Hello everyone, and welcome to the best ever You show. I'm Elizabeth Hamilton Garino. Thank you for being here with us. I have author Greg Kaplan with me today. He is the author of the journey How to Prepare Kids for a competitive and changing World. Greg, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me today. Elizabeth.
Yeah, okay, so you have pivoted careers a little bit and kind of heard I read somewhere that you were in the financial services industry and pivoted to a totally different career. Now have a book out, am I correct?
You are correct?
I am a reformed or burnt out investment banker turned college admissions expert or strategists.
So I went from.
Helping companies sell themselves to helping young people figure out what makes them ticks so they could then market themselves to the schools they wish to attend.
And tell me why you did that. So you just got sick of being in the financial services industry. I've won toe in the financial services industry too, well, kind of half of me. My husband is a federal securities lawyer.
Oh amazing. I'm also a lawyer by training. So I my journey to becoming a college admissions advisor. Really started as an investment banker when it was my ticket out of work every day before two am, when I would talk to some of the senior bankers at the firm I was at on Wall Street and they would ask, how did you get into a school like Penn And I would say, well, I developed a plan to market myself and to really you know, show my ability to add value to the to the organizations that I was
applying for the universities, and they would say, gosh, that sounds like actually quite smart.
Can you come give my kid at pep Talk?
And I, at that point, my twenty four year old self, was much more inclined to go over to some person that I worked with house for dinner to give their kid at pep Talk rather than be running, you know, pro forma analysis at two am, so that it was out of almost necessity. And I people kept saying, gosh, you got to write this into a book one day. And that was my first book. And I've been, you know, doing this full time for the last seven years.
So is the book for parents or for kids or who's it for?
So the Journey, which I published with HCI and May at twenty twenty four. I actually wrote to both parents and students, So it alternates one chapter to the parents. Because the journey to college, as you're well aware of Elizabeth, as a team sport, you really need everyone in the family be aligned, not just because the cost, but because it just takes so much at Emford and sometimes a
young person really does know how to navigate themselves. So it alternates chapter to parents, chapters to students, and it goes back and forth because I want everyone to be on the same page, which is sometimes hard with the teenager.
Is this for kids that need to get into Harvard or you know, Penn or Georgetown or Stanford or Bale or sis. For all levels of colleges, all levels of students, and what about students that don't want to go on to college?
So this book is not just for the ivy or busters, which we call them in my office. This book is for everyone who is seeking to make the most of their path to colleging career. There's not one college that has a monopoly on the path to success, and where one goes is not who.
They will be.
I had better job prospects coming out of U see Irvine School of Law, which at the time was unranked than I did coming out of Warton, which is the top rings business school the United States. So what this really is is to try to get families to move past the Harvard or Bust mentality, which I think is pervasive in a lot of high achieving, affluent communities, and to help people visualize success and their path to however they define it through, whether it's college or another path.
So this book is for everyone's about developing three key traits that can be developed as part of the journey to college, but also can be out. So no, it's not just for the Yeah, the Harvard or Stanford Stanfords.
Yeah, and are people saying, hey, mister Kaplan, can you help me get in here?
A lot of the families, you know, it's interesting. When I first started my practice seven years ago, a lot of the folks were very much I really am targeting a Harvard to Stanford, at UCLA, at University of Michigan. But the conversation's really changed to how do I make this process work for me? And I think that's a
very healthy conversation to have. I think these schools are so competitive to get into that it requires us to be creative and flexible, and that's really what I'm trying to spread the message to as a way to address team mental health, to address family angst and anxiety over paying for this for college.
That is because it's so expensive, it is so overprised, and so.
There is still a lot of that. But that has been the most pleasant change in my practice is that. And we joke like the Harvard or Iveyer busters, like that's a lot less and it should be.
Yeah, yeah, when So we've got four sons there now this year they turned twenty three, twenty five, twenty seven, and twenty nine, and we have we just finished the master's degree portion of everyone's educations. Yes, thank you. So we've been in college now, my husband, I feel like we've gone back multiple times. We've been in college since twenty thirteen, so that is eleven years of paying for college for multiple kids in school at once. At one
point we had all four in college at once. So you can imagine the bills and the rent and the food, tuition and everything for us, can't you.
