure to provide the links in our show notes and across all of our social media platforms. Daniel, as we think about as we transition, one, I think there's a lot of information out there. Right. I think it's good that parents know that if they find that their kids, that their students are in their senior year of high school, one, that they're still options. They're still plenty that they can do. And their countless outstanding schools out there, right? They can find their way there. Right. But also that this process really starts early on. Speak to that. Speak to because I think there are some people that say, oh, you're being ridiculous. You want to start having this conversation when your son or daughter is a senior or a freshman or an eighth grade, why is that important that they start early on? Great question. I think I got a good response to this, which is usually frame this for freshmen and sophomore parents. Is that college applications when you are a senior are due as early as October 1 to November 1st. Mayor-based scholarships are usually due October 1st. And the kind of biggest college application deadline is November 1. In most school districts, that's like two months in just senior year. So this whole idea of, oh, I have four years to apply to college is fundamentally untrue. Right. This is happening at the very beginning of 12th grade. So everything you do in 12th grade does not count for your admissions process. It doesn't, it's not what admissions officers are looking at. So if you recognize that, you have three years, that means that ninth grade makes up 33% of everything that an admissions officer will look at to decide whether or not you're a competitive student at their school. And in addition to that, I usually tell parents that the decisions that you make as a freshman in terms of whether or not you're enrolling in honors courses or AP courses or you're joining your school's robotics teams opens or closes doors for you as a sophomore. If you didn't join that robotics team as a freshman, the chances of you being president by tying your junior are relatively low. And if you're not on the robotics team, how are you can compete in state level competitions to get that gold award or that bronze award that will make you a stronger college applicant? Right. You need time to develop into those roles and garner these opportunities for yourself. And so if you don't start that process early on, you're right. Things are not totally out of the door by the time you're sought the senior or junior. You can sort of work backwards really accelerate your process, but now the onus is more on you. And of course by the time you are senior, you're kind of arduous working with whatever raw material you have and crossing your fingers at the decisions you made when you were a freshman or you were a sophomore, were the right ones for the set of schools you're interested in. Thank you. Thank you for laying that out there because I think I think a lot of people assume, you know, I can start maybe at the end of junior or at the beginning of senior year, right? But really, you do have to think critically and strategically about the decisions in terms of the courses and involvement, things like that. So thank you for for laying that out there. You know, Daniel, there have been a number of changes in terms of admissions. And I think we can all agree, it feels like the landscape of education has changed and our and our ideas about college. What do you tell a parent who, you know, I think parents and students who are looking at college and looking at college may be a little more questionable or with more questions than maybe they typically have about the state of college admissions and just colleges in general. Do you have any thoughts on that? I do. I think it of course varies on maybe what their uncertainty or maybe questions are. But there are times that I sort of got reactions from parents like, man, this process is daunting, this process is scary and it's unfair. And usually my response is, I agree. It is daunting. It is scary. And it's in a lot of ways unreasonable to ask a 15-year-old to take this on. But it's also the nature of the beast. And I usually tell families that, while of course, I work in college admissions and our team is here to support our families to get into whatever of schools they want for themselves, where you go to college is not at all as important as how you go to college. And while our team is absolutely in the business of helping our students on that where component, we're just as much helping them on the how component and really making sure that they are applying to programs that make sense for them, that they, there's even opportunities for acceleration, right? If your student interested in the pre-med like I was, helping students understand what's the BSMD program and the fact that actually you can apply to BSMD programs even as a junior in college if you aren't super competitive by the time you're senior in high school. And what is maybe a plus one program or schools where there's opportunities to accelerate your legal career? So especially for students who are interested in maybe graduate programming, they get to start their profession maybe one to two years early, especially if you have one of those longer trajectories in your process. So I think that's something that I usually tell families that if you're doing this right, the how you go to college will far outpace the importance of the where. Awesome. Awesome. Daniel, then finally one, thank you for your time today. And I think for your expertise in your knowledge, because I think one, there is a lot of information out there. And I think it's rare that we hear from the people who are actually doing the work, that the people that know the process and know the how the ins and outs. So I appreciate you taking the time to share that expertise with us. Thank you. And now, so as we transition out, because I do want to be respectful of your time, I know you're very busy. What last piece of advice would you like to leave for listeners and viewers out there? That is a great question. What I would say to, let's namely parents of high school students or high school students, and even current college students who might even be thinking about transferring or how they move through their careers is really spend time reflecting and understanding what your goals are. And really be thoughtful through how you move through these processes. You know, I shared that small story about that story that I told myself when I was in high school and how that sort of kind of elongated my process to the kind of career that I was hoping to have. But really, I think the more time that we can spend understanding ourselves, understanding our passions or goals, and pursuing those and illustrating our commitment to those fields, probably the earlier on that we'll discover for on the right track to our passion. If I probably would have spent more time shadowing doctors or working in a lab, I might have discovered that actually this isn't the fit for me or if I would have just built realize that I hated chemistry when I was a sophomore in high school when I took it, I would have just accepted that I probably shouldn't have been a biochem major and underrod. And so I think that introspection that really that reflection is a really important piece and I think pays out massive dividends later down the line. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Excellent advice. Daniel, thank you again for your time. Thank you for your story. And thank you for the work that you're doing. It's amazing that you've helped over 14,000 students. I wish you the best as you continue to help countless more, thousands more. And so thank you again for your time today. Thank you, Jose, for having me on and for the invitation. And I wish the best as well. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. This concludes another episode of the Weight of College podcast. Thank you to our guests, Daniel Santos. Thank you to all of our listeners and viewers out there. Please remember to subscribe, rate all of that good stuff. Give me the favor and share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. We'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.