Prior to becoming a full-time education consultant, I had the opportunity to work for a network of private schools in Colombia. As the Director of Education, I was in a position to analyze K12 education as a whole and identify the real levers of impact, the things that could move the needle in terms of a school’s ability to develop passionate, motivated, and committed young people with the skills to change the world for the better. There were the usual suspects – teacher quality, curriculum, and leadership – but an area that came up that surprised me was international career and college counseling. This stuck out as a such a priority, that my role eventually shifted and I took on the challenge of creating and implementing the career and college counseling program in the schools across the network. Through this experience, I have come to understand that quality international career and college counseling is what allows an international education K12 education to truly open doors.

Planning and development – organizational, project, program, or even curriculum – start with the end in mind. In education we love a good backwards design. Often teachers use this to plan their year, their unit, their class, but when it comes to K12 education we have to think about the graduate. While we can cite many purposes for education, I would argue that the number one responsibility of a school is to open doors for its students; to give students the foundation necessary to continue on the path they imagine for themselves. This is no small feat and, very often, I have found that individual teachers and even school leaders in their day-to-day work can quickly lose track of this end goal. Cue in the international career and college counselor.

The international career and college counselor (college counselor, for short) or the team of college counselors takes on the responsibility of understanding the goals and dreams of each student that passes through a school and guides them to the next step on their journey following graduation. There are many routes students can take and as they support students year after year to find their path, college counselors are uniquely positioned to analyze how well a school is meeting the needs of each graduating class and to propose strategic adjustments that will allow that school to respond to the actual needs of these students.

I am an ideas person, I see possibilities, so for me there is a long list of ways that the college counselor can add value to the school leadership team’s strategic planning, but here just are a few examples:

Curriculum Offerings. All universities will ask for a copy of the transcript and they will be looking at both the rigor of the courses that the student has taken (the curriculum) and how well they have performed in these courses (academic achievement). The college counselor will know how well the curriculum and its course offerings are responding to the needs/interests of the students and how well the students’ academic performance is up to par with the entry requirements of the universities they hope to attend. Here are some ways that schools can use this data:

• Update subject offerings to respond to career interests of future graduates. For example, if Engineering is a popular major and a school offers the IB diploma, it is important that students have access to the higher level math that they will need for universities in Canada and the UK, among others. If a school cannot offer more subjects, they can identify online courses or other alternatives to recommend to students so that the options the seek are still available to them at the time of applying to universities.
• Develop an improvement plan for subjects with particularly low averages, prioritizing subjects that are reducing students’ success at entry to universities and other programs.

Language Proficiency. In today’s world students will need a second of even a third language. College counselors are aware of the English levels that students need to enter the top universities around the world and can share this information. The most selective universities where English is the language of instruction require a 100 on the TOEFL to even continue reading the student’s application, but most are looking for a 110 to feel confident that the student will be able to successfully participate in university classes. Some actions that the school may take based on the data collected:

• Develop strategies to strengthen the skills where students are struggling: reading, writing, listening and/or speaking.
• Acquire training for language teachers to better understand the exams that the universities accept to incorporate strategies and testing structures into the curriculum so that the exam is not the first time students are coming across certain types of questions, vocabulary, or activities

Opportunities to explore talents and leadership. Many universities, gap year programs, and even employers look beyond coursework, grades, and standardized tests when sizing up a student for their school, program or company; they also want to see how the student has developed his or her unique talents and has used them in their leadership. Students can showcase this information through essays, their CV, and even a portafolio, but this is very hard for many students because 1) culturally, talking about their strengths and accomplishments may be considered bragging and because 2) they haven’t been proactively exploring who they are, what they are good at, and planning how to lead from their strengths. Once again, college counselors’ perspective can help schools to:

• Improve articulation across various teams and programs – character development; social emotional learning; community service; and extracurricular activities, clubs, and sports are all areas that can support students’ self-exploration and self-reflection (in addition to all their core classes!), but are they all working towards a shared goal? Is someone following up on how each of these supports the integral education of each student?
• Organize student portfolios. This is just one strategy that will allow students to record and reflect on their experiences and to show how all of their learning comes together to develop them as unique individuals.

College counselors have access to so much valuable information and data that crosses the silos that educators frequently find themselves working in. They are supporting students in the transition from school to career and know where students want to go and the tools they need to get there. A quality education needs to open doors to students. A quality international education needs to open doors to the exterior, for all the students who choose to pursue this option. Schools must invite their international college and career counselor to the table and take advantage of their knowledge and insights on how to open these doors.