I'm getting anxious just listening to talk about that. At least you're done, Yeah.
Yeah, we are, We're done. Although our youngest wants to continue on to medical school. So we may have a conversation, but you know, so that's that's us and our kids. It was interesting because, in fact, if you put all six of us together, we went to all types of different schools, from University of New Haven to Saint Amber's University in Davenport, Iowa, to Rutgers to Georgetown to University of Maine ri T in Rochester, New York. I think I said University of New Haven. I mean all different
kinds of schools. Do you talk about how different schools fit different students?
Yes, and I think that's the biggest thing, and that makes me so happy to hear, because this is not a one size fits all approach when it comes to college. And yes, there are some schools that are brands, and I use this intentionally when we're talking about college or grad school or the journey to being fulfilled and to being However, can we use define the word successful because I think that's different for everyone. But this is not getting a hood ornament for a car. This is not
getting a design purse to put on one shoulder. This is an experience, and so we really do want people to find schools and to embrace the mentality about making this work for you, not the other way around.
You know, the journey.
You mentioned that your son is potentially applying to medical school, and there are some schools that are really good fits at an undergraduate level to prepare people for the journey to medicine, for example. And I always use example when I tell students, because I would say about maybe ten to twenty percent of the students we work with want to be doctors. And I would say half of my hall, of my dorm hall, my freshman year of Pen was
pre med. But Penn is one of those places where there's so much academic pressure, and the grading is so intense, and your classes are graded on a curve, so your grade is not necessarily I got a ninety and a test reports in A. But if I'm in the top ten or twenty percent of my class at five hundred kids who happened, I'll be the smartest kids from their high school.
Then I get an A.
And so I always tell students if they want to go to medical school, we need to find schools where the grading practices make sense, where the research opportunities to you know, to bolster one's resume are easy to obtain and where there's service opportunities. So we have kids to say we.
Want to go.
I live in California and Irvine, and there's a very popul university here. You see Santa Barbara's on the beach. It's a great school. The only problem for UCSPC is there's no hospital attached to it, and so if you want to go do research or medical volunteering, you have to look elsewhere in the summer. So it's an amazing school. It may not be the greatest place to go become a doctor at though, and so it's really about making this work for you. And Asus is like a concrete example.
But yes, we really want all different types of schools because there's all different types of people on all different price points too.
Yeah, I remember when you mentioned the curve. I remember when I was in college one hundred thousand years ago. I was at the University of Iowa and I walked into my freshman math class, took my test, you know, did all my stuff, and it was graded on a curve, and I nearly fell out of my rocker point. I'm like, I've never even heard of this before. I come from a school of two hundred and seven kids in Pleasant Valley, Iowa.
And Wow, I just was blown away. And I didn't do terrible or anything like that, but I didn't get an A. And it was like the first time in my life where I didn't get an A And I'm like, oh, no, you know kind of thing. And so I think there's that there's that freshman adjustment period where things change. You're not at home, the grading's different, the school's big or smaller. You're on your own. If you get sick, you don't you know. If you get sick and you're far away
from home, you can't go home. All these things factor into school, and I don't know if everybody's thinking that way.
What I would say is like, we want people to recognize though, that there are going to be challenges and that again it's even finding the right place for you. If a young person's dealing with a lot of anxiety or just being in the most competitive school environment may not be the right fit.
And so sometimes it's a small school.
Sometimes it's a large school where the anonymity doesn't feel like there's a spotlight and that's okay, let's play to our strengths.
Yeah, there's a lot of talking right now about how expensive school is and whether it's worth it or not. pH debates going on about the value of college, how we're going to pay for college, if we're going to have loans, no loans, payoff loans, loans forgiven all over the place is college for everyone these days?
And I'm so glad you bring this up. College.
A public university, a place like the University of Iowa, when you factor in room and board if you're not living at home, could be close to thirty to forty thousand dollars per year, and a private university can be is approaching one hundred thousand dollars now per year, and to have four hundred thousand dollars of student loans and maybe not the right job prospects that would ever allow a young person to pay that off is I don't think that makes sense for everyone, and there are a
lot of other pathways to be fulfilled in life. However, we define that in terms of we always tell young people we work with we want them to be healthy, happy, and financial independent. And if someone's dream is too and you could be an entrepreneur, being a you know, an air conditioned and service technician, you could you could build up a practice, you could hire other technicians. It doesn't
have to be, you know, a computer programmer. So I think young people really have to have a sense of what they enjoy to do, whether it's interacting with people, building things, fixing things, helping people, and then try to
understand how educational pathways fit for that. And if a young person really doesn't know what they want to do or doesn't know if college is right for them, they can always start at a junior college and transfer because that is a low cost way to stay at home, start earning credits that allow them to discover more as they go. I think you have four kids who are
you know, emerging from their educational journeys. We don't necessarily do the best job, and I think you'd agree in helping young people figure out what they want to do or how their educations make sense for their life goals. And so sometimes it just takes a little bit more time or experience, especially coming on the pandemic where we are very isolated and not interacting with the world as much.
Oh, I would tell you in a heartbeat, if you look at all the different kids that come out of high school. I think there's so much pressure on kids coming out of high school to like have it all figured out, and they feel like, well, I, you know, I have to choose my major, and boy, I can't change I've got to There's so much pressure to choose a major and stick with it, and if you change your major, you're in school longer and you've disappointed parents
and people and this and that. And I think I think, you know, I would hope you would change and maybe not change your major per se, but if you need to go for it. But I hope as you enter college that things change and shift around for you and you find what you love and discover your passions and all of these things. And I really don't think that you're able to do that from the comfort of high school or discomfort of high school, whichever one it is,
you know. And so I don't know what is needed, But I think more experience with all of the different careers and things that you can do with your life should be presented, maybe almost in like a gap year before you're even allowed to go to college or more credit after high school. There needs to be some kind of a better segue right in there, because some people know they want to go to medical school when they're ten, and other people figure it out when they're you know, thirty, You know exactly.
Europeans take a gap year.
I think you mentioned that, you know, one of your sons had spent some time in Germany's over there right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, play in baseball.
Which is fantastic people in Europe because when you apply to university in Europe, you're applying for a specific program and you can't change once you get there. The United States, we give you a lot of flexibility to change your major. The problem is that we have no direction when we're heading there. So I'm a big believer in a gap year.
I'm a big believer in real world experience. And that's what we're advising people with their ninth graders is you say you want to be a doctor, let's go get you volunteering in a hospital, because that you don't have to love it, but you need to see if that's
the setting you want to work in. I never would have gone to law school had I shadowed or observed a lawyer other than my own dad, because I was like, gosh, it's great working with my dad, and I was in law school, I had like kind of my arrest of development moment, Like within the first five minutes of class. My first class was like I made a terrible mistake. I should not be here. And then I spent the
next three years trying to figure out something else. And that's me finding my calling, which is what I'm doing now. But that was a really rough time in the wilderness for me because I never done that exploration.
Yeah, in our school here, I'm in Falmouth, Maine, and our Falmouth High School requires you to do thirty five hours of community service plus a job shadow in order to graduate. So I think that that was really tricky because not everybody knew what they wanted to do. But our kids actually kind of used that to their benefit. We've had And here's another thing I would say too.
You know, when you have children, sometimes they do show kind of their gifts and talents when they're little, and you just got to pay kind of closer attention or close attention to it. Because we have four very different boys. One of them, for example, would constantly look up in the sky and look at the weather and notice the weather. He's a meteorologist, so he did his job shadow with Charlie La Presty at WGME. He put a he did
multiple hours with community service with the environment. He put a weather van on the top of the school and on and on. Our other son started throwing things around with his left hand kindly when he was about six months old, and we're like, oh my, he like looks like he was a pitcher or baseball player or something. And so he from a really young age always knew he wanted to play baseball and that is exactly what
he's doing. So you know, people do that. Sometimes people don't have that figured out though, and they're like, well, what do I do with my life? And that's even it's your college English degree or your history degree, or your whatever degree it is. Sometimes the degree doesn't point sometimes to the same thing, like as cut and dried, as like a medical degree or pre law degree or an or a engineering degree or something like that. They can be tricky. It can be tricky to figure out
what you want to do. I know that was a long story, but.
No, no, but it's the stories that we need to be telling because I think kids feel so much pressure and then also we don't necessarily I think once you have a general sense and the other thing we always have to acknowledge is like with AI and globalization and just changes to like the way jobs are done, is that there's gonna be a lot of changes jobs in the coming years, and just career paths that are so different from what you and I have faced.
But everything kind of starts to work together when you have a general sense you enjoy.
And so I think it's a prioritizing where we're going to college, like like the question of where are we going to where are we going to college versus why do we want to go to college or what do we want to do with our college degree.
I think that can really take the pressure.
Off of us trying to like fit ourselves into one of these boxes for like does it have to be a Boston college or does it have to be like out here like a univers u c LA or something like that's just really really hard to get into.
Yeah, I'll tell you the story of our oldest son, just real briefly. You know, our oldest son was like, yeah, I want to go to the University of Maine. So there he was up there, and he decided pretty quickly that he didn't want to go to the University of Maine. In fact, he didn't want to go to college at all, and he was like, this is the worst experience. I don't want to sit through four years of college. I do not want to be in debt. I do not want to do this. And we were like, that's fine.
Just as nic as you're We said the same thing. You're healthy, happy, and how what are we going to do to make you financially independent? You know kind of thing. What are you going to do then if you don't want to do this, And he was like, I'm going to get a job. And now he is the senior buyer for Performance Food Group and they did put him through leadership school and things like that, but he does not have he has three and a half years of school.
He quit in his senior year. Ever having any stories like that, we've.
Actually had, we had a student that we were working we're now actually working with her younger brother. We started working with her on the pathway to start a junior college and transfer to a four year university in Los Angeles, but she ended up getting a job as in production on a TV show and has already been promoted. And the decision she came to was like, gosh, like I'm going to go to college to do exactly what I'm doing now, Like maybe I'll go part time or try
to fit it in later in life. And it doesn't necessarily easier to find the time to do it, especially if you have personal commitments like with a relationship or a family. But we were really really happy for the student, like extremely happy, because it's like she has a purpose and she's enjoying life and.
She was.
The decision really came down it's like, do I want to take on two hundred thousandars of debt for something that I don't necessarily need? And so the answer should be noted that that's common sense, Like yes, I'm a part of the higher education landscape. But I'll be the first to say, but it's not right for everyone, and there's no shame in that. We need to also destigmatize, like college, going to college shouldn't be a rite of
passage to becoming an adult. It should be an experience that equips a person to do whatever it is that they seek to do.
On the other side, but if.
Your parents are pressuring you to go to Harvard or go to Yale, or you better get into Princeton, darn it. I went there, whatever it is, and you don't want to or you too.
Yeah.
So what I often tell people and a lot of times, and I'm gonna say it's more to the parents than the young people that young person is potentially listening to to me speak right now, is that we need to make wanting your child to go to Harvard, Princeton, et cetera. Yale comes from a good place. It's like, you want the world for your child, and you think by going there that.
That's the way you achieve it.
But there was a recent study that just came out from the Department of Education that showed that IVY League grads do not ten years out of college do not make any more money than people who went to Random State University. And so going to Harvard or Yale or Princeton is not a necessity to again achieve success, however
we define and whether that's fulfillment, whether that's financial. And so I think it's really important to understand that there are more Fortune one hundred CEOs that attended Random State University than the Ivy's. There are more people working in Silicon Valley that graduated from San Jose State University. Because the heart of it than from the entire IVY League put together. So we need to really check our preconceived notions about this process to make sure that we're all
on the same page. And I think it's helpful for young people to hear that. But that's a message that if a parent's place in that kind of pressure on their child, they need to hear that and understand that for themselves so they can be healthy with their child.
Yeah, let's talk about rejection. Oh I did not get into that school, this one, that one, or another one. Our son, Quaid Gerino wrote about his rejection process in my first book from Hide the Change Guidebook, and he's a contributor to that book, and he talks about how he graduated year early from high school and applied to like every single school and every one of them rejected.
And this is a kid with a fourteen hundred SAT score traight a's And it turned out to be a lot of you don't have your missing this class and this class and this class in this class. As a senior. He was missing courses from graduating early, and so it screwed up the application process. It was a really funky,
funky journey to him graduating in a year early. And this was twenty nineteen, the year before COVID, and he's like, thank god, I graduated a year early though, although he did get to college, did get to college in twenty twenty and have to come back. But anyway, a little card came in the mail from RIT and it said we want you, and he goes, you know, I'm just gonna this is my last one. I'm just going to try. Otherwise I would just finish out my senior year. And
RIT took him. We went up to visit RIT, which is in Rochester, New York, Rochester Institute of Technology, and he fell in love with it, like it was meant to be. And so he was four years there, biology and top of his class, you know, all these things.
Just absolutely loved it. But it was so funky that rejection process with him, especially because he's a straight a kid, so that graduating early, even with credit and the I can't remember the name of it right now, but the courses you take in high school they have to test for you at all that he had everything. He was just missing three certain classes that you needed to get into college and he didn't have them. It was really weird.
Really disappointing, though, talk about rejection because kids definitely have to deal with rejection getting into college.
So I think that it is healthy to face rejection and to learn how to overcome it. And I've had two students that I've worked with that happen to be siblings that got into and every school they apply to, and I told their mom that I failed them because they didn't get rejected to a single school. You have to at a young age learn how to deal with that setback. And the best part of your son's story is the fact that he tried again and he got in.
But that is a very important life skill and perspective that one needs in order to be prepared because life doesn't matter. It's not about reaching your goal the first time. It's that life. I think rewards those who fall, pick themselves back up and go at it again and then achieve their goals. So we think it's like the class examples of like the Abraham Lincoln's who never won elected
office really until he became the president. He had so many defeats, defeats, defeats, yeah, or we just see people who just go for a time and time again, and that's grits. That's perseverance, and I think it's okay. And I always tell students you got to put a school on your list that it's going to be very tough. It's going to be the ultimate reach to get in, because if you get in, that's awesome and good for it that you're willing to put yourself out and take
the rest. And if you don't, life goes on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, he got rejected to everything. So it was really interesting. You should read that story in the Change guidebook. It's a really interesting talk to him. It's a really interesting process he went through and I kind of summarized it, but it was still long. But so when it turned around to you know, he graduated magna cum laude from RIT and he was nervous again to He's like, I want to go get my master's degree, but I'm super nervous to apply. Can you understand why.
I'm like, oh, oh yeah, considering what you went through before. And he goes, well, here's where I want to go. I want to go to Georgetown University. And our other son was at Georgetown University playing baseball there and doing his second master's degree, and he wanted to be go to master's degree for a pharmacology at Georgetown University. And he's like, should I do this? And I'm like absolutely. The worst they can say to you is no, you know, and then you're going to move on from that too
and whatever. And he got in, and I will never forget that phone call. He's like, oh God, I go, I gotta go, you know that kind of thing. But it was so nice to see him have a success after that experience of the high school thing. It was so nice for him to just get in, I will say.
And doesn't it feel so much more sweet when you're admitted after you know, trying again, not with those expectations, just knowing that it's just that you put yourself out there. That is such a better acceptance when it does come.
Yeah, and that's our budding doctor. So we'll see what happens with him next. But you know, it's interesting, and I feel for all these kids, but you know, let's go back to parents for a little bit. So I'm fifty five right now. You can probably kind of tell my age by my kids and so forth. But college today seems so much different than it was when I went to college, including the use of a cell phone. I cannot imagine if my mom were texting me every ten seconds and I was at college.
I don't know, just saying yeah, no.
It's it's a different world, and there's a lot more opportunities like them than a you know, call it a parent who's gen X whose kids are getting.
Ready to go to college today.
Is that with you know, they've grown up with the information age, and when we think about education to be learned, to get an education, to learn how to deal with the like interact with the world, that's like so cool.
There's so many more opportunities.
The flip side of that coin is there's a lot more ways that kids need to be a lot more careful online presence things set online. There's a lot of meanness on the internet, and I think a lot of group think and just a filtered way of seeing the world through social media and understanding what's going on in the world. For sa TikTok, I don't think it's the
best way to do that. So I think there's a lot of really great opportunities, and then there's also some pitfalls, and so it's a lot easier to stay in touch with your kid.
I went to.
When I went to college, we didn't have smartphones, but we had cell phones, so I was still able to talk to my parents every day and that made it being on the other side of the country so much more comfortable at the distance and feel so bad because I literally called home every.
Day, and so that was nice.
I think today, you know, a self an addiction and the social isolation that I think it great for young people and then just living their lives more online than in real life. If we're going to go to college and be away from home, let's go out and meet people, Let's go out and do things.
I think that's really really important.
Yeah, all right, last question because we've got to go and again we're speaking with Greg Kaplan. He is the author of The Journey. I just shortened the title there. It's got a longer subtitle to it, but the Journey basically, and he's helping people. He's helping students. I think that's the best way to summarize helping students, families and so forth with really everything about education. I see probably helping people in high school to prepare to get to college,
but it probably backs into that as well. But what changes let's talk about the admissions process again, I started to kind of touch on it. But what changes do we need to see in the college and sin's process and in higher education overall? What changes do we need there?
So I think there's a couple of changes that need to be made. I think, you know, college has long been presented as a chance for people to learn how to think, and I think there's an amazing value to that. But I do think that we need to make sure that young people are developing the skills that they need
to be prepared for what comes next. So we're really bullish when we have students who are going to study nursing or are doing things like accounting or things that we feel like are going to allow them to live the lives of the envision. So I think we need more skills as part of our education so young people can go do things that they're actually in demand. And I think we need to have conversations about as part of that. Oh, so how does this education fit in
within like a young person's life goals? Because what you don't want is a young person graduating from college and being like now what, I think that's sad and I.
Don't think that is how it should be.
With that said, I think the other change is we need a lot more transparency about the costs. We're working with someone right now who in their second year of college, they just kind of pulled the rug out under the floor and took away some of the grants that they were receiving. And I just think I feel so much for this family because they said, we would never have agreed to go here had we known what the cost
was going to change after year one. And so I think we need a lot more transparence about the costs where these funds are being allocated to, and a really frank conversation about what are we actually getting, like, what are we paying for and what can we expect in return. So I think we need have a reckoning about the cost to avoid debt. And I think we need to make sure that young people are a little more prepared for the real world coming out of college.
Yeah, so the journey how to prepare kids for a competitive and changing world. I don't see this as I suppose you could give this to somebody for graduation, and I want to not get in that way. But I almost think that's too late. I would like to see this book being maybe standard issue in maybe like high school, ninth grade, tenth grade, somewhere around there where you're thinking about starting to really think about college, taking that sat, that kind of thing, so you can start to prepare
for that. Because if you get this book after you've graduated and you're in that summer before you go and you're too late, do you think maybe even I guess eighth grade, but that seems too young.
Yeah, I think the book is written to be understood by someone of any age. I mean really, I think heading into ninth grade is a great time because it delves into you know, and I love the fact that your son is playing baseball at a very high level,
but not ever makes it to that level. And so I think just to be told that if you play a sport that's okay, it's not going to it may not be your path to college acceptance, and just to know that you need to have a plan B. And so we really try to I really tried to make sure that this would be a way for people to make the journey to college and career work for them, so we enjoy it and base less stress.
So I'm with you.
I'd love to see it out there standard issue, and I've been told that before, so I one, I really do appreciate you saying then too. I think this is a great way for both a young person a student and their family to read it so they're on the same page to reduce friction.
Yeah, and for somebody listening, I'm going to keep you for Can I keep you for five more minutes? Of course, I'm okay, let's talk about that student athlete for just a second, because I just that just jogged my memory that I forgot to talk about student athletes and I meant to with you. You know that is that is like having two careers in college. And I don't know if people really understand the life of a student athlete completely.
I think when you're in a freshman in high school or maybe in eighth grade or whatever, and you start to see promise in a sport and you think, oh, maybe I could play this in college, and it's it's a it's a very interesting journey to playing a sport in college. And some some parts of it are all its crack up to be in more and other parts are like, wow, this is really tricky to maintain my grades, show up on time for my classes, show up on time for practice, show up on time for games, be
gone from school during games or practices or whatever. There is a lot that goes on to being a student athlete. It is like having two jobs or maybe even three at times. It just depends on how well you're going to do it anyway, So you know, Cam should promise very very young to be able to move on to
potentially be a professional player at some point. And you know, he played five years at the University of New Haven, in one year at Georgetown Universities, get two master's degrees, an undergrad degree, all in environmental science and sports management, and is now over in Germany playing professional baseball. And what a journey that has been. And wow, right, you must get kids who want to and we know lots of other kids who you know play We see in
all the parents and kids and all this stuff. For baseball anyway, you must come across a lot of student athletes.
So what I will say is that we work with a lot of students, that a lot of young people who the think that their journey to college is through the sport that they play.
With the scholarship too, right.
And scholarship too. But I want to be very clear and unequivocal on this, is that only six percent of high school athletes are recruited to play at the college level, and of all high school athletes, two percent are given some form of a scholarship, and that is not necessarily
full scholarship, but that could be partial scholarship. And there are some sports that aren't real revenue drivers for a college, think like football, basketball, baseball to a certain extent depending on the school, that there may be one scholarship for five incoming players for five incoming freshmen, so that's a one fifth scholarship. So I think it's one of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to play a sports again to college, or that playing a sport will pay for college.
And I always tell students is that you have to have a plan B, and that could be any other plan B. But until you have an offer from a school that you'd like to attend, let's assume that you're not going to be getting in for the sport, and let's assume it's not going to be paying for it. Not that I have any doubt in anyone's athletic ability, it's just you can't need those numbers.
Yeah, and it's also we always said, okay, you can play baseball. But guess what, kiddo, school is going to be just as important because at some point, there's going to come a time when you can't left handed pitch, and we're going to you know, you're going to need to promise very very young to be able to move on to potentially be a professional player at some point.
And you know, he played five years at the University of New Haven, in one year at Georgetown Universities, get two master's degrees undergrad degree all in environmental science and sports management, and is now over in Germany playing professional baseball. And what a journey that has been. And wow, right, you must get kids who want to and we know lots of other kids who you know, play, We see in all the parents and kids and all the stuff.
For baseball anyway, you must come across a lot of student athletes.
So what I will say is that we work with a lot of students, that a lot of young people who the think that their journey to college is through the sport that they play.
Yeah, with the scholarship too, right.
And scholarship too, But I want to be very clear and unequivocal on this is that only six percent of high school athletes are recruited to play at the college level, and of all high school athletes, two percent are given some form of a scholarship, and that is not necessarily full scholarship, but that could be partial scholarship. And there are some sports that aren't real revenue drivers for a college.
I think, like football, basketball, baseball a certain extent depending on the school, that there may be one scholarship for five incoming players for five incoming freshmen, so that's a one fifth scholarship. So I think it's one of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to play a sports again to college, or that playing a sport will pay
for college. And always tell students is that you have to have a plan B, and that could be any other plan B. But until you have an offer from a school that you'd like to attend, let's assume that you're not going to be getting in for the sport, and let's assume it's not going to be paying for it.
Not that I have any doubt in.
Anyone's athletic ability, it's just you can't have made those numbers.
Yeah, and it's also we always said Okay, yep, you can play baseball. But guess what, kiddo, school is going to be just as important because at some point, there's going to come a time when you can't left handed pitch and we're going to you know, you're going to need to plan for that moment. And it sucks to think about it. I get it, but you know there will come a time. It just happens that way, and
so we always stress school. And so what was nice about our student athlete was that he had the academic scholarships and didn't need to rely on the baseball scholarships so much. He did get both in this case. But that academic piece is so important. So I can't stress enough to anybody listening how important it is whatever you want to do in life, to try and do the best you can do in school and get the best grades you can get.
Yeah.
I actually tell story of someone that my brother and I grew up with that the family held him back. So he repeated eighth grade so you could get bigger and stronger for a year and he he and this was for golf, and so he ended up getting a golf scholarship to a universe had a great golf program fantastic.
And what has been.
What ended up happening with him because my brother and I had a little bit of and I work with my brother. We were in business together, so we were looking at this person who was in my one of
my brother's class end up graduating a year later. Is he ended up being like becoming a being on a minor tour in South Africa And we're from California and moving to South Africa and now he teaches golf according to LinkedIn in Canada and if anyone's I mean, you're from Maine, so you know it's a very short golf season.
In the north. But I just don't know if this has served him well.
Where it was sports like where you said, I'm going to hold a kid back at thirteen or fourteen, I'm gonna go to them. And everything's been about golf for this person. And so he's down his mid thirties and everything's still about golf. And if he's happy, I'm happy. But if I don't know, if you know, maybe there could be life beyond golf too.
Yeah, that's okay.
Well, it was interesting. That was one of the thoughts behind my book, my new book, The one the success guidebook with HCI was that well rounded, comprehensive success. So when I see people on Best Ever You, my goal is to help them be successful in all areas of their life. So that's great. If you can play golf, or you can play baseball, or you can play football or whatever it is. You know, you're great in this one area, but how are the other areas? How's that
working out for you? You know kind of thing, And I couldn't agree with you more so. I think it's just so important to not be one track or just see one thing, but rather be that you know, that golfer who paints, or that baseball player who loves environmental science, or the doctor who is a writer, or the lawyer who's helping people do things, you know, to get people into college and things like that. It's so important to just broaden out, don't you think.
I think so, And I just think you know, they're sports.
Youth sports are fantastic. But when they suck up all the oxygen in the room and you don't have any skills or perspective beyond it, then we have a problem.
And you have a problem. Yeah, Well, I'm so glad that you're here on Best Ever You. I think this is exactly the kind of show that our best every followers love, these kind of in depth conversations about a topic that actually is you know, applicable to our lives and so forth. So I think people will really find this useful. And I know we have parents who are always seeking some type of parenting information, especially when there's not so much written for this age of twenty to thirty.
I see lots of kid books out there, like you know, parenting your toddler and parenting your eight year old and things like that, but the parenting you're twenty to thirty year old needs to help more way more.
So I think this is Yeah, I think that fifteen to twenty five, getting a young person to launch themselves is you know, getting body training can be a challenge. The Terrible twos and the temper tantrums. Having been through that, you know myself, like I can say that is a challenge, But this requires a lot more thoughtfulness. And that's why it's nice to be having this conversation because it's a different type of challenge and it's it's and it's a
different type of conversation. I mean, you are having a conversation, which is nice, but it's it can be challenging. And then the world is just so much more complex than it was when we came of age, and so I think we need to just be very thoughtful and forward looking. So so thank you so much for having me on the show today.
Yeah, thank you for being here, and to the students listening, because we do have a very budding young audience. Of those twenty year olds, you know, this is a great way to grab his book and have a conversation with your parents, or even pull Greg in and help him have the conversation with you and your parents and so forth, you know, because there might be some I take it from a standpoint of you know, not everybody I do
truly go here. I'm like, not everybody wants to go to college, and these kids are thinking, my goodness, this is expensive and I don't know what I want to do, and I don't want to waste time and money and things like that. And I think this is a point, a conversation point that a lot of people have in the back of their mind, but they're afraid to say it. So they go to college anyway and do all sorts of things at college that aren't helping them.
I agree.
That's why you just have to have a plan. And again, it's not just about working with someone like me. I'm just thrilled that I get to make sure that people make the most of this because I don't want people wasting time. I don't want people wasting money. I want people building the life that the envision leading. But it does require being intentional.
Yeah, all right, Greg, thank you so much for being with me, and I want to make sure before we go I tell people where to find you, where to get your book and so forth. You said you're not really on social media that much. Are you on LinkedIn or is there someplace that you'd like.
You're on LinkedIn?
But we also have a fantastic website, Kaplan Educational Group dot com. Our book is for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles wherever you know books are sold, which I don't know online if that's anywhere else these days, But visit our website Kaplan Educationalgroup dot com. We also have a monthly newsletter that we send out and instead of kind of updates on social media, where we're kind of getting into a little more in depth about some of the issues that I think we should all be talking about.
I think this month I'm.
Going to be writing about, you know, with the loneliness epidemic in the United States, how being involved in activities in high school being thoughtful about that's actually probably the best way to to to, you know, to address that. So we try to get have dep and really make sure that young everyone is moving in the right direction. So this is, you know, I would say, the best way.
And you know, through the website you can reach out and contact us if you're interested in receiving any you know, individualized advising perfect And.
Again, just one more time. The book is called The Journey, How to Prepare Kids for competitive and changing World. And this has been a lovely conversation with Greg Kaplan. Greg, thank you so much for.
Being here, Thank you so much for having me, and it was it was a spectacular conversation, So thank you so much.
Elizabeth, thank you